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.
AMRAP stands for as many rounds as possible. You pick a few exercises, set a timer, and repeat the circuit as many times as you can before the clock runs out, resting only when you need to. Your score is the number of rounds you finish, which gives you something concrete to beat next time….
The clamshell is a side-lying exercise where you keep your feet together and open your top knee like a clam shell, and it trains the gluteus medius, the muscle on the side of your hip that keeps your pelvis level when you walk. Done properly, you feel a burn on the side of the hip…
The fire hydrant is a glute exercise done on all fours, where you lift one bent knee out to the side without letting your body twist. It gets its name from the way a dog behaves at a lamppost, which is unglamorous but makes it impossible to forget. It trains the gluteus medius on the…
A push day workout trains every muscle that pushes weight away from your body: your chest, the front of your shoulders and your triceps. For a beginner at home, that means five or six exercises, about 45 minutes, done once or twice a week. You can do the whole thing with a pair of dumbbells,…
A deck of cards workout is simple: you give each suit an exercise, shuffle the deck, flip one card at a time and do as many reps as the number on the card. Hearts might be squats, spades push-ups, and so on. You keep flipping until the deck is gone, or until your timer runs…
A jump squat is a bodyweight squat where you drive up hard enough to leave the ground, then land softly and sink straight back into the next squat. It trains your quads, glutes, hamstrings and calves, and because it’s explosive, it builds power and gets your heart rate up far faster than regular squats. The…
The best thing to eat before a workout is something with easy-to-digest carbohydrates and a little protein, eaten 30 minutes to 3 hours before you train. A banana, a slice of toast with peanut butter or a pot of Greek yogurt with fruit all work well. The bigger the meal, the longer you should wait….
For most people, the sauna is better after a workout, not before. Using it first raises your body temperature and starts dehydrating you before you’ve lifted a thing, which tends to make your workout feel harder and weaker. Afterwards, once you’ve cooled down a little and had some water, a 10 to 15 minute sauna…
A treadmill HIIT session for a beginner is 30 seconds hard followed by 90 seconds easy, repeated eight times, and the recovery interval is the part most people get wrong. Cut the rest too short and every interval after the third one is mediocre, which turns a HIIT session into an ordinary uncomfortable jog. A…
Chest and triceps belong in the same session because your triceps already work on every chest press, and the order matters more than the exercise list: chest first, triceps second, always. Train the triceps first and you sabotage your pressing, because the small muscle fails before the big one gets worked. This is the classic…