Fit as a Mama Bear
menu icon
search icon
×

Ultimate Guide To At Home Workouts For Moms

Please consult your physician before beginning any exercise program.  See full disclaimer

Learn the best workout plans, equipment, and beginner workout tips to guide you through working out at home as a busy mom. Fat loss, strength building, or general fitness, these tools will answer all of your questions about how to get fit at home.

I have an advertisement relationship with the ads in this post. Check out my disclaimer here
Image of a woman in a tank top performing a squat with her back leg on a bench and another image in a plank with text on the image.
Jump To

Huge Benefits Of Working Out At Home Instead Of The Gym

As a strength coach, most busy moms come to me wanting to start a fitness program but they’re just not sure how (which is the primary reason I created SMASH Fit For Life).

They’re busy, kids have activities, getting ready and leaving the house is a THING and they’re unsure of what to do at the gym when they get there.

Sound familiar?

Working out at home:

  • Makes scheduling practical
  • Saves time
  • Let’s you bond with your kids
  • Makes it so you stay consistent.

Learn more about the benefits of home workouts but know this: working out at home is the BEST WAY to stay consistent (and consistency is the whole reason I came up with the SMASH workout program!).

Not having to leave the house means you can work out at any time. This results in you being more consistent with your workouts and consistency = success.

The Best Home Gym Equipment For Beginners

If you’re new to working out at home there are a lot of options.

Though you can stick with using a variety of bodyweight exercises, eventually you’ll probably want to scale up your workout routine.

The best home workout equipment is gear that you’ll use!

There’s little point in investing in a machine if you’ll never touch it. Instead, set up with the basics and master staying consistent.

The home gym equipment below is all great for beginners, small spaces, and its cost-effective.

Each of these tools can be an asset to your training program. And you definitely don’t need it all.

But these are the best pieces of home workout equipment to get you started.

For my SMASH home workout program, my moms only need a set of dumbbells and and a mini band.

You can easily crush full-body workouts with a set of resistance bands or dumbbells (learn more about the benefits of training with just resistance bands)

You’ll want a yoga or gym mat for any floor.

A set of dumbbells or kettlebells will be a quick way to lose weight or build strength. You don’t need a full set, I tell all of my SMASH workout ladies to start with just a set of 15 pound dumbbells.

If you want a one-stop shop, TRX suspension straps are AMAZING because they allow you to use your body weight against you in a low-impact, rehab-safe way.

Learn more about the best home gym equipment for beginners and get yourself set up. In that blog post, I go into detail about the pros and cons of each piece of home gym equipment and help you select the best ones for your goals.

You can check out my own personal gym in this mom's home Gym Tour but know that you don’t need half of this to get a great workout (though I personally love it all haha).

Best Options Under $130
Home Fitness Essentials To Gear Up For Success
Home Fitness Essentials To Gear Up For Success

Create a stronger, healthier you with minimal space and money! Check out the 4 best home workout equipment to rock your at-home fitness journey.

Check Them Out

Beginner Workout Tips

Instead of trying to implement all the things, use these beginner workout tips for busy moms to get you started (and read up on this game plan about how to start working out if you’re brand new!).

Set realistic goals. Neither fat loss, muscle toning nor strength-boosting happens overnight. Be practical about your timeline.

Don’t rush into a ton of volume. Set yourself up for consistency. Showing up for three workouts each week every week will give you better results than sometimes hitting five workouts.

Plus, you’re going to be sore for the first little bit. High-volume work will leave you discouraged.

Get active outside of your workouts. All movement matters so make sure you’re not just putting an effort into your home gym time. A general daily exercise routine like walking or bike riding matters too.

Start slow and scale up. If you’re new to home workouts, jumping into a burpee challenge isn’t the way to go. Take the time to learn the foundational movements before anything else.

Stop thinking jumping exercises are the only way to boost intensity (in fact, here’s when you shouldn’t do jumping exercises). There are a lot of ways to scale your workouts, but jumping isn’t crucial to results (learn more about how to increase exercise intensity).

Be flexible. Life with kids or a baby is no joke. Your workouts will be chaotic or interrupted. It’s okay.

Have a plan. Bouncing around workout style to workout style leads to poor results. Go in with a plan and stick with it (like the SMASH workouts).

Here are some great fitness tips specific to new moms (like how to find time to work out!).

Like everything in life, there’s a learning curve. Go into it for the long haul.

women in pink shirt and black shorts sitting on grass doing a bicep curl with a red resistance band

How To Build A Workout Plan

To achieve fitness goals, you need to have a regular fitness routine with a mapped out plan.

Below are the things you’ll need to include when making a workout routine:

  • How many times per week are you working out?
  • What equipment do you have access to?
  • How long will your workouts be?
  • What kind of exercises will you be using?
  • What kind of workout style do you prefer?

You can learn exactly how to develop a workout program in four steps or, if you're super unsure of where to jump in, learn more about 5 minute workouts to maximize your time.

Likewise, with SMASH Fit For Life you can say goodbye to that frustrated thought that you’re failing because you can’t seem to stick with it and don't know what you're doing. Instead, these workouts focus on getting STRONGER

How Long Should Home Workouts Be?

This is the golden question. But the truth is: it doesn’t completely matter.

An average of 20-30 minutes a few times per week is an amazing start and will get you a great workout.

There is no “perfect time” that suddenly makes you fit as a busy mom. Some of it depends on the way your body responds to the stimulus you’re using.

One thing is for sure: you definitely don’t need two sixty-minute workouts per day 😛

Choosing A Workout Style

This is a tricky one for a lot of people.

I’m a huge fan of finding something you LOVE and effing rocking it. However, if you’re looking for something specific, you’ll need to gear towards that.

Plus, some body types respond better to certain workouts than others. For example:

  1. Running is awesome but it normally doesn’t get you super lean unless you’re already an ectomorph (born slender)
  2. Pilates is awesome but doesn’t have enough progressive overload to give great weight loss results
  3. Circuit training can definitely be geared towards weight loss and work well but it doesn’t build muscle
  4. Strength training helps immensely with weight loss and that “toned look”

So, my advice is the start by choosing a style you somewhat enjoy and then tweak as needed. The best results normally come from combining two styles.

For the SMASH workouts, we do a lot of basic strength training with some circuit training mixed in.

Exercise Choice For Home Workouts

Choosing your exercises is a big factor in your programs. You need to consider:

  • Knowledge
  • Equipment
  • Space
  • Progressions

Many people make the mistake of opting for traditional exercises like squats, push ups and crunches.

And though those exercises are great to an extent, you need more.

Begin by mastering the basics listed below. From there, place a lot of your focus on exercises that target the posterior chain, as they’ll be the ones to help reduce pain, carry kids easier and improve posture.

Also, make sure you have some glute work in there (learn more about why you NEED strong glutes).

And of course, focus on bigger movements instead of isolation work (think squats instead of leg extensions) to maximize your workout time.

Working Out At Home To Lose Weight

There is no best exercise to lose weight.

Weight loss is a multi-faceted approach and needs to be treated as such.

However, you can lose weight with home workouts.

Though many people opt for increasing intensity in their home workouts for weight loss, focus on strength first.

With a base foundation of strength, weight loss follows. Plus, with muscle on your body, your body will burn fat outside of your workouts too.

Which means, before going into anything too intense, master these basic exercises:

Use a combination of strength-building workouts with cardiovascular exercise or shorter, intense workouts.

You need the intensity (which can be done with resistance, pace, tempo, exercise choice etc) to stimulate weight loss. It needs to be more intense than your day to day activities to lose weight.

This means, unless you’re focusing on keeping nutrition very intact (and here are two meal templates to help you do that), it’s difficult to lose weight using just lighter workouts like pilates and yoga.

Regardless of the style of workout you choose, for weight loss, strive to work out 4-5 days per week (the SMASH workouts are on a four day workout cycle that changes monthly).

On your off days, you’ll want to focus on active recovery. Meaning, move your body!

Here are a few ways to be more active outside of your workouts.

An example of a week of fat loss workouts could look like:

Monday: Resistance Band Workout

Tuesday: HIIT Cardio Workout

Wednesday: Rest

Thursday: Dumbbell workout

Friday: Low Impact HIIT

Saturday: Resistance Band Workout

Sunday: Rest

The trick to working out at home to lose weight is staying consistent. You need to show up day in and day out.

There’s no quick fix or master plan, it’s just hard work.

Check out the Fat Loss Workout Playlist for some examples.

What To Do With Kids While Working Out At Home

Just because you’re planning to work out at home doesn’t mean it’ll be easy as a busy mom if your kiddos around, it can get pretty chaotic.

However, there are some easy solutions:

  • Let them join
  • Give them activities
  • Make use of screen time

Here are some great tips to entertain kids in the gym while you get in a quick workout.

Let Your Kids Join In Your Home Workouts

This one is easily the most practical of the options because your kids are going to want to join in anyways. So, let them!


The truth is, it’s crazy working out with kids. But you make it work. You change diapers between sets, you laugh *a lot*, you sing on rest times. You make fitness fun.

Mom in pink shirt and dark pants in a reverse plank in a home gym with a toddler on her tummy hugging her

Somedays it’s worse than others but after a while everyone somewhat learns the game plan.

That said, this is not a great option for you if you truly need your workouts to zone out. I love working out with my kids and showing them that exercise is fun, but it’s not peaceful by any means.

And half of my focus is definitely placed on them and not what I’m doing. But sometimes, it’s also the only option, so roll with it

Activities For Kids In The Gym

You can also try desginated activities for the gym. We’ve done this on occasion and it works pretty well.

For example, playdough was only played with while mama was doing a workout. Specific coloring books were used etc. it gives them something to look forward too and distracts them

The truth is, it’s crazy working out with kids. But you make it work. You change diapers between sets, you laugh *a lot*, you sing on rest times. You make fitness fun.

Learn the best tips (experienced mom of three here!) to entertain kids in the gym. Then, just dive in.

Bodyweight Training

Learning how to leverage bodyweight training is crucial when working out at home.

The truth is, you need to master bodyweight exercises before anything else. So, make them a priority.

The secret to this is to: Learn to focus on engagement, activation, and contraction and not just going through the motions.

Bodyweight Training For Beginners

If your goal is to get back into the swing of working out then you need to start with the basics.

Considering this, choose practical bodyweight exercises (no jumping, no pistol squats etc) and focusing on form first, always.

The best bodyweight exercises for beginners.

Begin by using 8-12 repetitions of each exercise (you can go higher for glute work) and 2-3 sets. 

You can choose bodyweight exercises and make them into a circuit (one right after another).

Bodyweight Training For Fat Loss

Many people love working up a good sweat in a short amount of time and these bodyweight workouts do just that! 

Likewise, these workouts are more fast-paced than when you're just starting out and *could* include some jumping. 

The biggest thing to remember is that your form comes first. If you're rushing through the workout to keep yourself breathless but getting sloppy in your squats- your workout is ineffective. Form comes first every single time. 

These bodyweight workouts tend to be more interval-based (think circuit or HIIT training, EMOM's etc). 

An easy way to create your own bodyweight circuit is to choose 5-6 exercises (a blend of upper body and lower body exercises) and alternate them. Perform them back to back without rest until the end of the set.

While many advertised fat loss workouts do include jumping, it is not only not necessary but also not always a good choice. Furthermore, for moms especially you need to be strong before you begin jumping otherwise there can be issues with the knees as well as the pelvic floor. 

Image of a woman in a plank position with text around the image.

Bodyweight workouts

Learning to use your bodyweight against you is a great way to not only challenge yourself but also get fit at home.

If you need some motivation and something to connect with, check out these no-equipment free workouts you can follow along to.

Below are a few reader favorites in terms of no-equipment workouts:

Home Workouts For Weight Loss

When it comes to workouts for weight loss you’ll want a variety of home workouts that target strength as well as more intense workouts like HIIT sessions.

You can look at the fat loss workout section on my home workouts page.

Or, use the workouts below and create a routine with 4 workouts to perform each week.

Home Workouts To Build Strength

In my experience, when you focus on strength, the body comp stuff tends to follow suit and there’s less mental stress over the whole thing.

This doesn’t mean you need to start picking up super heavy weights!

Strength training can encompass a variety of home workout equipment.

The trick is using external resistance and progressing your exercises/workouts (making them harder in some way).

If you’re brand new to any kind of strength training, learn the five best tips to get started.

Again, I have a lot of follow along free workouts you can choose from to improve your strength.

Or, you can stop GUESSING and just focus on showing up with a plan that's been proven to get you stronger. SMASH Fit For Life workouts do just that.

The biggest thing with building strength is to make each and every repetition count. Focus on form and learn control while increasing your resistance.

At-Home Cardio workouts

If you’re looking to make your workouts more cardio based you can rock:

Ditch the All-or-Nothing Trap

The Kickstart & Thrive Bundle is where busy moms keep things simple with quick, strength-building workouts you can actually fit into your day, plus protein-packed snacks that give you energy and taste like dessert but don't add extra time in the kitchen.

GRAB THE BUNDLE

Other Resources To Help You Master Working Out At Home

Common Questions About Working Out At Home

What is the most effective home gym equipment?

You don’t need a lot of gym equipment to see results! The most effective equipment is the ones you’ll use. Keep it simple and get started with resistance bands, mini loops, dumbbells, kettlebells, or TRX suspension straps before purchasing anything too costly.

What equipment do I need to workout at home?

You can get a total-body workout in at home with a variety of equipment. You will want a bit of space and a mat to work on though. From there, resistance bands, mini loops, dumbbells, kettlebells, or TRX suspension straps are the best home gym equipment tools to get started with.

Can you lose weight by exercising at home?

Yes! You’ll want to strive to work out 4-5 times per week and make sure to move your body on your non-workout days. Aim to perform a combination of strength-based workouts with resistance bands or dumbbells in addition to some cardio or higher intensity workouts. Find a blend of workouts that you enjoy and stay consistent to them. It’s showing up every day for your goals that will help you lose weight at home.

How much should I exercise at home to lose weight?

Much of weight loss will depend on your nutritional intake as well. However, a good start is to strive for four 30-40 minute workouts per week. In addition to that, ensure that on your “off” days you’re still active (go for walks, play with your kids etc). Every bit of movement matters and adds up.

What are the 5 best bodyweight exercises?

The five best bodyweight exercises (assuming you don’t have access to a bar to perform an inverted row or pull up) are: squats, lunges, push ups, hip thrusts, and deadbugs.

Can you get ripped with just bodyweight exercises?

So long as you learn to properly engage the muscles and scale your workouts accordingly you can get ripped with any exercise. To get fit using just your bodyweight you need to continuously up the intensity of your workouts with volume, time under tension or progress the exercise itself (squats to single leg squats). Staying consistent to training without weight can result in a very lean physique.

Is it effective to workout at home?

Working out at home can be just as effective as working out at the gym or taking a class so long as you follow a sound workout plan. In fact, home workouts offer more flexibility and often lead to greater consistency.

What is the best way to work out at home?

Make sure to set up a dedicated space for your home workouts and have a plan. Schedule your workouts in like anything else and commit to showing up. Use a variety of no-equipment or minimal equipment workouts and aim to be active with them 3-4 times per week.

How should a beginner start working out at home?

Make sure you have a space to work out as well as a plan. Start slowly and scale your way up. Not only will this help you mentally prepare for workouts and stay consistent but it will allow your muscles to get sued to the stimulus as well. Like anything else, work on mastering the foundational movements first and then start to branch out and challenge yourself.

More Fitness Tips For Moms

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *