Who wants to go to the gym anymore? Wake up early, half asleep, brew some coffee, rush out the door, hopefully beat all the early risers to your local fitness center, fight for a bench or a treadmill, then race back home in time to squeeze in a shower before you grab a piece of burnt toast and hop back into your vehicle to fight traffic to work. That sounds awful.
Then you consider alternatives, like a home workout DVD. But you feel discouraged as you struggle to keep up with the fitness gurus on your TV screen, who appear to breeze right through all the exercises without breaking a sweat. Meanwhile, you pause the video for the third time within 15 minutes to guzzle down more water and gasp for air.
So what can a person do to get back into shape and maintain it without a gym membership or a box set of DVDs only professional athletes can handle? Well you have plenty of options, especially in your own home! But forget about treadmills, stationary bikes, and a rack of dumbbells. Save yourself money and space in your living room with resistance bands.
Get That Brazilian Butt Lift
Okay, so let’s face the harsh truth. You find yourself walking on the beach and you happen to spot some athletic men and women with a firmer derrière than your own. Well, one, simple exercise, repeated each day over time, effectively addresses that concern: squatting. If you want to tone up your buns, then light resistance bands will suffice.
Runway Model Legs
Think about every runway model you have ever seen. What do you notice about them? Probably a few things, such as hair, make-up, and dazzling outfits. You also might recall their tall, slender legs. Several exercises focus on the legs. But the leg extension trumps all of them to isolate the front of your legs.
Make Their Knees Weak With Your Strong Calves
Different muscles group together at different angles to shape your legs. The extensions will tone up the front. But the leg curls will tone up the back. Now, if you grab a pair of dumbbells, then you can really sculpt the back of your legs with calf raises. But in lieu of free weights, leg curls with resistance bands will help you complete your objective.
Excuse Me, Is This A Gun Free Zone?
Now that you have those legs ready for your modeling career, let’s concentrate on those guns—er, arms—with a good ole fashioned concentration curl. You can pump up your biceps as you stand or as you sit. You decide the position. Watch your arms inflate like a balloon and over the next 90 days start to take a whole new shape ( and not to mention your newfound strength ).
Extend Extend Extend
Just like with your legs, you have two sides to address. So you exercised the front side of the arms with the concentration curl ( or any type of bicep curl ). Now you must work out the back side of the arms with the tricep kickback. You can perform this routine lying on your back. But you will find standing up more functional for most tricep exercises.
Fresh And Fly
Now that you have your arms ready for the next local amateur arm wrestling competition, let’s work on the one muscle group you will never see with your own two eyes: your back. Yes, that makes it less appealing. But you want your whole body even and proportional, and the classic reverse fly will help you with your posture and carrying heavy things at home or at work.
Building A Chest Like Schwarzenegger
How do you look good in a T-shirt? Build a big chest. Even with a little flab in the abdominal region, large pecs will push out the T-shirt and give you that more athletic shape. Most people hop on the bench and do different chest presses. But with some resistance bands you can work out your chest and get a good burn with the crossover chest fly. Remember to really squeeze it.
Keep Pushing And Dig Deeper
Sometimes you can’t beat the old school formula. Push-ups use your body weight to exercise your chest. You can do those on your feet or on your knees for assistance. But if you really want to ramp up the intensity, then start adding resistance bands to your sets of push-ups. Don’t overdo it, though. You can always alternate between using the resistance bands and not.
Lift Up Your Hands
You can feel your heart beating out of your chest after all those push-ups, and you probably feel a secondary sensation in your shoulders. Now you can double down on your shoulders with the overhead press. You can start off with a bicep curl and segue into the overhead press for a more compound exercise or just simply go straight to the overhead press. You will feel the burn!
Do The Twist
You knocked out all of the “meat and potatoes” for your full body workout. But now one final piece of the puzzle remains: the washboard abs. Forget about crunches. That just strains your neck. Instead, do the twist! Some call it the mason twist, or the Russian twist, or the kayak. Call it whatever you want. Just make sure you incorporate this ab routine into your workout.
Blood, Sweat, And Tears—But Mostly Sweat
“You can have results or excuses. Not both.” Arnold Schwarzenegger understand the secret to success, especially in the art and science of fitness and health. But you don’t need steroids and five-hour workouts, six days a week, lifting heavy in the gym. You have now empowered yourself with ten effective exercises that cover all your muscle groups. You just need some resistance bands and a living space—and a little coffee in the morning. That’s okay, too!
