Let's talk about: Home Workouts
Home workouts were all the range in lockdown, Joe Wicks had us all in a chokehold! We were running up and down our stairs, lunging up and down our gardens, using cans and milk bottles for weights, going on mental health walks, and for the lucky few who managed to get hold of some, utilising the equipment we had! (I was not one of the lucky few... enter resistance bands and makeshift weights!)
But times have changed gyms are open and everyone ventured back indoors for their workouts. So now we are all back in the gym, our equipment sits in garages and sheds, and we wonder if home workouts are worth it anymore.
Well, I'm here to tell you yes! While there are lots of benefits of training in a gym, equipment availability being one of them, there are just as many to working out at home, with or without equipment.
It's free (for the most part)
While gadgets and gizmos are becoming increasingly popular for fitness, you can still have an effective workout without spending money on stuff. There are tons of YouTube videos to follow, Netflix has a fitness section now, or if you’re familiar with exercise you can create your own circuit or a quick Google will give you loads of options.
Bye Bye Gym Anxiety
The gym can be a scary place for many, myself included back in the beginning. The endless aisle of equipment, weights sections dominated by what looks like pros, the grunts, the noises and most of the time terrible overhead music! And let's not forget the worry I think most of us have when stepping foot in a gym, people watchers! (Now from experience I can tell you most people who are in the gym are not watching you and are just cracking on!)
But with home workouts there's no need to worry, the only people there are (hopefully) people you know, you can find a reasonable-sized space, I’m talking, swing your arms around, that's enough room, and do you workout in peace with no mirrors, no bad soundtrack and no fear!
Anytime, Anywhere
When you’re tied to a gym it can be hard to work out if you're away for any reason, and sometimes just the drive to get in your car or on your bike or feet and get yourself there is boundary enough. With home workouts, you can do it at any time. Got 30 minutes before work? Quick workout. Finished your day and have a lot of pent-up energy? Quick workout. Lunch break? Go for a walk! You get my gist.
Get Outdoors
Leading on from going for a walk on your lunch, which is a fantastic thing to do not only for your physical health but mental too, GET AWAY FROM THE SCREEN! Working out outdoors, in your garden, in a park or on the street for a run is another very free, very easy way to work out at home, especially now the weather is starting to turn!
Tips
Hitting intensity
We know that the intensity of workouts is important, this is how we progress, it’s very simple to add more weight in a gym environment but this doesn't have to be the only way to increase intensity below are some other ways:
Higher Reps
More reps equals more work, more work means more intensity, pretty simple. If the weight isn't enough to get you going try adding a few more reps to your sets!
Time Under Tension
This is a great tool in and out of the gym, TUT or Time Under Tension uses changes in your rep tempo to create different intensities. Most people will perform a squat for example in 1010 (1 count down, 0 count at the bottom, 1 count up, 0 count at the top), slowing this down in either direction is going to create more intensity in the exercise, and you can play with the timing as well.
3-1-3-0 would be 3 counts down, 1 count in the bottom position, 3 counts backup and 0 at the top, so straight back into the lowering phase.
Mess with your timings and see what works for you. A simple and classic I use in my classes is 4-0-4-0, 4 counts down, then straight back into 4 counts up.
This can be used for most exercises not just squats!
Shorter Rest Periods
Rest periods in the gym are generally used for a quick scroll on the gram or TikTok, maybe a mirror selfie of your pump or general photo evidence of your visit! While it’s fine to do all those things, they all take time. When working out at home reducing the time you rest between your sets may help, try removing 10 seconds at a time until you find the sweet spot!
Utilise the space
Most of us will have at least a little bit of space we can use, as mentioned earlier you don’t need loads of it.
Your living room or kitchen could be a great location (assuming no one is cooking that could get dangerous really quickly!)
Your office doesn’t just have to be for endless Teams meetings that could have been an email, jump out of your chair and march on the spot for 2 minutes every hour of your shift, do some nice and slow standing hamstring curls, a bodyweight squat anything you can think of!
The garden is one of my favourite places to work out, it's outside in nature, sounds of lawnmowers in the background, and birds chirping away. I find it super peaceful, so a great place with probably more room than inside the house. When the weather permits, get outside and enjoy the vitamin D!
Stairs are probably the easiest to overlook, however, if you are a stair master girly, use your actual stairs to recreate the stair machine, I promise it’s just as effective.
So there you have it, my guide on working out at home, easily done alone and with a trainer. I offer mobile pt as a service to women in Banbury and the surrounding villages, if you would like to know more you can flick over to my Mobile Personal Training page. Alternatively, you can book a call with me, it's completely free and we can have a friendly chat about you, your goals, as well as how I can help you on your journey.