Calisthenics At Home
Here are some calisthenic exercises that avoid exposing your joints to harmful repetitive impacts and help to strengthen the major muscles of the body. These typical exercises add up to 11 minutes. Rest one minute breathing deeply between each different exercise.20 Pushups in 2 minutes - target triceps, back, and abdominal muscles.
Put the dumbbells on the mat as far apart as the width of your shoulders. Holding the bars of the dumbbells when you do your pushups places your wrists in a less stressful position than if you put your hands flat on the mat. Lie face down with your chest on the mat. Lift your body by pushing only with your arms while maintaining the rest of your body rigid and pivoting from your toes. On your way down, make sure that your chest touches the mat for each repetition. Your arms lift approximately 70% of your body weight during a pushup. You can check this by putting your hands on a bathroom scale in a pushup position and dividing the weight shown on the scale by your body weight. Inhale when you push up, exhale on the way down.
30 Dumbbell Curls in 2 minutes - target biceps.
Stand with your arms straight down holding the dumbbells close to your hips with your palms facing forward. Bending at the elbow, lift your arms forward until the dumbbells are at shoulder height. The dumbbells should weigh from 10 to 20 pounds each, depending on your strength. Choose a weight so that the first 15 repetitions can be done comfortably and the next 15 require moderate effort. If you can do more than 30 repetitions easily, the dumbbells are too light for you. A general guideline for beginners is for each dumbbell to be 10% of the maximum normal body weight for your height. You can gradually increase the weight as you gain strength. Inhale when you lift, exhale on the way down.
100 Bicycle kicks in 3 minutes - target leg and abdominal muscles.
Lie face up flat on the mat. Bend your left and right knees alternately toward your torso and move your legs as if you were bicycling. Keep your feet from touching the floor as you stretch out your legs. Count only when your right leg bends. Inhale for two kicks, exhale for two kicks.
40 Crunches in 3 minutes - strengthens abdominal muscles.
Lie face up on the mat with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor. Place your hands in a comfortable position such as folded across your chest or behind your neck. Roll your upper body forward, contracting your stomach muscles. Lift your shoulder blades off the mat and hold the position for 1 second. Exhale when you contract your stomach, inhale when lying back down.
Reverse Crunches are a variation with the same starting position, but instead of lifting the torso, the legs are lifted so that the knees approach the chest.
Avoid sit-ups. Sit-ups are performed like crunches, but the torso is bent forward perpendicular to the legs. Sit-ups exert large compressive forces on the spine. The repeated flexing motion of sit-ups squeezes the spinal disks causing them to bulge and press on the nerves, potentially causing lower back pain and disk herniation.
20 Squats in 1 minute - strengthens legs and back muscles.
Stand with legs as far apart as the width of your shoulders. Keeping your back straight and arms down by your side, bend your legs until the tips of your fingers touch the floor. Stand up back to the starting position. As a variation, you can hold the dumbbells by your side during the squats. Exhale when you squat, inhale as you stand up.
If you are not strong enough to do the pushups, try a less strenuous pushup by pivoting from your knees. Your arms lift approximately 50% of your body weight for this type of pushup. When you build up your strength, you can start doing the regular pushups. Similarly, if you cannot complete all the repetitions of one exercise, do as many as you can and stop. Over time you will gain strength and you will be able to increase the number of repetitions.
