Full-Body At-Home Workouts for Getting & Staying Fit

Look, nobody NEEDS a gym. Not really. When you’re trying to build a better body, tone up, or lose flab, having a facility with a variety of equipment certainly helps, but it isn’t a must. You can get in enviable, even jaw-dropping shape with a few light weights, a suspension trainer, or even your bodyweight alone, if that’s all you’ve got. (And if you don’t believe us, visit your local penitentiary, and get a look at the bodies you see in there.) Our number-one suggestion for anyone training at home: do full-body workouts. First, read up on the advantages of full-body training below, and then see four of our favorite routines for getting in shape, whether you have minimal equipment (such as a single light dumbbell or kettlebell, or a suspension trainer), or your bodyweight only

Why Should You Work Out Your Whole Body?

Working the whole body in one session offers three big advantages over body-part workouts. For one thing, it ensures that you train the entire body evenly. You can’t neglect any one muscle group, or simply forget to do it for a week (ahem, like leg day). For another, working all your muscles together ramps up the calorie-burning effect, and trains your heart, so that you can maximize fat loss in your workouts and get aerobic benefits as well. A study in BioMed Research International found that subjects who performed just three 30-minute, full-body circuit-training sessions per week lost fat and improved their resting heart rates and blood pressure.