Awesome Cardio Workout at Home – Lose Weight Quick and Effectively!

Cardio workout at home is considered one of the most effective exercises for sport-lovers. One of its main advantages of cardio is that it could be done anywhere, anytime without any equipment and by any age group. As we are living at a global pandemic period with lockdowns and staying home (A LOT!), the effectiveness and importance of cardio are being discussed even more nowadays. This article will talk about the importance of cardio and provide some of the best exercises.

Why Cardio Workout Is Good?

Cardio workouts compile some of the most effective exercises since it warms up your body before the more intense exercising but at the same time, it’s good for losing weight and building muscle.

Some professional trainers even though tend to recommend exercising with equipment, also underline the importance of bodyweight exercises that focuses heavily on cardio. Exercising is always better than not doing any exercise…

When talking about weight loss it’s important to consider personal variables such as; age, weight, height, body composition among other factors which have a direct impact on the effectiveness and intensity of the specific workout. Still, we recommend everyone to use calorie trackers, which will help a lot to set goals both on workout effectiveness and body goals.

So, what is a cardio workout specifically? The main aim of these exercises is to raise your heart rate and keep its height for a prolonged period of time. In return, your lungs bring more oxygen into your body system which helps you to produce endorphins and other natural painkillers.

One of the most important mental and physical advantages of these exercises as follows:

• Managing your weight,
• Ward of heart diseases,
• Raise your mood and
• Help you live longer!

Without a doubt, as we are living in a global pandemic; the importance of healthy lifestyle choices has become understood better by many people. The importance of cardio workouts is becoming even more important when taking into account that many people stay at home almost all the time either due to regulations or personal choice. 

It’s important to note that cardio at home should not be focused on a specific time span. As every workout which been made by a personal trainer or yourself which focuses on your fitness goals could be done between 30 to 60 minutes. Also, on some occasions, half an hour of workout has been proven to be more effective due to the intensity of exercises.

For instance, you would probably expect that burpees would be better to burn calories compared to running on the spot, even though both are being stable exercises in cardio workouts, it’s more important to focus on what you can do more effectively. As been noted all exercises in this article will be focusing on bodyweight exercises.

However, it would be great if you had a treadmill like this.

Which Cardio Workout Is Best for Weight Loss?

These exercises are all great for weight loss because one of the main points of a cardio workout is to burn calories. Still, you should clean up your diet because exercising on its own is not enough to support a healthy lifestyle. Both pillars are equally important…

When you are doing cardio workouts your body consumes a lot of oxygen and it’s known that oxygen plays a role in breaking down fat. So, more cardio exercises = more oxygen consumption leads to better metabolism.

Cardio exercises will keep you healthy while getting you closer to that killer body goal before the start of the summer season.

According to a study done by researchers, it shows that overweight people have lost between 4.3 % and 5.7% of their weight during the duration of the 5 times a week of cardio for 10 months with burning in between 400-600 calories each cardio workout. These findings prove how effective a cardio workouts at home can be.

Therefore, the current situation with Covid19 should not be an excuse for anyone to gain weight and become physically lazy.

Besides weight loss, also, there some crucial improvements cardio provides such as:

• Improving overall health,
• Lowering blood pressure,
• Regulating blood sugar,
• Reducing asthma symptoms,
• Reducing chronic pain,
• Strengthening the immune system,
• Improving brain power,
• Boosting mood,
• Reducing the risk of falling.

So, even though your main reason to start doing a cardio workout at home was mainly motivated by losing weight and hence burn calories, it will also provide numerous advantages to your body and mood as we’ve stated above.

Cardio Workout at Home

With providing some background information regarding why it’s important to do a cardio workout at home to lose weight and what should you focus on while exercising, we would like to provide you 10 cardio exercises which could be done easily at home without any equipment!

10. Jumping Jacks

Without a doubt, one of the most effective and easiest workouts which among cardio workout at home is jumping jacks. To do this move you just need to jump repeatedly with circulating your arms overhead. We recommend you to do only 10 jumping jacks if the rest of your workout is more intense, however, increase it up to 40 if you can do it properly.

Jumping jacks exercise burns 100 calories if you do it for 10 minutes. Still don’t take this exercise lightly, try to mix it with other exercises to make it more fun.

9. Jogging in the Spot

Another exercise that could be done easily at home without any assistance, knowledge, and experience is jogging in the spot. If you got a big house, you can jog from room to room. This is a super easy exercise to do, still, it’s important to pay attention as in every exercise to breathing. If you don’t properly breathe; your body will give up before testing its real limits.

You can do exercise for 5 minutes or more according to how intense your workout is. It’s awesome for warming up your body.

8. Mountain climbers

Now we are getting to some tougher exercises, the main point of mountain climbers is to help you develop a strong core.

To do this exercise start at a pushup position and from there on, drive your knee into your chest one at a time. Just like all the cardio exercises, it raises your heart rate by building strength, endurance and help you lose weight. We recommend you to do this exercise 10 to 20 times according to your workout because it’s an intense exercise.

7. Jumping Squats

Compared to previous ones, this exercise needs your absolute attention; as it is one of the exercises which has a higher risk of injury if not done correctly. It’s important to get right into the squat position and jump as high as you can with doing this exercise. If you do this exercise by squatting low, it provides tons of benefit to legs.

Due to having stronger legs, your endurance levels will improve drastically and it will help you with your outdoor exercise and walks. You can do 10 to 20 jumping squats.

We consider this our favorite exercise because it’s one of the most effective exercises for muscle building and losing weight.

6. Burpees

One of the most recommended exercises among cardio workouts is burpees because it burns high amounts of calories and helps to build endurance.

What makes it slightly challenging is that this exercise needs your full attention because if you mess up your form your gains will be cut drastically.

You start with squatting down, follow it with jumping into a plank position, doing a push-up, and then jumping into the starting position. Due to the intensity of this exercise, we recommend you to not do this exercise more than 20 per set during your workout. Being one of the most intense cardio exercises, it burns a lot of calories and exercises your entire body.

5. Shadow Kickboxing

First of all, you don’t need to really know how to kickbox or any other martial art exercise. Obviously, the aim of this exercise is not to become an expert kickboxer but to provide the main goals of cardio which is to burn calories. Shadow kickboxing consists of punching, kicking, and other combinations with focusing on your posture, length of your legs, and arms during it.

Do this exercise for 5 minutes for an easy-intensity workout, 15 minutes for medium, and 30 minutes for high-intensity workouts. You can burn a lot of calories by only doing this single exercise. However, for example; if you do this exercise for 15 minutes without showing real effort, you can make fewer gains than doing this exercise properly for only 5 minutes.

4. Lunges

Lunges are amazing to develop leg strength. Also, you’ll make a lot of gains in balance if you keep your posture right.

To do this exercise you need to be standing; step your right foot forward and bend your knee to 90 degrees. Your left foot should be parallel to the floor and also your right foot shouldn’t go beyond your knee. This exercise both needs strong legs and balance; so if you are not sure how to do this exercise check the video above.

Try to do this exercise 10 times for each leg.

3. Inchworm

Another exercise that could be done as a cardio at home workout is the inchworm, it looks pretty simple but there are some tips and tricks to this exercise. It improves your posture because your spine plays a crucial role in this exercise.

For the exercise, you need to stand with feet-width apart and core tight.  Hinge your feet and place your hands on your feet and walk with your hands forward without bending your knees.

We should mention that this exercise is not so beginner-friendly…

2. Climbing Stairs

You can do this exercise; if you got access to the set of stairs either inside your own home or in your building. In fact, you just need to climb stairs several times but what makes this different from the usual stair climbing is that you need to be in a much faster tempo.

Climbing the stairs is highly recommended because it’s a great cardiovascular exercise. Also, it strengthens your legs and corrects your posture. One of the main advantages that as long as you have stairs available without going out or at least being nearby you can do this exercise several times a day. This exercise could be done both within your workout routine or on its own.

1. Running

When it comes to running it is seen as an outdoor activity, still, there is nothing wrong about including running into your daily cardio workout at home workout. Especially if you have enough space in your house and good neighbors below that don’t get bothered by you running around your home.

Naturally, due to the limited space, you won’t be able to get as fast as possible. Still, even running with a moderate-intensity speed could be enough to burn a good deal of calories from your body. In a similar manner as climbing stairs, running could be done by itself or within a workout routine. However, you need to remember that when you run and do other exercises, you can get tired pretty quickly.

We recommend running separately after an intense workout to finish it off.

Check these two articles to see how amazing treadmills are for weight loss;

So, we have introduced some of the key exercises which could be used as a cardio workout at home, also emphasizing the bonuses of the exercises such as; getting a stronger body, better posture, endurance, and boosting mood.

As been noted in this detailed article, it is important to keep your body physically active to control your weight by doing cardio workouts at home. Since most exercises don’t need you to have lots of preparation or intense instructions, you can start exercising right away. Even if you struggle with some, you can master it all by watching the videos we provided.

Shape Utopia also provides a lot of exercises for different goals. Please check some of the articles below;

Also, if you want to help us, please share this image!

Shape Utopia team thanks to Elnur Kuliyev for writing this article.