28 Day Home Workout Plan

Looking for easy exercises at home? This 28 day Home Workout Plan helps you get fit with cardio, chest, arm, leg and abs workouts at home!

In a busy world, how do you balance healthy eating and working out? Many of you have asked us that question! Alex and I have a busy life with work and family, but we’ve found a system that works for us. Here’s our secret: doing easy exercises at home! Because we have so much going on, we haven’t found a good way to fit going to a gym into our schedule. But 25 minutes of easy exercises without leaving the house? Sign us up! Here is our 28 Day Home Workout Plan that includes abs, chest, cardio, arm, and leg workouts at home. And we’ve got a Home Workout Plan Spreadsheet download to keep you on track (it’s been the only way we’ve stayed motivated!). Keep reading for more.

Related: Try our 28 Day Healthy Meal Plan, 28 Day Vegetarian Meal Plan, or 28 Day Vegan Meal Plan!

Before you start

Important: if you’re trying to lose weight, remember that eating healthy food is the most important for your body weight! In our podcast The best way to lose weight, we learned from a doctor and workout specialist that 80 to 90% of your body weight is due to the food you eat.

Does that mean you shouldn’t work out? Absolutely not! Physical fitness is an important part of keeping your body healthy for the long term. Cardio workouts and strength training are important for building muscles and overall fitness. Our Home Workout Plan a great starting point for building fitness into your everyday routine. But if you’re looking to lose weight, make sure to focus on food as your number 1 priority. Check out our 28 day meal plans as a good starting point.

Overview: our Home Workout Plan

For our Home Workout Plan, we try to incorporate the recommended 150 minutes of exercise a week (here’s the Mayo Clinic’s recommendation). Here’s what that looks like on a daily basis:

• Cardio workout 3x per week
• Strength training 4x per week
• Walks as much as possible!

Below we have a links to all of our workouts and a download of our Home Workout Plan Spreadsheet so that you can plug in all of your workouts! Keep reading for the Workout Plan Spreadsheet.

Download: our Home Workout Plan Spreadsheet!

Here is the magic that we’ve found helps us stay motivated: our Home Workout Plan Spreadsheet! The spreadsheet is how we keep track of what workouts we’ve done on a weekly basis. The spreadsheet method is exactly what we’ve done with our 28 day meal plans! You simply use the spreadsheet to copy in links to the exercises you’re planning for the day or week. We’ve found that it keeps us accountable: we like filling in the “Yes” bubble on the “Did you exercise?” question. Funny enough, it works! It’s also helpful to have a workout buddy: Alex and I do all these exercises together! We do it in our shared living room / toy room and let our 2 year old run around and play slash exercise with us.

**Here’s the download: our 28 Day Home Workout Plan Spreadsheet!

Here are some tips about how to use this Home Workout Plan Spreadsheet:

• Open the Spreadsheet and review the example of how to fill it out.
• All of the links to workouts are on YouTube, and are listed below! They are all 10 minutes or less and about medium level difficulty.
• Pick the exercises you’d like to do for the day or week, and copy them into the spreadsheet.
• Some of the exercises use weights: I do 5 to 8s and Alex uses 10s. But there are plenty of exercises without weights! See the equipment section below.
• If we like a workout, we shade it green in the spreadsheet so we remember. If not, we shade it yellow (we keep the yellow ones in just so we know which we didn’t love!).
• You can always find new YouTube workouts and copy those in too! Below are ones we’ve tried and liked in each category: abs, chest, arms, legs, total body, cardio, and stretches.

Abs workout at home

Here are our favorite exercises for an abs workout at home. These are some of our favorite workouts, and we were able to start seeing results in just a few weeks! We try to do abs workouts around 5x per week.

• Ab Challenge – 10 Minute Home Workout | Rebecca Louise
• Advanced Pilates Abs Workout – Waist Trim | Rebecca Louise
• 8 Minute Abs | Core Toning Workout | K’s Perfect Fitness
• 5 Minute Abs for a Strong & Sculpted Core | K’s Perfect Fitness
• 7 Minute Pilates Bootcamp for a Strong Core | K’s Perfect Fitness
• 8 Minute Abs Workout | K’s Perfect Fitness

Chest workout at home

Here are our favorite exercises for a back and chest workout at home. We’ve found these really help improve your posture after spending hours at the computer.

• 6 Exercises to Help Improve your Posture | K’s Perfect Fitness
• Bingo Wings, Back & Chest | Rebecca Louise
• 8 Minute Upper Body Workout: Chest, Back & Arms | K’s Perfect Fitness
• 3 Minute Plank Challenge | K’s Perfect Fitness
• Plank Challenge | Rebecca Louise
• Ultimate Back Workout: 5 Moves to Your Fittest Upper Body | Blogilates

Arm workouts at home

Here are our favorite exercises for a arm workouts at home.

• How To Lose Arm Fat | Rebecca Louise
• Back, Chest, & Shoulders Workout – Ultimate Upper Body | Rebecca Louise
• How To Tone Up Your Arms in 5 Minutes | K’s Perfect Fitness
• Intense Arm Workout – Lose Upper Body Fat | Rebecca Louise
• Arm Workout, No Weights! – Upper Body Tone | Rebecca Louise
• Complete Arms Workout (At Home No Equipment Exercise Routine for your Arms) | Blogilates

Leg workouts at home

Here are our favorite exercises for glute and leg workouts at home.

• Lift and Tone Your Butt | Rebecca Louise
• 200 Squat Challenge | Kelsey Lee
• Slim Legs & Lifted Glutes Workout | K’s Perfect Fitness
• Slim & Sculpted Legs in Just 6 Minutes a Day | K’s Perfect Fitness
• Inner Thigh & Glute Workout – Tone Legs and Butt| Rebecca Louise
• Legs Focus: 6-Week Body Toning Bootcamp #4 | Blogilates

Total body workouts at home

Here are our favorite exercises for a total body workout at home. We try to mix these in with the other targeted exercises for some variety!

• 7 Minute Total Body Dumbbell Workout | K’s Perfect Fitness
• 6 Minute Total Body Toning Workout | K’s Perfect Fitness
• Yogalates | Yoga and Pilates Fusion | K’s Perfect Fitness
• 7 Minute Total Body Dumbbell Workout | K’s Perfect Fitness
• Total Body Pilates Workout | Blogilates
• Full Body Workout: 10 Minute Total Tone | Rebecca Louise

Cardio workout at home

Here are our favorite exercises for a cardio workout at home. Typically we use our exercise bike! But here are a few that don’t use equipment too.

• Exercise bike
• Jogging or elliptical (if you happen to have one)
• 30-Minute No-Equipment Cardio and Strength-Conditioning Workout | Popsugar Fitness
• The Scientific 7 Minute Workout: HIIT | K’s Perfect Fitness
• Silent Death Cardio – Apartment friendly workout to lean down | Blogilates
• 5 Minute Fat Attack | Blogilates

Stretches at home

Here are our favorite stretches to do at home, either in the morning or after workouts! We love doing the 5 minute energizing morning stretch: it helps our posture and gives us more energy to start the day. You could also do some of these yoga workouts to stretch after your strength training.

• 5 Minute Energizing Morning Stretch | K’s Perfect Fitness ** this is the one we love for mornings
• Total Body Stretch (At Home Exercise Routine to Improve Flexibility) | Blogilates
• 7 Minute Evening Stretch and Flow for a Peaceful Sleep | K’s Perfect Fitness
• Cool Down | Rebecca Louise
• 7-Minute Yoga Boost – Yoga With Adriene
• 6-Minute Post-Workout Yoga – Yoga With Adriene

Equipment for this Home Workout Plan (optional)

First of all: you actually don’t need any equipment for this Home Workout Plan! Plenty of the exercises above simply use your body weight. And you can do walking and running outside as weather allows. However, a few of the workouts below call for weights and they’re fairly inexpensive to buy! Also, we had room for an exercise bike in our home and it’s been a great investment, especially when we don’t feel like heading outside in the winter. Here’s the equipment we use for our home workout plan:

• Weights: Here are the dumbbells we use. I use only the 5’s or 8’s for the workouts above; Alex usually uses the 10’s.  So you definitely don’t need all of these: select a few that you think you’d need:
  • 3 Pound Dumbbells
  • 5 Pound Dumbbells
  • 8 Pound Dumbbells
  • 10 Pound Dumbbells
  • 15 Pound Dumbbells
  • Multi-use weights: if you’re someone who wants to get super buff, these multi-use weights are nice! Alex uses them for lifting, but not for the workouts below.

• Exercise Mat: Here’s the exercise mats we use.
• Exercise Bike: Here’s the exercise bike we use. You definitely don’t need to buy an exercise bike, but if you’re looking for one and have space in your house, we really like this one. It’s manually controlled, basic, and easy to maintain. We keep it on our third floor, which is a multi-use living room, play room and exercise space.

What do you think?

Was this 28 Day Home Workout Plan helpful? We’d love to know what you think in the comments below, or if you have any questions!

A Couple Cooks - Healthy, Whole Food, Vegetarian Recipes

from A Couple Cooks http://bit.ly/2RielLD