Pretty much anything you can think of can be turned into a piece of workout equipment, ranging from a football to a piece of rope. So take a look around your living room, let’s ask what almost everyone reliably owns and what you can find in pretty much any home. The couch seems like a pretty good place to start, so how do you go about building a workout regime around it?
It’s actually pretty simple. Here’s an eight-minute routine (nice and fast) that you can do without leaving the sofa! Let’s call it the ‘couch potato workout’.
The Moves
Inverted Mountain Climber Cross-Overs
Mountain climbers normally involve being in a press-up position with your arms straight and then ‘running’ by bringing your knees up underneath you. In this case, you’ll be doing the very same thing except your hands will be against the sofa thus raising you a little higher above the ground.
Flutter Kicks
Flutter kicks can actually be made a little more difficult on the couch. Just rest your upper body on the couch with your legs sticking straight out in front of you, then raise them slightly and likely kick or ‘flutter’ them up and down.
Lying Leg Lifts
Here you’re using the couch primarily as a way to stabilize your body. Hold on to the underside of that sofa with your fingers and then raise your legs off of the ground directly. These hit the exact same areas of the abs as the flutter kicks.
Hand to Shin Taps
These are sit-ups with your legs suspended against the sofa. You’ll basically be sitting on the sofa ‘backwards’ with your legs on the seat and your back on the floor. You’re then going to perform sit-ups and each time you do, you’re going to tap the tops of your shins.
Elbow to Knee Crunches
The elbow to knee crunches don’t require you to move position at all. All you’re going to do instead is use a crunching movement in that same position instead of a sit up movement. That means you should be ‘rolling’ the abs up rather than folding at the waist, imagine that you’re curling your abs. This is the perfect way to follow the shin taps because it effectively provides a ‘mechanical drop set’, allowing you to go past failure by using a slightly easier variation of the same movement.
Take these exercises and then assemble them into a circuit. You’re not going to pause at all in between sets and you can do each exercise for around 20 seconds, with a 20-second rest at the end. This then means that each round will take two minutes, giving you time to bang out 4 rounds in total for an eight-minute workout.
The great thing about this type of circuit is that it’s very intensive thereby ensuring you’re also getting cardio benefits to strip away any excess flab from your stomach!
