It has been over a year since I wasn’t able to visit the gym or go for my swimming classes. To continue being active, I had to plan a full body workout at home! A full body workout can provide overall toning and help you achieve your goal – whether the goal is to gain strength or to lose weight! A full body workout doesn’t require any machines so it’s a routine you can follow anywhere. 

How You Can Plan A Full Body Workout At Home 

To begin with, I divided my workout into three parts – Stretching, Abs and Cardio. Let’s see why these are important. 

1. Stretching

There are many benefits of stretching regularly. It not only increases your flexibility but also corrects posture, reduces stress and body ache. I believe this is a must during a lockdown, especially for individuals working at home as continuous sitting hours affect posture drastically. So stretching should be an important part of your routine. Stretching before a workout prepares the muscles for an activity. It improves performance, blood circulation, blood flow to the muscles and reduces muscle soreness.

Types of Stretching include:

• Dynamic: Usually done before an exercise to get your muscles ready for movement 
• Static: Done after exercise to reduce risk of injury 

Stretching exercises include: neck stretches/rotation, shoulder stretch, arm stretch, chest stretch, stretching your wrists, standing stretch, ankle flex, etc. 

2. Core Strengthening

After getting in a few good stretches, I begin with core strengthening because with long sitting hours, I’ve observed my belly growing in size. To curb that, my full body workout also includes core strengthening. 

Abdominals or Abs are that part of the body which help in generating power for functional movements. To avoid injuries that may occur from day to day activities, it is very important to keep the core of the body strong and flexible.

There are varied benefits of core strengthening. It is not just about reducing belly fat. Some of the benefits of training your core include: 

• Balance and stability to the body
• Improved posture
• Helps in alleviating back ache
• Better performance in sports and related game activities
• Strong core is very important for women during pregnancy
• A strong core minimizes the chances of injury caused by undue stress on some parts of the body
• Core strengthening leads to muscle strengthening and this, in turn, leads to bone strengthening

Some simple exercises for core strengthening include:

• Forward Crunches
• Reverse Crunches
• Bridge
• Plank variations- Front plank, side planks, plank walk
• Air cycling 
• Leg pull-in/push-out

3. Cardio 

Eventually, I increase the intensity of my workout by including a few cardio exercises. Cardio exercises are aerobic exercises of long duration (more than 3 minutes at a stretch). It works on your cardiovascular strength (heart health), stamina and muscular endurance. Examples of these exercises are walking, brisk walking, jogging, running, swimming, cycling, stair climbing, etc. In lockdown or while self-quarantining, I include spot jogging, spot cycling, jumping jacks, march pass and stair climbing to my daily routine.

Few Things To Keep In Mind While Planning Your Routine 

1. Workouts should be developed around a person’s age, goals, nutritional strategy, free time, etc.
2. How much time can you devote to exercise? If you can do an hour a day, that’s fantastic. But maybe you have a wife or husband, three kids, a dog, two jobs, and no robot butler… then maybe you only have thirty minutes, twice a week.
3. Break up your workout! According to the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), if you accumulate three 10-minute bouts of exercise throughout the day to a total 30 mins of exercise, then that is as effective as someone who does one 30 mins bout of exercise

How to Build a Full Body Workout? 

Now comes the tricky part—putting all this together. 

1. Full-body workouts should be fairly simple! Always begin with a dynamic warm-up and finish with a cooldown.
2. Add a variety to your exercise routine by including one new exercise every week to avoid boredom
3. As a beginner, you can start your full body workout slowly and once you get used to the routine, you can increase the intensity for better results.
4. Rest is also required to ensure complete recovery of the body. So do not forget to give one day rest to your body – it deserves that! 

Finally, the favourite that I never miss doing is Surya Namaskar! At least 1-10 rounds depending on my workout. Surya Namaskar postures are a good blend of warm-ups, asanas and burn out. It helps to tone and shape the body and it also improves body function, improves flexibility, strengthens muscles and helps beat stress. Add this to your routine to stay active always and it’s best done in the morning hours. 

If this article helped you, let us know your thoughts in the comments below. If you’re not sure where to begin, try joining a live, interactive class, conducted by an expert on GOQii PRO. You can schedule a class via the GOQii App. 

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You can also browse through more articles on everything workout and fitness here.

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