We all love Workouts! Don’t we? In fact, the gym is the favorite go-to place of every training enthusiast out there, including me! Undeniably many fitness-freaks are so obsessed with gyms that they can’t workout at any other place or without training machines. However, not everyone has sufficient time, resources, and most importantly money for the gym; thus, working out at the comfort of our home is our top-most priority.
No doubt, your gym would surely be packed with proper equipment, including barbells, lifting machines, along with high-tech cardio machines. Yet, this does not at all mean you can’t achieve your fitness goals from working out at home.
Believe me or not, but the only thing that you need for an ideal workout is your body! Simple body training workouts with varying intensities can effectively tone and slim down your body while making your muscles more definite and prominent.
Especially during such a pandemic when gyms are closed for a prolonged period and with no chances of physical training, these at-home workouts come very handily to maintain one’s physique. Therefore, to assist all our workout-loving readers, here we have provided comprehensive details that can assist in making home workouts more intense!
Let’s get started!
How to add more power to your workouts?
Inspired by the idea of becoming stronger, harder, and better by just utilizing our body, we spoke with various fitness experts and came up with various ideas:
Increase your Motion
Training experts firmly believe that the most significant way of intensifying your training without adding extra weight is to increase the range of motion. The primary reason for this is that by adding more motion, you are making your muscles work super hard.
How to increase your motion? Well, you can add motion to literally any at-home exercise from squats to a push-up, but it’d be ideal if you:
- While doing regular squats, elevate your front foot on a step or sturdy surface instead of the stationary lunge, as this would allow greater movement.
- You can also increase your motion while doing Sumo Squats by elevating your foot; hence squatting with the added weight would be difficult.
- Likewise, you may also elevate your feet while doing pushups to increase your range of motion and make it intense.
Slow Things Down
One of the most incredible ways of adding intensity to your workout is by changing the tempo of your exercise. This means that you must keep on changing the speed of your reps accordingly throughout the workout. This will challenge your muscles in working in different ways and prevent them from adopting a certain speed. You may adapt multiple ways, for instance:
- Slow down by taking more than 4 seconds when lifting down the weight.
- Make the lowering part harder by lowering the weight for 3-4 seconds.
- Alternate the speeds by doing two sets fast and rest at moderate or slow speed.
- Keep tension on the muscles you are working on by shortening the range of motion.
- At the end of a set, you may add several small pulses.
AMRAP Set
AMRAP or “As Many Rounds as Possible” is a popular way of increasing the difficulty levels of workouts as it can test your optimal endurance. To include these AMRAP sets in your workout, simply keep on perform reps of a certain exercise for as many rounds as you can.
While many prefer incorporating AMRAP without time constraints, few individuals also like to observe the number of reps that they can do within a certain time limit. For instance, they might see how many squats they can perform in 1 minute.
An important aspect to consider here is that doing the maximum number of sets; it doesn’t mean you can comprise upon the form. Suppose if you are doing poor squats or sloppy pushups, you would have no benefit of doing it on the maximum range. In fact, there’s a high risk of injury in poor form.
Try unfamiliar movements
Expert trainers and fitness enthusiasts recommend trying unfamiliar movements from time to time. The primary reason for this is that when we try a new move, your brain takes time to process and get familiar with it. As a result, your workout becomes intense and challenging.
Just simply step out of your comfort zone and try out exercises and programs that your body wouldn’t expect. For instance, if you are a fan of a typical forward or backward lunge, try a lateral lunge instead. Or if you have never tried Pilates, go for it!
Try Super-Sets and Circuits
A huge number of individuals prefer not to take a break after every set of an exercise, and undoubtedly there are countless advantages to it. Usually, in gyms, when we are training with heavyweight, rest becomes a necessity for most. However, at home, when you aren’t lifting anything that heavy, a superset (when you don’t rest between two sets) becomes quite convenient.
Basically, supersets that work with the same muscle group are capable of exhausting them. Hence, you can feel the challenge without doing several repetitions.
Not just supersets, but you can even perform circuits which involve consecutive three or more exercises without resting, as this can keep your heart rate elevated throughout the workout.
When adding supersets or circuits in your workout routine, it is really crucial to consider what sort of exercises need to be combined. Many individuals just hop on to random exercises; however, unfortunately, this isn’t as beneficial as a pre-planned superset or circuit.
SO what’s a Well-planned circuit or superset?
NO doubt the best ways to combine different exercise differ from person to person; however, the best combination is when:
- Targeting opposite Muscle Groups
- Compound Sets such as Glute Bridge and sumo squats.
Emphasize on a Single-leg workout
Fitness experts believe that unilateral exercises where you only work at a single side of the body, for instance, lunge, or a single-leg glute bridge, are super helpful, as they are effective in correcting improper muscle imbalances. However, they are extremely-challenging to be worked; therefore, most people avoid it.
It suggested that if heavyweight is unavailable, unilateral workouts are more challenging and harder to do. Thus, you can perform them slowly, particularly during the eccentric (or the lowering) phase of the move.
Change Your Workout Split
Working Out at your place is different from workout out at your gym; hence, you must consider changing your training split. Usually, most individuals prefer allocating one day for only a single muscle group; for instance, you trained back and biceps one day, chest and triceps another day, etc.
This workout routine doesn’t need to be followed at your home, especially when the proper equipment is unavailable. In contrast, you must consider trying a new format of workout. For example, you can start with two upper-body days and two lower-body days or try 3-4 full-body workouts per week.
Another aspect is to change out the frequency of your workout, as it breaks the plateau of exercise. Plus, this provides you with the perfect opportunity to experiment with new ways of exercising
Add Intense Power to the cardio
Fortunately, adding more intensity to your at-home cardio sessions is super simple. If you wish to burn calories like an athlete, and while enhancing your strength and endurance, you can simply add power moves in your workout. Individuals who have been working out at home for ages, yet manage to remain in great shape utilize polymeric exercises to assist them to build significant endurance and strength. You can incorporate simple power moves in your workout, such as:
Jumps: By adding various kinds of jumps in your workout, you can easily spark up your heart rate. You may try jumping up and then gently landing in a slight squat position as if you were doing a squat jump. With that, jumping forward with both feet in a long-jump or jumping up onto a step or platform with both the feet at a time can add crucial intensity to your cardio.
One-Legged Jumps: These are also pretty common during at-home cardio, as jumping with a single foot is extra challenging. Try hopping around your house and jumping up and down simultaneously in slow but explosive motion.
Power Jacks: Power jack is the perfect way to add power by doping slow squats. First, jump high, and land in a wide squat, and then jump your feet together in an explosive motion.
Interval Training
With other methods of adding intensity to your workout, you may also try interval training, which primarily revolves around add bursts of intensity (either with speed, resistance, or other similar moves) throughout your workout split. In simple words, the idea recommends working out hard for a period (reaching out to your limits) and then slows down for recovery. There are certain ways you can do interval training with ease:
- Measured Intervals: This is the most common training and highly recommended for beginners. During measured training, you work hard for a certain period and then recover for an already set time period.
- Varied Intervals: In varied intervals, you don’t train and recover for an already set time period, but you work for as long as you can and then recover accordingly.
- Aerobic Interval Training: If you are starting Interval Training for the very first time, this type will perfectly suit you as these don’t force you to very high-intensity. Simply, you can do a set at moderate intensity, and then 3 minutes just slightly higher than moderate.
- HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training): This type of training is perfect for all my fellows who are already experienced in moderate level interval training. HIIT propels a trainer to step out of its comfort zone and work as hard as you can for short intervals. This is also often called anaerobic training and utilizes various high-intensity workouts like circuit training and Metabolic Conditioning.
Make your own “weights”.
No weights? No worries! Luckily, our homes are treasures filled with everything we need for a perfect workout, but only if you look with perceiving eyes. From used soup cans and standard cans of 10 ounces to water, wine, and liquor bottles that are more substantial, you can literally utilize anything at your home.
Not just that, you can also use Bags of cat litter or pet food, which are quite heavy and usually weigh similar to a barbell. Moreover, backpacks can also be used as they are easy to lift, and you can add weight to them accordingly.
Use your mini-bands!
If you earlier utilized your mini-bands just for stretching and warm-up, now is the time to pull them on for double-work. Mini-bands can effectively pull your legs together when it’s around your ankles, or even knees, which makes squats, deadlifts, and your favorite glute bridges extremely difficult.
Conclusion
At home, workouts have been in trend for ages, but in such time of the pandemic, these have become extremely popular. Luckily, even by staying at home, you can still maintain your figure and optimal health without having to spend loads of time and money.
In fact, it’s ideal to combine all the above-mentioned tips to see what works best for you. A lot of effort and control is required to do so. Just Have patience and go slow and steady. Keep up the pace and be consistent in what you are doing. The key to gaining mass and strength is following a proper diet, taking supplements, and following your workout routine consistently. If you carefully follow the above-mentioned tips, trust me within no time, you will be shocked by the results.
We hope our guide assists every training-enthusiast out there, and in case of further queries, let us know.
