Beginner-friendly fitness and movement guides, all in one place. Browse simple home workouts, stretching and mobility routines, habit and motivation tips, and honest equipment advice, with every guide written for total beginners and no gym required. New here? Start with our complete guide to home workouts for beginners or the Start Here page.
High knees is running on the spot with a purpose. You drive each knee up to hip height, pump your arms, and stay light on your feet. It needs no equipment and about one square metre of floor, and it raises your heart rate faster than almost anything else you can do in a living…
A kettlebell is an odd shape, and that is exactly why it is so good for your abs. The weight hangs below the handle and away from your hand, so it is always trying to pull you off balance. Your core has to work to stop it. I noticed this the first time I carried…
The kettlebell swing is one of the most useful exercises you can learn, and one of the easiest to get wrong. Done well, it is a powerful snap of the hips that trains your glutes and hamstrings, raises your heart rate in seconds and takes almost no space. Done badly, it is a squat with…
Cindy is three exercises, twenty minutes and no weights. It looks so simple on paper that most people badly underestimate it the first time. I certainly did. I had done plenty of push-ups and squats, so I set off at a pace I thought was sensible. By minute six my push-ups had gone from sets…
Plyometrics is jump training. It is how athletes build the spring that lets them leap, sprint and change direction, and it is one of the few kinds of exercise that trains your body to produce force quickly instead of just producing a lot of it. It also has a reputation for being hard on the…
The first time I tried a pre-workout supplement, nobody had warned me about the tingling. Twenty minutes after drinking it, my ears, face and hands started to prickle as if I had walked into nettles. I spent the warm-up wondering whether I was having an allergic reaction. I was not. It was one ingredient doing…
Swimming is the one form of exercise where being a beginner feels most obvious. You get in the pool, push off the wall with good intentions, and by the far end you are gasping. Meanwhile somebody twice your age glides past without apparent effort. That was my experience the first time I tried to swim…
Training your biceps and triceps together is one of the most satisfying sessions there is. The exercises are simple, the muscles are easy to feel, and because the two groups do opposite jobs, one rests while the other works. You can get a great deal done in half an hour. I used to think arm…
If you can train four days a week, the upper lower split is very hard to beat. Two days for your upper body, two days for your lower body, and three days off. Every muscle gets trained twice, no session drags on, and there is a rest day whenever you need one. It is the…
Push pull legs is probably the most popular way to organise a week of strength training, and the reason is that it makes sense the moment you hear it. One day you train the muscles that push. One day you train the muscles that pull. One day you train your legs. Then you repeat. I…