Quiet, no-jump workouts for apartments

You can get a hard workout in an apartment without bothering anyone. The noise comes from impact: feet landing after a jump, knees and hands dropping onto the floor, furniture sliding. Leave out the jumps, move slowly where you'd normally bounce, and use longer holds and shorter rests to keep it challenging.

This guide covers what makes a home workout loud, twelve exercises that make almost no noise, a 20-minute session you can do tonight, and how to make quiet training harder as you get fitter.

What makes a home workout loud

The sound your downstairs neighbours hear is mostly impact noise. When you land from a jump, the force goes straight into the floor and the building carries it as a thud. Talking, music and breathing travel through the air and are much easier to keep down. That's why one set of jumping jacks can be heard two floors away when a set of squats can't.

The usual noisy exercises are:

• Anything with a jump: jumping jacks, burpees, squat jumps, skipping and tuck jumps.
• Fast footwork: running on the spot, high knees and quick mountain climbers, where your feet strike the floor many times a second.
• Dropping to the floor: letting your knees or hands slap down when you get into a plank or push-up.
• Gear that moves: a chair that scrapes on tiles, or a phone stand that rattles.

A few small changes help as much as the choice of exercises. A rug or an exercise mat takes the edge off any contact with the floor. Stand where the floor feels most solid, which is usually near a wall rather than in the middle of a room. If you use a chair for dips, put it on the rug with its back against a wall so it can't slide. And if you know where your neighbour's bedroom is, don't train above it late at night.

Twelve quiet exercises

Every one of these keeps at least one foot, or your hands and knees, on the floor the whole time. Move with control, especially on the way down, and they're close to silent.

Legs and glutes

• 
  Squat

  Feet about shoulder width apart, sit back and down until your thighs are about level with the floor, then stand. Take three seconds to lower yourself to make it harder without adding a sound.

• 
  Lunge

  Step back rather than forward, and place your foot down instead of planting it. Lower the back knee towards the floor without touching it, then step back in. Alternate legs.

• 
  Side lunge

  Step wide to one side, sit back into that hip with the other leg straight, then push back to the middle. It works the inner and outer thighs that forward movements miss.

• 
  Wall sit

  Back flat against a wall, slide down until your knees are bent to about a right angle, and hold. It's completely silent and harder than it looks. Use an outside wall if you share the others.

• 
  Glute bridge

  Lie on your back with knees bent and feet flat. Push through your heels to lift your hips until your body is straight from knees to shoulders, squeeze for a second, then lower slowly.

• 
  Hip hinge

  Stand tall, soften your knees and push your hips back while your chest tips forward with a flat back, then stand up by driving your hips forward. It trains the hamstrings and glutes.

Upper body

• 
  Push-up

  Lower yourself to your knees first rather than dropping into position. Do them from your knees until full push-ups feel steady, and lower your chest slowly either way.

• 
  Tricep dip

  Hands on the edge of a sturdy chair, bend your elbows to lower your hips, then push back up. Bend your knees to make it easier, straighten your legs to make it harder.

Core and back

• 
  Plank

  Forearms on the floor, body in a straight line from head to heels, and hold. Get into it from your knees so nothing hits the floor.

• 
  Side plank

  On one forearm with your feet stacked, lift your hips so your body is straight. Split the time between sides. Drop the bottom knee to the floor to make it easier.

• 
  Bird dog

  On hands and knees, reach one arm forward and the opposite leg back until both are level with your body, hold for a moment, then switch. Keep your hips still.

• 
  Superman

  Lie face down with arms stretched out in front. Lift your arms, chest and legs a few centimetres off the floor, hold briefly, and lower. It works the muscles along your spine.

A 20-minute quiet workout

This session works your whole body using six of the exercises above. Do each one for 40 seconds, rest for 20 seconds, and move to the next. After all six, rest for a minute, then go again. Three rounds take about 19 minutes. Two rounds take about 12.

Rest 20 seconds between moves. Work hard enough that the last ten seconds of each move are a struggle, and finish with a minute or two of easy stretching.

How to make it harder without making noise

Quiet training doesn't have to be easy training. When the session above stops being a challenge, change one thing at a time:

• Slow down. Lowering for three or four seconds, or pausing at the bottom of a squat or lunge, keeps your muscles working for longer in every rep.
• Hold longer. Push your wall sit and plank from 40 seconds towards a minute.
• Rest less. Cut the rest between moves from 20 seconds to 10. Your heart rate stays up, and it's the quietest way there is to make a workout feel like cardio.
• Use one leg. A single-leg glute bridge or a split squat with your back foot on the floor doubles the load on the working leg.
• Add a round. A fourth round turns this into a 25-minute session.

One honest caveat: jumping is the quickest way to get your heart rate high, so a jump-free session won't feel quite like a hard interval class. Short rests and a steady pace close most of the gap. If you have somewhere to make noise, like a park, a garage or a ground-floor room, a session with jumps once a week rounds things out.

The Silent but Deadly pack

We made a Workout Pack in Streaks Workout for exactly this. Silent but Deadly has five jump-free workouts built from the exercises in this guide, from an easy core session (Ninja Core) to a hard full-body one (Quiet Storm). The pack has its own voice coaching and music, and its workouts run on your iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple TV. You can also build your own quiet workout in the app by choosing only the exercises you want.