How to Make Your Home Workouts More Interesting and Challenging

It’s been a couple of weeks since stay-at-home guidelines have been issued in most states. The gym withdrawal is real, and for many of us meatheads that live and die for heavy weights, at-home bodyweight workouts sometimes get tedious after a while. If you’re used to pushing your limits in strength, many bodyweight exercises might not feel challenging enough.

Fortunately, there are many creative ways to make bodyweight workouts more challenging, interesting, and beneficial. You may not put any weight on your lifts during the next few weeks, but I guarantee you’ll maintain your muscle mass and maybe even drop some fat and improve any nagging joint issues you may have.

Like any other time, focus on what you CAN do. Just because your focus has pivoted doesn’t mean you aren’t getting better. You’ll set yourself up for an even better return to the gym when this is all over.

Here are some ways to mix up your bodyweight training.

Find creative ways to increase resistance

The classic example is elevating your feet while you do push-ups – the higher your feet, the more difficult the exercise becomes. Get creative with other exercises. Use a heavier band or heavier dumbbells. Add weight to a backpack. Do lunges up a hill. Use manual resistance – have a training partner push against you as you do an exercise.

Increase your range of motion

Increased range of motion will make your muscles do more work without changing the amount of resistance. Think how much easier a quarter squat is than a full squat.

Here are some examples:

Lower Body

-          Step-ups to a higher bench

-          Reverse lunges from an elevated surface

-          Squatting to a low box vs a high box

-          Deadlift a weighted backpack while standing on an elevated surface

Upper Body

-          Push-ups using handles or books to elevate your hands and stretching the chest more at the bottom

-          Handstand pushups using the same principle

Slow down your tempo or add pauses

This is a great idea for building muscle. Slowing down reps without adding resistance will tax you more than you think. Try a “303” tempo for couple of exercises per workout – 3 seconds down, no pause, then 3 seconds up. This will wreck you. I’ve used up to 6 seconds each direction with good results.

You can also pause at various points in the range of motion – for example, holding the bottom of a squat for 3 seconds before standing back up. You can pause multiple times per rep too – pause at the bottom AND pause halfway up. Goodbye quads. This can be applied to any strength exercise.

Add reps

This one is self-explanatory but it’s still a great option for building muscle. Add 1-3 reps per workout.

Decrease rest periods

Also self-explanatory. This is not ideal for strength but is great for cardiovascular fitness, building muscle, and time efficiency.

You can also string together similar exercises to create various kinds of drop and extended sets. For example, try doing feet-elevated push-ups to failure, then put your feet on the ground and go to failure, then elevate your hands and go to failure. Only use this type of technique for 1-2 sets of 1-2 exercises per workout.

Add complexity

Try combining multiple exercises into combinations and complexes. The sky is the limit. With combinations, simply alternate between exercises, doing one rep of each before repeating. Here are some common combinations:

-          Dumbbell Clean + Press

-          Push-up + Mountain Climber

-          Lunge + Dumbbell Overhead Press

-          Dumbbell Squat + Push Press

Complexes are a string of multiple exercises, each done for one rep before repeating. Here are some favorites:

-          Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift + Row + Clean + Overhead Press + Squat

-          Dumbbell Front Squat + Push Press + Row + Push-up + Clean

If you’re looking for a fitness trainer in the Mt Juliet/Hermitage/Nashville TN area, online fitness training, or just need some advice to get your fitness program started, contact me

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