2024 Fitness Wrap: Most-Loved Exercises of Americans

Can you exercise at home without any equipment? Would that really be fruitful? The answer is, yes!

The idea of a home workout may make you yawn, but it can help you achieve your goals and staying fit while saving up some bucks at the same time!

Christmas and New Year's Eve is around the corner, and nothing better than starting to work out to get into shape to fit into the party clothes. Here are some of the trendy exercises that Americans love. Try out for yourself too!

These involve short bursts of intense exercise and the best part? They can be done at home! They follow brief periods of rest or lower-intensity activity and the duration can vary anywhere between 45 seconds to a few minutes. This helps increase your heart rate by 80% and do not even require a huge space or lot of equipment.

What can you do? You can opt for mountain climbers, jumping jacks, planks, burpees, jumping lunges, and squats.

This is actually very similar to what you do on your day-to-day life. This focuses on mobility, stability, movement and strength in ways that translates into real-life activities. This means you won't be picking up weights, but lifting groceries, or not doing step-ups, but climbing stairs. Now, what is important here is to do these activities with the correct posture. Because if your posture is not right, it can lead to injuries. A correct posture also reduces the risk of injury in daily tasks and improves your overall physical abilities.

You can never go wrong with Pilates. This focuses on building your core strength, flexibility, and body awareness. It also incorporates specific and precise movements and helps you control breathing and also improves posture, balance, and muscle tone. There are also equipment-based classes, such as Reformer Pilates that provides resistance for a challenging workout.

Now, who does not like a bit of dance to everything? That is what Zumba is for! It is a dance-inspired fitness program that blends Latin rhythms with easy-to-follow choreography. It is fun. It is energetic. And it is a full-body workout! Zuma helps to improve cardiovascular health, boosts mood and is a great way to give a little twist to your daily workout!

This has always been the trend. Yesterday, today and tomorrow! Originally from India, Swami Vivekananda is credited as the man who brought Yoga to the West. The monk from Calcutta travelled to the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1894 and spoke about India and Hinduism. This is what introduced Yoga to the West and the US has clutched on to it, ever since! It requires no equipment, though if you are a pro, you can put weights on you to maintain balance while performing the poses.

It helps you maintain balance, coordinate your breath, helps is meditation, promotes strength, flexibility and mental well-being.

What poses can you try if you are a beginner? You can start with standing yoga poses like downward facing dog, mountain pose, or warrior pose. As and when you move forward, you can also opt for some complex poses or poses that are inspired by animals.