Home fitness one week training plan

A one-week home fitness program for the 80% of ordinary office workers who just want to improve their posture, lose some fat, and don’t want to spend too much money or time. The core is "3 days of resistance + 2 days of light activity + 2 days of flexible rest." No complicated equipment is required, and the total investment does not exceed 50 yuan. The cumulative exercise time per week does not exceed 6 hours. According to actual measurements by 17 friends I have brought with me in the Internet industry, body fat can be reduced by 2-5 percentage points, muscle mass can be increased by 0.8-1.5kg, and shoulder and neck pain can be alleviated by more than 70%.

In fact, there have always been two contradictory training logics in the fitness circle: one advocates "small amounts and multiple times", moving for 10-20 minutes a day without putting a burden on the body, and is suitable for people who are heavy, have old joint injuries, or have no exercise habits at all.； The other group advocates "differentiated and concentrated training", which divides the chest, back, legs, shoulders and arms into different training days, with each training session lasting more than 40 minutes. It is suitable for enthusiasts who have a basic sports background and want to quickly increase muscle size. This plan of mine is the middle value between the two sides, and is suitable for most ordinary people who don’t have clear muscle building/preparation needs. You don’t have to force yourself to grit your teeth and persevere, and the error tolerance is high.

There is no need to set a strict time clock, you don’t even need to fix what day to practice, just figure out the general rhythm.

For example, after finishing the morning meeting on Monday, when I get home from get off work, I feel slumped on the sofa and don’t want to move. So I take 25 minutes to do upper body exercises: kneeling push-ups in groups of 12, do 4 groups. If you can’t stand up, just lower your knees, or even do it with your hands on the table.； Then take an elastic band that you bought for more than ten yuan and put it on the security door. Do 15 high pull-downs in one group, 4 groups, specifically to cure your rounded shoulders after working at your desk all day. ； Finally, take two 500ml bottles of mineral water and do static lifts against the wall for 30 seconds in 3 groups. After you touch your shoulders, they will feel much more relaxed. A little girl I took care of before who worked as a content operator couldn't even do 3 kneeling push-ups at the beginning, but she could do 12 in half a month. When she wore a sling, her secondary breasts disappeared. It was much more useful than the beauty salon body shaping card she had spent thousands of yuan on before.

Don't do strength training on Tuesday. Don't sit on the sofa and watch short videos after dinner. Stand and dance with Pamela for 15 minutes. Or use a 20-yuan foam roller to roll your legs and back for 20 minutes. If you worked overtime until two or three o'clock the day before, it doesn't matter. You don't have to feel guilty about being "lazy". Fitness is to add points to your life, not to add KPIs to you.

After I recovered on Wednesday, I trained my core and lower limbs. I did 4 sets of 15 bodyweight squats. Don’t buckle your knees in when squatting. I had a buddy who practiced blindly and his knees hurt for a whole week. Then he changed his movements. Just squat until your thighs are parallel to the ground. You don’t need to squat too low.； Then do 4 sets of 20 glute bridges. Don’t raise your waist too high. Just feel the force in your buttocks. ； Finally, hold three sets of planks for 40 seconds. If you can’t hold it any longer, kneel down and rest for two seconds before continuing. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Thursday is active recovery day. If you want to move, go downstairs and walk twice around the community, or do 10 minutes of cat-cow pose + baby stretch at home. If you are not busy at work this week, you can also step on the stepper for 20 minutes. If you don't want to move, just rest. Don't believe the nonsense on the Internet that "if you don't practice in one day, you will lose three days". The amount of training for ordinary people is not enough to lose muscle after two days of rest.

It's great on Friday. You can do a full-body circuit for 20 minutes. Just do two sets of the exercises you practiced before. Or you can just follow Station B and search for 20 minutes of low-intensity full-body HIIT. After the exercise, you can take a hot bath. On the weekend, you can sleep in or go out to eat hot pot with friends.

You can arrange whatever you want on the two days of the weekend. If you want to move, you can go hiking or riding a bike. If you don't want to move, you can just sit at home and watch TV shows and eat takeout. It's totally fine.

Of course, this plan is not dead. You can adjust it according to your own situation: if you are heavier, replace high-impact movements such as squats and aerobics with seated leg extensions and slow walking to avoid hurting your knees.； For novices who have no exercise foundation at all, the number of sets of all movements should be halved. Don’t push yourself. It’s normal to be sore for two or three days after training. It’s wrong to be sore. Stop immediately. ； If you have a basic foundation and want to increase the strength, you can replace the mineral water bottle with dumbbells and the elastic bands with thicker ones. It will come as you feel tired.

Some people will definitely say that working out at home is useless. If you want to practice, you have to go to the gym. This has to be said twice. If your goal is to compete in bodybuilding competitions and bench press a heavy weight of 100kg, then you really need to go to the gym and use professional equipment. ； But if you are like me and my friends, you just want to slim down your belly, hold up your shoulders when wearing a T-shirt, and relieve pain in your shoulders, neck and waist from sitting for a long time, then home fitness is really enough. I have a programmer friend who had a gym membership for three years and went less than 10 times in total. Later, he followed this plan and practiced at home for half a year. His body fat dropped from 28 to 20. The jeans that he couldn’t fit into before are now loose. It is much more cost-effective than going to the gym.

I have been through a lot of traps before, buying several hundred yuan of adjustable dumbbells, thickened yoga mats, and a full set of resistance bands. In the end, the yoga mats were used to pile clothes, and the dumbbells were used as door stops. Later, I found out that there are only three commonly used ones: an elastic band worth more than ten yuan, two bottles of mineral water, and a foam roller worth more than twenty yuan. The total is less than 50 yuan, which is enough for you to practice to the stage where you can see obvious changes in your body. There is no need to spend money randomly.

To be honest, no matter what plan you have, it is better for you to take action first. When you get home from get off work today, don’t lie down on the sofa and check your phone first. Do 5 kneeling push-ups first. You will have defeated 90% of the people who have collected a bunch of fitness plans and never implemented them.