How to Train Effectively at Home

As I’m sure you already know, most gyms, sports clubs, and training facilities are off-limits for now.

Meaning, unless you have a home gym, you’re left to improvise and find new ways to stay consistent with your workouts.

To that end, we’ve put together this post to help you achieve great success with your home training. Below, we’ll cover the three most important things you need to keep in mind.

Bet On Bodyweight Exercises

While many people frown upon bodyweight exercises and deem them ‘ineffective’ and not challenging enough, this is far from the truth.

The fact is, bodyweight exercises are incredibly beneficial for people of all fitness levels. For one, you can always modify a bodyweight exercise to make it more or less challenging - depending on what you need.

Second, bodyweight exercises are convenient, and you can do them in the comfort of your home without needing any special equipment.

Plus, research suggests that bodyweight exercises are just as effective at helping us build strength and muscle as any other movement, so long as we push ourselves and aim to improve at them over time.

Push Yourself And Abide By The Principle Of Overload

Whether you’re training with barbells, dumbbells, gym machines, resistance bands, your bodyweight alone, or something else, you need to abide by one simple rule:

You need to push yourself and improve over time.

The principle of overload states that, if we want to improve (muscle growth, strength gain, etc.), we need to push ourselves continuously and force the body to adapt to greater and greater stressors.

Meaning, if you keep doing the same home workout over and over again, it will eventually cease to benefit you. In other words, if you’re doing sets of 15 push-ups this week, make sure to do sets of 16, 17, even 18 next week. That way, your body will keep adapting because it will have no other choice.

Work The Six Primary Movement Patterns

For your training program to be complete and offer balanced development (both in terms of athletic ability and appearance), you need to train the six primary movement patterns:

1. Vertical push - this includes exercises like overhead press (pushing heavy objects above your head), pike push-ups, and handstand push-ups.
2. Horizontal push - this includes exercises like the classic push-up, and chest press (for example, if you have something heavy and relatively comfortable to grab at home).
3. Vertical pull - the two most prominent examples here are the pull-up and chin-up. If you have a home pull-up bar, then you have all you need. You can also get yourself some resistance bands and perform lat pulldowns with them.
4. Horizontal pull - this includes most rowing exercises and inverted rows (which you can do underneath a sturdy table or desk). For example, you can fill up a suitcase with heavy objects and row it with one arm at a time.
5. Hip hinge - this includes the classic glute bridge, single-leg glute bridge, and hip thrust.
6. Squat - great examples here include the bodyweight squat, the jump squat, and the single-leg split squat.

Be Consistent

Consistency is what matters most. Even if your workouts aren’t exactly the best right now, so long as you do them with enthusiasm and persistence, you will not only retain your fitness results but also improve.

Remember that even minor efforts add up over time.

So, set a schedule for yourself, make an actionable plan (the specific workout you’ll be doing and the exact time of day), and never skip workouts.