Best Cardio Exercises to Do at Home

Conditioning your cardiovascular system through cardio exercises is crucial to your overall health. Spending hours at the gym is not necessary to keep your heart healthy or to lose weight. Even if you don't have much room or equipment, you can still perform a beneficial cardio workout in the comfort of your own home.

To begin, it's important to define "cardio exercises". With such broad definitions, cardio can include a wide variety of activities beyond just sprinting and brisk walking. To get their heart rate up, people don't need a lot of fancy gear. They can substitute doing cardio with their own body weight at home.

The following routines can be done in the comfort of one's own home, in a public park, or even outside in the fresh air. Feel free to pick and choose from a variety of exercises to meet your specific needs. As your fitness levels rise, you can also progress to more challenging exercises.

Cardio Exercises to Do at Home

The following cardio exercises that you can easily do at home will help you up your calorie-burning efforts. Cardio is especially beneficial for weight loss, but you will have to accompany it with a low-calorie and nutritious diet.

1) Jumping Jacks

Cardio exercises for beginners can be as simple as jumping jacks, and can be done virtually anywhere. Jumping jacks are one of the best cardio workouts you can do at home.

Instructions:

• Start with your arms at your sides and your feet hip-width apart.
• Extend your arms straight overhead as you jump apart at the knees.
• Land gently on the balls of your feet as you spring back to the starting position and draw your arms back into your body.
• Intensify your workout by jumping higher and faster. You can also lessen the intensity by doing fewer, smaller jumps.

Jumping jacks are one of the best cardio workouts (Image via Pexels @Julia Larson)

2) Squat Jumps

Glutes, quads, hamstrings, and calves all get a good workout when performing squat jumps. This is one of the best cardio exercises to work out the major muscles in your lower body.

Instructions:

• Keep your feet shoulder-width apart and your arms by your sides as you stand.
• Squat by bending at the knees.
• Jumping into the air from a squat position allows you to straighten your body out.
• When landing, roll backward off the balls of your feet to reduce the impact on your heels.
• Alter the challenge by doing the exercise again, but this time with your arms in different positions.

3) Lateral Shuffles

Looking for low-impact exercises? This is one of the best cardio exercises that you can easily do at home. This shuffle is very similar to the warm-up routines used in sports like football and speed skating.

Instructions:

• To begin, squat down at one end of the room.
• Walk in a shuffle toward the opposite wall, bringing your feet together, then apart again.
• Boost the difficulty of your workout by picking up the pace and going deeper into your squats.

Lateral shuffles involve moving from side to side as a warm-up before sports (Image via Pexels @Marta Wave)

4) Burpees

Burpees are a difficult full-body exercise that will get your blood pumping. It is one of the most performed cardio workouts at the gym. However, it can also be done at home as it requires no equipment.

Instructions:

• You should get into a pushup position to begin.
• Squat down and land on the balls of your feet to perform a knee-in-chest push-up.
• Squat down, then jump up, hands in the air, and land back into a squat.
• Re-situate the hands back under the shoulders.
• Kick back your legs to get back to square one.

A Bosu ball is a specialized exercise device that can be used to add an extra level of difficulty to cardio exercises.

5) Inchworms

The inchworm is one of the best cardio exercises to test your shoulder strength and mobility at the same time.

Instructions:

• From a standing position, touch the floor or the toes for a brief moment before walking the hands out to a pushup position.
• You can imitate the downward dog pose by performing a push-up, then bring your feet in towards your hands while simultaneously lifting your hips.
• When returning to the pushup position, inching the feet as close to the hands as possible before walking the hands out is optimal.

Stretching is extremely important before cardio (Image via Pexels @Andrea Piacquadio)

6) Bear Crawl

As a whole-body movement, the bear crawl is highly effective. It is one of the best cardio exercises for those trying to lose weight.

Instructions:

• Position yourself in a push-up.
• Crawl forward by alternating leg and arm movements while keeping knees off the ground and bent.
• Maintain an upright posture by contracting the abdominal muscles.

Doing cardio exercises regularly is good for your heart, lungs, and muscles. And to incorporate it into your exercise regimen, you don’t even need to leave the comfort of your own home. When trying out a new move, make sure to warm up first and take things slowly.