Most of the posts we’ve written about exercises and workouts have been written under the assumption that everyone has the time and the desire to spend an hour(s) in the gym four to five times a week. I’ve been spending a lot of time with family friends lately, what with graduation parties and everything, and somehow we would always start talking about working out and how they didn’t have the time or the energy to spend hours in the gym everyday. That being the case, I figured I’d write a short little series of articles about how you can get a good workout in the comfort of your own home with limited equipment. I’ll do a short workout for a different body part in each article and at the end you can mix and match and make it as long/short as you like.

Chest workouts are great because you really only need a set of dumbbells and you can do a wide variety of exercises. Here’s a pretty simple three step workout you can start out with. For your first exercise, just do as many pushups as you can, plain and simple. If you’re going to take a break between sets, then make it quick, no more than 15 sec. Next, you’re going to want to have a couple of dumbbells about arms length apart, placed on pillows or books. The pillows/books are just to make it more convenient to get that first rep up. The second exercise is pec flys. It’s actually kind of nice to do these on the floor, because the ground limits your range of motion and takes the strain off of your shoulders and reduces the risk of injury. Again, do as many as you can. Finally, take those same dumbbells and do as many straight dumbbell bench reps as you can.

It doesn’t really matter how heavy the weights are, I mean they should be decently heavy, but the important part is that no matter what weight you use, you keep lifting until you can’t go anymore. Additionally, in a basic workout like this one, it’s incredibly important to keep excellent form. Go slow all the way up and back down and that will help you get better results. Don’t sacrifice form for extra reps, if you find your form faultering then stop and move on to the next exercise. You can repeat this cycle as many times as you want until you feel satisified. Just keep in mind that this isn’t meant to be a crazy workout, just something simplet hat you can do to keep in shape if a gym is too inconvenient.