Exercises to do for a full body, at-home workout

Exercising at home in your living room is sometimes seen as the poor relation of going to the gym, but the truth is that you can get just as good of a workout at home¹. Plus, there are plenty of reasons you might prefer a home workout over going to the gym: maybe you’re relatively new to exercise and the energy of the gym just feels a bit too aggressive. Or perhaps you’ve witnessed fellow weekend warriors failing to wipe down their gym equipment, so you have cleanliness concerns.

Whatever your reasons for staying home, we’ve put together some exercises to do for a full body, at-home workout – no equipment necessary. After all, the gym might not be for everyone, but movement is². And at Voltaren we want to bring the joy of movement to everyone!

Always consult your doctor before starting a new exercise program.

Benefits of this workout

These days, many of us are spending more and more time sitting down, which is impacting our health³. Inactivity has been described as a “silent killer” by the UK’s Department of Health⁴, with studies linking it to obesity, type 2 diabetes, some cancers and even early death⁵. Fortunately, we can reduce our risk of ill health from inactivity with regular exercise⁶ – which is where this workout can come in handy.

Find out more about the pain relief benefits of weight management. Movement is crucial to ensuring a healthy weight. There is a strong link between obesity and pain⁷, those extra kilograms can put stress on our bodies through extra to carry as well as giving us poor posture⁸. Being active every day, and a weekly target of 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise (like brisk walking, riding a bike, or aqua aerobics) or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise is recommended.ⁱ The activities included in this circuit training are vigorous, so you can see how doing it twice a week can quickly get you to that target!

How to do the workout

The bodyweight exercises in this at-home workout target your back, chest, legs, abs and arms, helping to build total body strength⁹. There’s also a cardio component to support heart health and help you maintain a healthy weight¹⁰. Doing cardio exercises is one of the best ways to lose weight at home, making this a great workout to try if fat burning or weight loss is your goal.

You can do this workout anywhere you have a bit of space in your home, and you don’t need any equipment except for a stopwatch (you can use a physical stopwatch or anything with a stopwatch function, like a smartwatch or your phone). The whole workout should take about 30 minutes to complete.

The workout is made up of five different exercises. Do each exercise for 30 seconds before moving on to the next, focusing on completing as many reps as you can in that time while maintaining good form, with 20 seconds of rest between each exercise. When you’ve worked through all five exercises, take a full minute of rest. That’s one round. Complete four more rounds for a full body, combined strength and cardio workout.

In practice, this is how the workout looks:

1: do exercise #1 for 30 seconds.

2: rest for 20 seconds.

3: do exercise #2 for 30 seconds.

4: rest for 20 seconds.

5: do exercise #3 for 30 seconds.

6: rest for 20 seconds.

7: do exercise #4 for 30 seconds.

8: rest for 20 seconds.

9: do exercise #5 for 30 seconds.

10: rest for 1 minute.

Repeat steps 1 through 10, four more times.

Without further ado, let’s move on to the main event: the exercises.