Brand new to exercise? This is your corner. Workouts for beginners that assume nothing, explain every move, and never make you feel out of place. I break things down the way I needed them broken down when I started: what to do, how it should feel, and what to skip until you’re ready. No burpees on day one, no jargon, no pressure. Pair these with the complete beginner’s guide and a little help with habits and motivation to make it stick. New here? Start with our complete guide to home workouts for beginners, or head to the Start Here page while we add more guides to this section.
If you want to know how to increase running endurance, the most important advice is also the least exciting: slow down. When I started running, I could manage about four minutes before my lungs burned and my legs turned to concrete. I assumed I was just unfit. I was, but the bigger problem was that…
Aerobic exercise is any activity you can keep going for minutes at a time because your body is using oxygen to make energy. Walking, cycling, swimming and easy jogging are the classic examples. Anaerobic exercise is the opposite: short, hard bursts, like a sprint or a heavy set of squats, where your body makes energy…
The bear crawl exercise is exactly what it sounds like: you move across the floor on your hands and feet, knees hovering just above the ground, like a bear on all fours. It looks playful, and it is, but it is also one of the most demanding bodyweight exercises you can do in a small…
Walk into any gym and you will see people strapped into an impressive amount of kit. Wraps on the wrists, sleeves on the elbows and knees, straps looped around the bar, a thick belt, gloves. It is easy to conclude that you need all of it before you are allowed to lift anything serious. I…
An obstacle race is the only event I know where you can finish covered in mud, with scraped knees and a soaking wet T-shirt, and be grinning. You run, you climb, you crawl, you carry heavy things up hills, and you help strangers over walls. A friend talked me into my first one with eight…
Five days a week is the point where training stops fitting around your life and starts being part of it. It is a real commitment, and for the right person it is a very satisfying one. Sessions are shorter and more focused than on three or four days, and there is room to give every…
When people flex their arm and look at the bump on top, they are mostly looking at the long head of the biceps. It is the outer of the two heads, and it is the one that gives the muscle its peak. For a long time I did not know there were two heads at…
There is a short period at the start of strength training when everything works. You add weight to the bar nearly every session. Exercises that left you shaking in week one feel routine by week four. People who have trained for years look on with something close to envy. That period is known as newbie…
Most people who train their arms have never heard of the brachialis. It sits underneath the biceps where you cannot see it, it has no impressive peak, and it rarely gets a mention. Yet it is the strongest muscle you have for bending your elbow. I came across it by accident. My biceps curls had…
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…