Jump Back Into Fitness: Download This Free 6-Week At-Home Workout Plan to Build Muscle and Burn Fat

Getting back into a fitness routine can feel overwhelming, but it’s also an incredible opportunity to reset and refocus on your health. Whether you've taken time off for life changes, recovery, or just a busy schedule, this free six-week at-home workout plan is designed to help you build muscle, burn fat, and rediscover the joy of moving your body.

With a balanced mix of cardio, strength, and mobility exercises, this plan prioritizes not just progress but sustainability, incorporating all the areas of fitness and emphasizing recovery as a key component of long-term success. Additionally, following this plan sets you up to meet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s physical activity guidelines, which include: 

• At least 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity aerobic activity or 75 minutes a week of vigorous aerobic activity (or a combination of both).

• At least two days per week of moderate- to high-intensity muscle-strengthening activity.

We understand the unique challenges of starting back up. That’s why this plan is tailored to ease you into a consistent routine, offering achievable workouts and tips to keep you motivated.  

Let’s jump in together and make the next six weeks your strongest comeback yet!

Your six-week workout plan: Quick view

With this workout plan, you are free to craft your own routine or follow along as we release in-depth guides for each week’s workouts every Sunday. You can quickly access these comprehensive guides below: 

• Jump Back Into Fitness: Week 1

A guide to the different types of workouts in your plan

Want to familiarize yourself with all of the exercises in this program? Below, we’ll dig into each type of workout, why it is worth incorporating into your exercise routine, and what you can expect.

• Cardio workouts: 

  • Steady cardio workouts

  • HIIT-style cardio workouts

  • Tempo cardio workouts

• Strength workouts 

• Yoga and Pilates workouts

• Muscular endurance workouts

• Active recovery workouts

Cardio workouts

Cardio workouts are activities that increase your heart rate and improve the efficiency of your lungs, heart, and circulatory system. The great news is you have tons of options available from the comfort of your home, including: 

• Rowing

• Cycling

• Elliptical

• Treadmill

• Dancing

• Aerobics

• Jumping rope 

• Floor exercises

If you find one activity you really like, feel free to stick with it, or mix up your exercise equipment to work different parts of your body and keep things exciting! 

Not all cardio workouts are created equal, and this workout plan will introduce you to three types of cardio workouts—steady cardio, HIIT cardio, and tempo cardio—to mix up your intensity level. These workouts can be completed from your home using your heart rate as a guide of intensity. To measure your maximum heart rate, the most general guideline is to subtract your age from 220.

Let’s dig into what each workout is, why it’s great to incorporate into your fitness routine, and tips for maximizing each type of workout: 

Steady cardio workouts

• What it is: Steady-state cardio is a type of cardiovascular exercise that involves working out at a consistent, moderate-intensity pace over an extended period of time with the goal of keeping your heart rate steady. 

• Why it’s awesome: Steady cardio is great for building endurance, burning fat, improving heart health, and keeping your workouts sustainable, especially if you’re just starting your fitness journey or getting back into a workout routine. 

• How to maximize your workout: The key with steady cardio workouts is maintaining a consistent intensity. Aim to hit 50% to 70% of your maximum target heart rate in order to burn fat and develop aerobic endurance. You can also figure out whether you’re at the right intensity level by using the “talk test”—in general, you should be able to hold a conversation with someone while doing steady-state cardio without being too out of breath. 

HIIT-style cardio 

• What it is: High-intensity interval training (HIIT) cardio workouts involve short bursts of effort followed by less-intense recovery periods. Rather than maintaining a consistent intensity level, you alternate between periods of higher intensity to increase your heart rate, then lower intensity to allow your heart rate to drop.

• Why it’s awesome: Because of their higher intensity, HIIT workouts are a great way to burn calories and improve your cardiovascular fitness. 

• Tips for maximizing your workout: Not sure if you’re at the right intensity? With HIIT-style workouts, you should be breathing too hard to say more than a few words at a time and unable to hold a conversation. This should translate to a working heart rate that is over 80% of your maximum heart rate. But don’t be surprised if your heart rate gets close to max during some of your more intense intervals!

Tempo cardio workouts

• What it is: Tempo cardio is a type of cardio workout in which you maintain a steady yet challenging pace for an extended period of time. Unlike interval training, which alternates between high and low intensities, and steady-state cardio, which keeps you level at a lower intensity, tempo cardio focuses on sustaining a consistent, moderately high intensity. 

• Why it’s awesome: Tempo cardio sessions are designed to improve your speed and endurance by training your body to push its base speed. This ultimately encourages your body to adapt to performing comfortably at a higher intensity.

• Tips for maximizing your workout: During this style of workout, you should aim to work between 85% to 90% of your maximum heart rate.

As you explore different types of cardio workouts, it’s important to understand that it may feel hard or uncomfortable at first—and that’s okay! You have to push yourself to see growth, and even as a workout beginner, you can still adapt these exercises to your current fitness level and grow with time.  

Strength workouts

• What it is: Strength training workouts are designed to improve your muscle strength and muscular endurance by applying resistance to your muscles. 

• Why it’s awesome: Strength training helps you tone your muscles, improve your strength, and boost your metabolism. 

• Examples of strength training workouts: The resistance you apply to your muscles can be harnessed in many forms, including weights, resistance bands, or even your own body weight.

• Tips for maximizing your workout: When crafting your strength training workout program, you can focus on your entire body at once, or work your upper body one day and your lower body another day to give your muscles time to recover between sessions or complete more dedicated exercises to that area of the body.

If you don’t have any workout equipment at home, don’t worry—exercises that use your own bodyweight as resistance are a great place to start. Squats, push-ups, deadlifts, pull-ups, planks, and lunges are all examples of exercises that can be used in strength workouts for beginners.

As you get more comfortable with strength training (and you get stronger!), you can invest in equipment like dumbbells, resistance bands, free weights, or weights machines. 

Yoga and Pilates workouts

Yoga and Pilates workouts are a great way to mix up your exercise routine while focusing on improving your flexibility, mobility, core strength, balance, and coordination. As part of your workout plan, you’ll encounter three types of workouts: 

• Recovery yoga: A type of yoga practice specifically designed to promote physical recovery, mental relaxation, and overall restoration. It prioritizes gentle poses, slow movements, and mindful breathing to help your body recover from physical activity, reduce stress, and restore balance. 

• Power yoga: This type of yoga practice is more vigorous and fitness-oriented than recovery yoga, incorporating dynamic movements, flowing sequences, and challenging poses and emphasizing strength, flexibility, and stamina. 

• Pilates: Pilates sessions strengthen your core and improve your flexibility and posture.

Muscular endurance workouts

While any repetitive action or movement technically works on your muscular endurance, this plan also includes two workouts meant to target smaller (yet very important!) muscle groups in your body and improve their muscular endurance: 

• Core workout: This workout will help you specifically target strengthening your core muscles, helping to improve your posture, enhance your stability, and support better movement. 

• ABCs (Abs, Butt, Core) workout: Use this exercise routine to focus specifically on your abs, butt, and core, helping you to enhance your performance, improve your balance and stability, and reduce your risk of injury. 

Active recovery workouts

• What it is: Active recovery refers to engaging in low-intensity physical activity after a high-intensity workout or on rest days. Every Sunday, we recommend either a complete rest day or incorporating active recovery exercises into your routine to allow your body the time it needs to recover from a week of exercise. 

• Why it’s awesome: Unlike passive recovery, where you rest completely and avoid physical activity, active recovery involves light exercises that keep your body moving without putting additional stress on your fatigued muscles. This method keeps blood flowing to relieve sore muscles, helping remove waste products like lactic acid and facilitating quicker muscle repair. 

• Examples of active recovery exercises: Active recovery can range from a lighter-intensity workout (think 50% or less of your maximum heart rate) to physical activity such as gardening or raking. Here are some ideas for active recovery exercises to get you started:

  • Gentle yoga sessions

  • Low-intensity cycling

  • Low-intensity rowing

  • Foam rolling

  • Walking and light jogging

  • Resistance band exercises

  • Gentle Pilates

  • Dynamic stretching

  • Mobility drills

  • Low-intensity bodyweight circuits

Get started today!

We hope this plan has gotten you excited to make exercise part of your daily routine. Keep an eye out for each week’s workout releases, and most importantly, have fun! 

• Jump Back Into Fitness: Week 1