If you have a desire to be healthy and fit, but don’t know where to start, then this is the perfect place for you. Here, we will discuss some exercises that are easy for beginners.
It is important for you to start with easy exercises to maintain the interest in the initial phase. Once, you get hooked onto exercising, there will be no stopping you.
For many exercising is a task or work, and when you take something as mere work that needs to be finished somehow, you end up losing interest sooner than later.
In the beginning phase, you even might feel tired after exercising, but that is because your body is not use to so much physical activity.
If you are still there after 2-3 weeks, you’ll realise that you’ll be little addicted to exercising. Exercising won’t make you feel tired, it will make you feel fresh and happy.
Yes, exercise is a good stress buster. So, let us see some easy exercise for men and women.
15 easy exercises
Sit ups
Sit ups is one of the easiest exercises you can do. If you don’t know, it is like crunches, but you end up using the full range of motion and not the partial.
Sit ups engage the lower back, abdomen, chest, pelvis and few other stabilising muscles. On the other hand, crunches is more of an isolated exercise.
The thing you have to remember is that you need to use full range of motion; from bottom to the top.
The farther you keep your feet from the hips the easier it will become, the job of stabilisation for your core will become easier.
In the beginning you can start with feet farther and hands placed crossed on your chest. As you get stronger and more comfortable with the motion, you can upgrade a little.
To make this exercise a little difficult bring your heals close to hips and keep you hands behind your head. Make sure to keep your upper arms aligned to your head.
Breathing:
You need to breath while going up and when you are at the top hold your breath for a second and exhale while going down.
It is important to move in a slow and controlled way, so that you can synchronise your breathing with the motion. It helps reduce fatigue.
Hold something heavy
When I say heavy, it totally depends upon your personal strength. For example, a weight which is heavy for a person might be light for another.
Why would you want to just lift something?
This is to train your forearms. The main job of forearms is to help you grip things. For example, you are hanging of a pole, you are using forearms to do that.
A motocross biker needs to have very strong forearms, because he needs to hold onto the bike handles while his bike is jumping up and down the slopes. FYI, it is tough as hell.
So, when you hold heavy weights, what you are really doing is engaging the muscles that helps you grip. You can also hang from a pull up bar, that will also engage your upper arm and shoulder.
It is important to have strong forearms because apart from legs, forearm muscles are very useful in day to day life.
You should always start with light weight and increase little by little, that will help avoid injuries and also prepare your muscles for the next level.
This is easy exercise for forearms for people who go to gym and people who don’t go to gym. But, if you go to gym you can take it to the next level.
Wrist curls
Wrist curls can activate each and every muscle in your forearm. You can do it on a machine or using dumbbells. Keep in mind to go slow, because it is easy to injure the wrist.
You can do normal wrist curls for sometime, then you can graduate to reverse wrist curls. Reverse wrist curls targets your Brachioradialis.
Squats
A squat is on the best exercise you can do, but this doesn’t make it difficult. In fact, it is very plain and simple, but you do have to keep a few things in mind.
Squat is an exercise for pretty much each and every muscle in your legs, and it also targets your glutes, lower back and abs.
Depending upon your feet position, you can target different muscles more or less. For example, if you allow your knees to go beyond your toes, then you’ll target your hamstrings and lower back more.
If you let the knees cross your toes then you’ll target your glutes and quadriceps more. If you want to stretch your glutes and activate your abdomen too, then go deep.
Is there a next level?
For a beginner, a body weight squat is an easy exercises to do, but when your body will get use to it, then you might have to take it to the next level.
Many people go directly to barbell squats after this, but it is important to skip no step. Dumbbell squats is somewhat between body weight squat and barbell squats.
It gives you more resistance than normal squat, while preparing your legs and back for the more difficult exercise.
Strengthening your muscles before going for the heavy squats can help prevent hamstring and lower back injuries.
Bicep curls
Bicep curls is an isolation exercise, which targets only your biceps. You might be knowing that your biceps are made up of two heads; long head and short head.
The range of motion of your bicep curl will decide which head you’ll hit. For example, if you are going to the extreme bottom and coming to the top end, then you’ll be targeting both the heads.
If you want to target only your short head, then go down only to the mid-point and curl back.
As a beginner you should start with very light weight, you don’t worry about who is watching. Ego lifting is considered as the top most reason why people get injured.
Choose a weight with which you can do 20-25 reps. People might tell you that doing so many reps of light weight will cause muscle loss, it is not true.
Until you go to extreme length, like doing 500 – 1000 reps like this, you won’t lose any muscle.
Tips for doing biceps curls
The first thing you need to remember is that treat your elbows as fixed. Don’t move your elbows at all. The lesser you move the better results you’ll get.
Breath in while bring the dumbbells up and breath out while you bring the dumbbells down.
To go a little heavy you can use this trick. While bring the dumbbell you keep in it neutral position, as you are 25% up, start turning your wrist, to make the grip supinated. HELPS LIFT MORE WEIGHT.
You can also squeeze to give the extra pump, but in the beginning that won’t be necessary. Just go slow, especially when you are bringing the weights down.
Push ups
Push up is probably the first thing anyone who is into gyming learns. It is not only an easy exercise fore beginners, but it is also a staple exercise for people at an advance stage.
There are few qualities of push ups which makes it king of all exercises. First of all, it has lots of variations, these variations helps to target different muscles.
Push up is a complete upper body exercise, which means you can train your biceps, triceps, upper back, shoulders, traps and forearms using push ups.
The three most popular variations are: normal push up, diamond push and wide grip push up.
Since, we are here to discuss easy exercises, hence we will only discuss the most basic push up. In the basic, push up you keep your hands at a shoulder width.
To activate your triceps even more you can move your hands a little closer.
Push ups are difficult for me?
If normal push ups are difficult for you, then you can start with doing push up against a wall. I know it sounds a little stupid, but it is a nice way to strengthen the muscles needed for push ups.
After doing wall push ups for some time, you move to bench push up. In this, your hands will be on a bench and feet should be on the ground.
How to do it properly?
- Your body should be like a piece of wood. It should not curve while going up and down.
- Do as less as one, but do that rep properly. It helps in preventing injuries.
- Look straight while doing push ups, to target chest more.
- Ask someone to check your form in the beginning or do them near a mirror.
- Breath out while going down and breath up while coming up.
Hyperextension
Hyperextension is a simple and easy to way to work on your lower back and abs. Working on lower back and abs makes your core strong, and a strong core means strong you.
It is best to do this on a hyperextension bench, but if you exercise at home or don’t have a bench in the gym, then you can do this on a normal bench, sofa or a bed.
For doing this on bed or bench, you need to ask someone to sit or hold your legs. Or, you can put some weight on your legs.
Hyperextension is an easy exercise for beginners, as the motion we use use in this exercise is quite simple, and most of the people get a hold of it in the first attempt.
If you have a bad posture or you want to avoid lower back problems at an old age, you must definitely do this one.
Can I add weights?
Yes, you can add weights. You can either take a little heavy plate and hold it close to your chest or you can take a light plate and hold it in front of you like a superman.
Hyper-extension for belly
If you want to get rid of the side tire(side belly), then you should do this exercise, but side ways. Doing it won’t help lose fat, but it will tone the muscle and make your waist decrease in width.
If you are not comfortable to this, you can start with side-planks to strength those muscles and then move to side-ways hyper-extension.
Leg extension
Leg extension exercise is a good way to warm up those legs. But, it is also used as a dedicated isolation exercise for your quads.
All though is a very simple exercise, yet there are few things, if done correctly, will take the effect of the exercise to a whole new level.
Firstly, your toes should point in different directly; in outward direction. Then there should a gap of a fist between the two knees.
The most important thing is to squeeze at the end and hold there for a couple of seconds, before going down.
As a beginner, you don’t have to use heavy weights, because if you spend too much muscle juice in this one, then you won’t be able to finish the workout properly.
For people who don’t go to gym
You can do leg extensions using a resistance band, you would also need a chair. Tie one end of the resistance band to the leg of the chair, preferably the legs that are behind.
A dumbbell can also come very hand, if you want o do leg extensions at home. There are two ways, you can do it using dumbbells. First, on is shown in the video below.
Secondly, you can take a little heavy dumbbell and try to lift it using both the legs. Sit on a chair or on the bed, the main thing is to get the squeeze at the end.
Dips
Doing dips on dip bar is probably not a thing for you if you are just beginning. So, if you can use a chair or a bench for dip.
Dips is the best exercise for your triceps and it also gives a nice stretch to your chest. In the beginning you should do dip by keeping your upper body on a chair/bench and feet on the ground.
When you are more comfortable to can use two chair, that means, upper body on one chair and feet on the other.
To take to the next level, you can use weights also. Keep a plate on your laps while doing the dips. Make sure while going, up or down, you don’t strain your shoulders.
Lots of people tend to injure their shoulder while doing dips. Keep the palms at shoulder length and try to feel the pressure on the triceps.
If you are not feeling enough tension on the triceps, then you need to change the position of your hands a little bit. You can change while doing it.
Superman pose
Actually, it is a yoga pose, known as ‘Prishth Naukasana’. Prishth means ‘face or front’, nauka means ‘a boat’ and asana means ‘pose.’
This name, because you are making the structure of a boat with your body. It is very commonly known as superman pose, as super man fly in a similar fashion.
This pose targets your back, abs, hips, legs, shoulders and various other muscles. If you want to increase testosterone level this is a good exercise.
Apart from that, being a Yoga pose, it also has several other benefits, like it strengthens your digestive system, improves your mood, tones all the organs and it is good for combating stress.
How to do it?
As a beginner, it is better to go up level by level. You can start by lifting one hand and one leg at a time. For example, lift your left hand and right leg. Do this for other pair too.
On the next level, raise both the arms while keeping your legs flat on the ground. Try to keep your chest off the floor. After this, lift your legs and keep the hands on the ground.
Now, you can do both legs and hands together, which is actually the main exercise. You can go up one by one or just do the superman pose directly.
You should hold the pose for at least 10-15 seconds. It might look easy, but if you do it properly it can take all the negative energy out of the body.
Dumbbell kickbacks
As the name suggests, this exercise works on your triceps. And, it is probably the least complicated exercise of triceps.
How to do it properly?
Firstly, you have to bend your knees a little bit and lean forwards. The angle of lean is totally your choice.
Tip: Bend at angle so that your upper arm is parallel to the ground. When your upper arm is parallel to the ground then the entire range of motion will be against the gravity.
And, after that you need to keep your elbows locked at that position.
Triceps kickback trains the longer head of your triceps. If you are not comfortable in doing both the arms together, then you can do one at a time.
Note: When you are back and up, don’t follow a straight line, instead go towards the centre of your body, it will help focusing all the tension on those muscles.
Shrugs
Shrug is as easy as it can get. I mean, all you have to do is hold one dumbbell in each hand and try to bring them up using your traps only.
In fact, those traps you see in movie(Tom hardy – Warrior) or on a wrestler(Goldberg or Lesner), they have build those traps on using this movement.
Again, in order to get maximum results you need to keep few things in mind. Firstly, when the dumbbell goes up, you need to squeeze at the top and when they go down, go down as low as you can without bending.
Most common mistake?
There a common mistake that pretty much everyone make during shrugs. They use a very heavy weight in the beginning.
When you use heavy weights, other muscles come into picture and remember I told you, you have to use only your trap muscles.
So, it is better to start with light weight and program your traps to lift weight. And, then slowly increase the weight session after session.
The next level?
After you are sure, that you can lift little heavy weight using only your traps, then you can move to barbell shrugs.
Now, you can do barbell shrugs using free weighted barbell or you can use smith machine for that purpose. On a smith machine, you can lift a lot heavier than you would normally do.
Lat pull down
Lat pull down is a nice and easy exercise for your upper back and of course lats. There are some good exercises for your back, but they are very complicated.
For example, most of the people fail to target the right spot when doing dumbbell row. Instead of feeling the actual tension on the muscle, they just go through motion.
With lats pull down, targeting the right muscles is comparatively easy, although you do have to keep in mind the following things.
Firstly, start with light weight. Remember, whenever you are doing any back exercise, you are also using many other supporting muscles, like biceps, triceps and shoulders.
The heavier you lift the more these supporting muscle will come into picture which you don’t want.
Walk stairs
Walking stairs is a good way to burn calories and build leg muscles without any equipment or gym. It works so well because you are going against the gravity.
It targets you hamstrings, quads, hip flexor, glutes and calves. When you are skipping 2-3 steps, then you’ll use your hams more to pull you up.
Walking stairs increases your heart rate, which is good for heart heath, prevent clogged arteries and reduced resting heart rate.
Reduced resting heart rate means that your heart is strong enough you deliver adequate amount of blood with less pumps.
FYI – Trained athletes and endurance runners can have resting heart rate as low as 40 BPM. This is because regular training have increased the size of their heart.
Another thing good about walking stairs is that, it releases good amount of endorphin, which helps you to be in a good mood or just relax.
Once, your muscles are habitual of walking stairs, then you can run too. But, there is a huge difference between walking and running on stair. So, go slow!
Calves raise
Calf raises is the only exercise which targets your calves in isolation. You hit your calve when you are doing squats, deadlifts, lunges or any other leg exercise, but it is not enough.
The best thing about calf raises is that you can do them anywhere, you just need an elevated platform. Like, a stair or even the threshold of a door.
You can target different part of your calves, by just changing the angle of your feet. Do 3 sets which different position.
One is by keeping feet parallel to each other, then by pointing your toes in opposite direction and then pointing your toes towards each other.
If you have a calf raise machine in the gym, it is best. You can add as much weight as you can, you can’t do that at home.
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