We can exercise on a budget or in limited time frame

Let’s face it, with the economy the way it is today, more and more people are running a little tight in the wallet and a little tight in the pants. That, to me, is double trouble! You might be a college student or in school and not have enough funds to join a gym and need an alternative to going there. You could also just be out of shape and unable to exercise without getting exhausted quickly, or don’t want to go into public until you’re in a little better shape. You can choose to exercise at home!

The reasons really do not matter, but what does matter is more and more people are looking to exercise at home, and they would like ideas of what exercises they can do to trim up their stomach, arms or to just getting the heart rate up.

We need to maximize our exercise potential

The things I am sharing today are ideas that will help tone your muscles, but a good detox diet and a really good all-around eating habit really needs to go right along with this in order to maximize the potential of the results. Since we are trying to tone up and get fit on a limited budget and probably in a limited amount of time to even exercise, we need a good foundation.

Before we get started, we need to understand that to lose weight we need to exercise. It is imperative to drink plenty of water and never skip breakfast or meals. The body needs to be hydrated to rid toxins and make the liver perform its job. The body needs something to supply the muscles to get strong and rebuild. Lack of food puts the body in starvation mode and wants to burn muscle and hang on to fat. This works against our goals of trying to get healthy and firm. We need to cut out all salt or sodium and all soda. These materials make the body retain water and, again, go against what we are trying to do. Remember we are trying to get healthy, lose weight while on a budget, and lose it on a limited amount of time. This will even save you a lot of wasted money on soda and doctor bills from being sick.

Always remember to warm up with stretching before exercising

The first thing I am listing is a simple jumping jacks exercise

Simple jumping jacks are a great way to loosen up and get the body ready to go while also getting the heart rate up. We start with feet together and hands at our sides. We then do a small jump, moving the legs and feet out past the hips, while moving our arms overhead. Do a reverse jump to move feet together and arms to the side again. It is important to keep your knees slightly bent to ease the hoping motion on the joints.

The next thing I am listing today will be a simple skipping exercise. We raise the right knee up towards the hip and at the same time, we reach our left arm up to the sky while doing a small hop off the ball of our feet and landing on the other ball of the left foot. From here, all we do is reverse it. Start from the left foot and repeat the process. The faster and more intense you do this, the better the workout. I would go no less than 10 to 15 minutes, but try to skip as high as you can and that will cause a natural flexing of the muscles.

The faster we go, the more intense workout

The second exercise is a simple stair climb

This will wear you out; do it till it burns and keep going. Go to the stairs and start going all the way to the top, turn around, and go back down. The faster you go the harder the workout. If that gets easier, add some weights to your ankles or arms on most any workout to add resistance and more burn.

The next exercise is a basic burpee,

Do a pushup or left right leg kicks in pushup position

I do not know why this is the name, but it’s a goodie for an exercise. Stand with hands straight at your side and do a squatting motion, reaching hands to the floor. Once your hands are firmly on the floor, kick your feet straight out so you are in a pushup position. If you opt to do the pushups, do it here. (bend your arms and lower yourself in a straight line to the floor and then push yourself back to straight arm position.) If you do not do the pushups, hop your feet back under you to the squat position again and stand up to the starting position.

The last thing I will mention is doing a vertical jump.

Bend your knees and jump as high as you can. You can also move your arms upward to help propel you into the air and land with your knees bent.

This is just a few exercises we can do, there are so many more we can add to this, or some variants of what is listed here. Some variants I will mention are a one leg burpee, invisible jump rope, lunge boxing or shadow boxing, side stepping like an ice skater, etc. For any workout, always drink enough water and make sure the workout is followed by a cool down period so you don’t hurt your muscles.