Home workouts: Effective exercises for beginners with no equipment required
Image: DC Studio / Freepik
Working out doesn't have to mean spending hours at the gym or investing in expensive equipment.
For many people, exercising at home offers a more convenient, cost-effective, and comfortable alternative.
Whether it's due to a busy schedule, financial limitations, or simply preferring the privacy of home, at-home workouts are becoming an increasingly popular way to stay fit and healthy.
Cape Town-based personal trainer Reemay Damons shares a series of effective, equipment-free exercises for beginners that prove you don't need fancy machines to get strong, toned, and energised.
Warmup exercise
Damons recommends doing a few warm-up exercises before starting your workout to ensure your muscles are properly prepared. Here are three basic exercises:
Arm circles: Loosen up the shoulders and arms with small to large circles going forward and backwards.
Leg swings: Swing one leg forward and backwards, then side to side, to open up the hips and hamstrings.
Torso twists: Rotate your upper body side to side with controlled motion to loosen the spine and core.
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Damons shares five simple beginner-friendly exercises that you can do at home without the use of equipment. Exercise 1: Wall pushups
If you're a beginner, this can be done against a wall.
Stand arm's length from a wall, place your hands on the wall at shoulder height, and lean in, bending your elbows until your nose almost touches the wall.
Then, push back to the starting position.
Exercise 2: Half crunches
Half crunches are a good starting point for beginners or those seeking a less intense abdominal workout.
In a half crunch, you lift your upper body only a few centimeters off the ground, engaging your core without fully extending your spine.
Place your arms behind your head or across your chest.
Exercise 3: Knee plank
A knee plank is a simple, beginner-friendly way to get started on core strength.
Start on your hands and knees. Lower your forearms to the ground with elbows directly under your shoulders.
Walk your knees back slightly so your body forms a straight line from your head to your knees.
Engage your core by tightening your abdominal muscles.
Keep your hips in line with your shoulders and avoid arching your back. Hold the position for 20 - 30 seconds.
Exercise 4: Knee lifts
Knee lifts are a simple yet effective cardio exercise.
Start by jogging on the spot, lifting your knees as high as possible.
Try to lift your knees to hip level while keeping your core tight.
Exercise 5: Squats
To do a beginner squat, stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, toes slightly out, and chest up.
Engage your core, bend your knees, and push your hips back as if sitting in a chair.
Lower down until your thighs are parallel to the floor or as low as comfortable, keeping your knees in line with your toes. Press through your heels to stand back up.
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Ezintsha, for years based in a Yeoville house, and Hillbrow back rooms, around which sewage spills split and foamed, now occupies two floors of a large office block in Parktown, an environment of biometric access controls and curvilinear glass, employing 150 people. On the upper floor is the Sleep Clinic, where patients with suspected sleep disorders lie back on R50,000 mattresses sponsored by the company. QUID PRO QUO The Sleep Clinic at Ezintsha in Parktown treats people with suspected sleep disorders, with beds sponsored by a mattress company. It's also now the home of a new obesity clinic with new drugs which, says Venter, are 'every bit as fiddly as antiretrovirals were in 2000'. Image: Delywn Verasamy 'The quid pro quo is that they be allowed to advertise,' says a faintly apologetic Venter, as we cross through an incongruous six-bed showroom. The Sleep Clinic also houses a new obesity clinic, where Venter sees patients with South Africa's new pandemic. 'The new drugs for obesity are every bit as revolutionary as the HIV drugs,' he says, 'but every bit as fiddly as antiretrovirals were in 2000.' New studies, using these wonder drugs in people with both HIV and obesity, are being hatched here. Ezintsha's health staff are looking at using HIV lessons to try to improve primary care for diabetes, hypertension and other common diseases in South Africa. The race to the bottom We are a long way from Phalaborwa, a long way from the house in Yeoville, too, and while it is probably unfair to include Ezintsha in this observation, the transit away from the streets into cushy offices is one that many organisations working on HIV have made in recent years. 'It is nice not to have to worry about staff being pistol-whipped while at work,' remarks Venter, but he doesn't dodge the inference, which is that donor funding, while key to the fight against HIV in South Africa, has also distanced organisations from communities, and created a dependency which, following the collapse of the US government's Aids Fund, Pepfar, and the United States International Agency for International Development, USAID, threatens catastrophe. 'What happened still feels quite unthinkable. On the one hand it feels like 2004, when Mbeki's denial of HIV became national policy and everything felt like it was going backwards. On the other hand it is extremely frustrating that our systems have not been made sustainable, and are now on the brink of collapse as a result of Pepfar having been interwoven with the national HIV programme to such an extent everything unravels when it is stopped.' Venter sketches a scenario, in which South Africa's HIV response — 'the one effective programme we have' — is misleadingly characterised as 'too expensive', and dragged down to the lowest common denominator, 'leading to the same terrible outcomes you find in crap programmes, like diabetes'. Patients in neighbouring countries like Lesotho, where the country's HIV programme relied almost entirely on US funding, start crossing into South Africa en masse in search of treatment, where they are conveniently scapegoated by South African authorities for collapsing the health system. MR FIX IT Venter says getting 'everyone from the president and the minister of health down' to use the public healthcare system using their medical aid will mean 'they will have an immediate investment in assisting those fixing it'. Image: Supplied 'A race to the bottom, in other words,' says Venter. 'We have poor indicators for almost every health metric outside HIV, TB and vaccines and even those are now slipping, due to the health department dropping the ball. Both our public and private health services are an expensive mess, for very different reasons. The health minister has been in charge for most of the last 17 years, we have endless excellent white papers and policy documents that gather dust, and little to show for the continent's most expensive health system.' Will this grim scenario prevail, or will South African healthcare be shepherded through the labyrinth of budget cuts and misfiring systems? Venter doesn't see why not. 'It wasn't so long ago that we seemed to be in the grip of load-shedding without end, yet Eskom was turned around in 18 months. Our problems are systemic, and we have enough resources and brains to fix them. What is needed is strong leadership, which is something we currently lack,' says Venter, pausing to mull the judiciousness of his next point. It isn't a long pause. 'I'll tell you what you do. You take the top people from the medical aids and tell them: you can't be head of Discovery or the Government Employee Medical Scheme, Gems, any more, lead with the best people from academia, from government, the private sector, donors, civil society, form a focused group with teeth, and run the health system.' 'We all declare our interests, put an end to corruption and everyone from the president and the minister of health down in government must use the public healthcare system when using their medical aid. If they experience the system first hand, they will have an immediate investment in assisting those fixing it. Stop blaming the private sector and a lack of money for the problem. 'Start using the innovations South Africans are world leaders in, including data systems. If we do that, I am telling you we will fix the system in five years.'
