Best home workouts

Being a new parent, especially a mother can be challenging and demanding.  The newborn baby always strives for attention and you’ll have to deal with sleepless nights and numerous obligations during day time. This can be the best period of your life taking care of your own child, but sometimes it can be frustrating and tough, particularly for young mothers. You can suddenly find yourself trapped between daily tasks and your child’s needs, you can become a victim of post-delivery depression. This special state of your mind reflects constant dissatisfaction, mood swings, and anxiety.

So how can exercise help you to overcome this unpleasant state? Working out increases the presence of dopamine, often, know, as the hormone of happiness. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays a significant role in regulating mood, motivation, and pleasure. It will certainly help you to feel satisfaction, relaxation, and reduced stress levels. One of the additional benefits will include increased cognitive capabilities and higher energy levels.

When to start working out

This question is entirely up to you, there is no exact answer,- whenever you feel ready and eager to start. The usual time frame is a couple of days after delivery, with condition that you had a normal vaginal delivery without serious problems. The time of day when you perform the workouts is also irrelevant, it all depends on your energy levels during the day, your commitments, and your job. You should be aware that 30 minutes of physical activity is enough in the beginning.

How to start training

You should start with light aerobic exercises like walking.The benefits of walking can’t be easily disregarded or dismissed. It is great for burning calories, reducing body fat, and improving overall stamina and cardiovascular health. The next step is to shift to other moderate and cardio exercises like riding a bike, hiking, and rollerblading. These activities can be more demanding than just walking.

If you were physically active before pregnancy you’ll be able to conduct vigorous aerobic activities like jogging, running, and swimming.During these exercises, you have to be focused on your breathing and you’ll be putting in a lot of effort, so it will be difficult for you to talk or sing.(read more)

Strength training

The advantages of strength training are numerous, from increasing muscle size and strength, improving cardiovascular health,and increasing bone density, to enhancing sleep quality and stabilizing blood sugar levels. This type of workout can positively affect your mental health and your balance and coordination.(read more)

Bests advice is to stick to compound exercises which are recruiting major muscle groups in your body. Muscle-strengthing activities should be performed along with your favorite aerobic(cardio) activity for maximizing the results. There are many fitness applications and programs out there, you can join a local gym or if you are not feeling comfortable there you can always train at home.[1]

The Best exercises to try are:

Squats

This is one of the best exercises you can do for your lower body. Squatting movement is the essence of strength and muscle building. This functional and beneficial exercise will engage large muscle groups in your body like the quadriceps(front of the thigh), hamstrings(back of the thigh), gluteus maximus (buttocks), adductor(groin), hip flexors, and calves. Your core should be active during a whole movement, so core muscles like rectus abdominis, obliques, and transverse abdominis are also targeted.

• How to properly do the squats:

Squats can be done without weight also commonly known as air squats or with additional weight on a bar.It is crucial that you perform this exercise correctly, bad form can lead to an injury so you have to be extra careful when you are doing squats.

• Start with feet slightly wider than hip-width apart with toes turned slightly out. Look straight ahead and pick a spot on a wall in front of you. You should be focused the entire time on that spot without looking down while you are squatting.
• Put your arms in front of you parallel to the floor.Keep your chest up and spine in a neutral position
• Your entire weight is on your feet, it should be on your heels not toes, you have to be able to move your toes during the entire movement
• Keep your upper body in a strong stable position with engaged core muscles. The best way to flex your abdominal muscles is to imagen that you are going to be punched in the stomach, so keep that in mind and brace yourself.
• Take a deep breath, break at your hip, and try to push your buttocks back. Hips are going backward and your knees are beginning to bend. The important thing to understand here is that your squat starts with your back and hips not knees.
• As you lower your body make sure that your knees are in line with your toes. Your knees shouldn’t move inward, towards each other, this is a common mistake characteristic for new lifters.
• Hip joint should be lower than your knees while you are squatting, and that is 90 degrees (or parallel) squat. When you are squatting you want to imagen that you want to sit on a chair.
• When you reach the bottom position, keep your body tight breathe out and drive your entire weight through your heels. Your knees are staying away from each other during the whole movement.

Once when you master bodyweight squats, you can try weighted bar squats. If you are a beginner start with 3 sets and 10 repetitions in each set and if you are consistent you’ll eventually add more working sets and reps and advance to weighted bar squats.

Lunges

If you are looking to improve coordination and balance, this exercise is right for you. Lunge is also a compound multi-joint movement that will recruit all major muscles in your lower body. It engages similar muscle groups as the squat, but lunges put more accent on your buttocks.

• How to do bodyweight lunges:
• Stand in a split stance, with your right foot about 2 feet in front of your left foot. Keep your torso straight, shoulders back and core engaged the whole time.
• Next, movement is bending your knees and lowering your body until the back knee is a few inches from the floor.
• At the bottom of the movement the front thigh is parallel to the floor while your back knee points towards the floor. The primary goal is equal distribution of the weight between both legs.
• Return or push back up to the starting position, keeping your weight on the heel of your right foot. Remember that you are pushing weight through hells not toes.

You can start by doing ten reps for each leg in three working sets. After mastering the bodyweight forward lunge, you can try other more complex and challenging variations of the lunge, such as; reverse lunge, walking lunge, lateral lunge, side lunge, and dumbbell lunge…

Push-ups

This is a great bodyweight exercise, a synonym for strength and durability maybe unfairly stigmatized as men’s exercise. You can do push-ups anywhere at any time, no additional equipment is needed. The main gains of push-ups are improved balance and coordination, calorie burn, and upgrading your performance in sports and other physical activities.

If you are not strong enough to do regular push-ups you can always try a modified version of push-up(or knee push-up), this exercise will hit your shoulders, triceps, and chest muscles, while the core is also engaged during the whole movement. Here is instruction how to properly execute the exercise:

• You want to put your hands shoulder-width apart, don’t internally rotate the hand and potentially put stress on your shoulder.
• You are going to inhale as you go down, bending at the elbow, and then exhale like you are blowing the floor away, when you are in the push-up pose don’t let your head drop, and you also don’t want to start exercise leading with your hips, that means that you are not engaging the core.
• So, keep your head in line and the rest of your back too, brace your abs, inhale to take it down, and exhale to come up. 

Planks

Are great exercise for core strength and stability. All core muscles are engaged here as well as traps, shoulders, rotator cuff, chest, and thigh muscles. A strong and stable core is essential for athletic performance and major compound lifts. Here is a short instruction on how to hold a plank:

• First, you need to be in a proper position, with face down, your forearms and toes on the floor. Your elbows are directly under your shoulders and your forearms are facing forward. Your head and neck are relaxed and you should be looking at the floor.
• Keep your torso in a straight line and maintain a neutral spine position, make sure that your shoulders are down and your heels should be over the balls of your feet. Brace and engage your abdominal muscles the whole time.
• You should avoid arching your back, that is a clear indicator that you are not engaging your core properly and you will put more weight on your arms.
• Your neck should be in line with your body not tilted up, you’ll be putting yourself at risk of injury (straining the neck).
• Clear sign when you should finish the exercise is the moment when your hips start sinking. By that point, abs had reached their fatigue limit.

As a beginner, you should try to hold your plank for about 20-30 seconds, then rest for 10 seconds and repeat the exercise. Do 3-4 working sets and see how that work for you. If you are doing planks regularly you’ll be soon able to increase your holding time. After you master the basic plank position, then challenge yourself with more advanced plank variations like side plank, weighted plank, superman plank, and reverse plank…

Jumping Jaks

Jumping Jaks is a great high-intensity exercise that enhances aerobic fitness and simultaneously strengthens the whole body. Primary targeted muscle groups are the gluteus, quads, and hip flexors. Secondary targeted muscles are the legs abs and shoulders.

• Stand with feet together and hands by your sides.
• Jump up, spread your feet and bring both hands together above your head.
• Jump again and return to the starting position
• Repeat until the working set is over.

      This exercise will boost your stamina, decrease blood pressure, improve your metabolism and it is will help you to maintain healthy weight. It’s a great overall stress-reliving exercise. 

Conclusion:

  Give yourself time and patience, you have been through a tough period, so don’t be too hard on yourself.  Your goal is to get better every week, each month until you finally get back in shape. Start with a basic bodyweight home routine, then when you master bodyweight exercises you can make them more challenging by adding weight or trying a more advanced variation of these exercises. You have already done a great thing, you become a mom, and you gifted a new life and that is priceless.

Source:

[1]- https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/