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[title]It’s been a tough time since we all first heard about this thing called Covid. At one stage or another, you’ve probably been presented with a situation that hasn’t allowed you to train the way you might like, and while gyms are allowed to operate right now, should things change in the future or if you're just more comfortable training from home, there are a few simple ways to make sure you're getting the most out of your daily exercise as possible.
When it comes to building or maintaining your physique – whether you're training from home or at the gym – there are a few considerations you need to be mindful of.
Is there enough weight to go to failure?
The closer we get to genuinely failing when we lift weights, the more mechanical tension we create through our muscles. This is the driving force behind muscle growth – so it’s important we have enough of a load to actually get somewhere near the point of muscular failure.
Are you able to maintain stability?
The more stable we are, and the less energy we have to exert on bracing, stabilising and balancing, the harder we can work towards creating more mechanical tension in the msucles we want to train. Barbell squats are great – but often it’s your back, your core or your ability to brace that fails far before your legs do. The more stability we can create, the harder the muscles in question can work, because they don’t have to worry about anything else other than ‘pushing’.
Can you achieve 'progressive overload'?
We need to be able to put our bodies through more stress over time, to continuously force it to adapt. If you do the exact same workout lifting the exact same weights every single week, the workout will get easier initially, but after a while, it won’t. You’re not challenging your body enough to force it to get better, stronger, or more resilient. Instead, adding additional reps, weight, or sets when you can, will give you the opportunity to continuously adapt to the idea of ‘more’ while become much stronger in the process.
When you’re training in a gym, keeping to these principles is relatively easy, but this obviously isn’t always the case when you train at home, which means it becomes super important for you to work with what you do have.
While exercise selection is really important, you essentially want to stick to the exercises you can perform in a way where you can get close to muscular failure. Doing hundreds and hundreds of reps of push ups or air squats might get your heart rate up or give you a massive pump, but if you’re not getting to a point where you can’t or nearly can’t do another single push up or squat, you’re not getting to a point where you can build or maintain muscle.
So, here are a few ways we can make exercises more difficult in a manner that allows us to continue to challenge ourselves more and more over time, whether or not you have access to gym equipment:
Make the most of household items
Sure, maybe you don’t have access to dumbbells or a barbell, but can you load up a heavy suitcase with stuff? Could you fill a backpack? Are you able to use a handrailing for chin ups or a staircase for calf raises? Get inventive. I’m not suggesting you run around all day with a backpack on for the fun of it, but if you can add a weighted backpack to a push up, all of a sudden it becomes a lot more like a bench press.
Focus on single-limb exercises
We’re often really strong when we use both of our arms or both of our legs together, so let’s make it harder, and think about using one side at a time. The only downside to this is that it often comes at the expense of stability – so let’s fix that too.
Lunges, Bulgarian Split Squats, Single Leg Squats – all much more difficult and require far less load than an actual Barbell Squat for us to get a solid leg workout in. There’s nothing stopping you from doing these with a dowel rod for support, for exmaple, or next to a wall so you can hold onto something. More stability allows us to work harder – using a single limb at a time just negates the need for a lot of load, which perhaps you don’t have access to right now.
Don't forget to pre-fatigue
If you have access to limited weights at home, think about making your muscles tired before you begin a set. As an example, you could hold a push up at the bottom of the rep (without your body touching the ground) for 30-60 seconds, before doing a set of weighted backpack push ups. Or, you could do a 60-second wall sit before doing a set of weighted supported Bulgarian Split Squats.
Pay attention to tempo and pauses
Lifting weights more slowly, or adding pauses to your repetitions can also make things far more difficult – in a good way. These both serve to create more mechanical tension without requiring as much load to do so. See how much more challenging things can become by adding in a 4 count during the movement with a 2 count pause.
There’s no question that training at the gym is the most optimal way to build and maintain a physique, but in the event of that not being possible, you don’t have to change the way you train entirely. Training at home might require some inventiveness or creativity, but it doesn’t mean you can’t push the boundaries in terms of muscular failure. You just have to think outside the box a little.
Nick Cheadle is one of Sydney's top fitness coaches and founder of Paragon Strength and Fitness in Artarmon.