Thanks to the COVID-19 enforced shutdown, a lot of people are having to workout at home. I’m seeing the same kinds of home workouts all over social media and the same mistakes keep coming up. To help the AdMac Fitness family and readers to make sure they get the most from their home workout, I decided to write this post.
Here are the top 5 home workout mistakes to avoid…
Mistake #1 - Too much HIIT, not enough strength work…
It’s easy to assume that without weights, you can’t really grow much muscle. People equate weight lifted with muscle built. Whilst that’s true to a point, it’s not the only way to build strength and muscle. You can build muscle at home with targeted exercise.
A lot of people fall into the trap of ‘if it’s not hurting, it’s not working’, so fill in their workout time with really high intensity efforts that raise your heart rate and get you sweating a lot. These are great for cardio and calorie burning, but they’re generally terrible for strength building. There’s definitely a time and a place for HIIT work, but don’t fill your workout with burpees and running on the spot - you’ll lose a tonne of strength if you do.
Mistake #2 - Not pushing to failure…
When you sacrifice weight, you have to increase volume. There’s no point in sticking to sets of 10 if sets of 10 aren’t a challenge for you. You have to create overload if you want your muscles to grow - overload can come in the form of volume (do more reps), weight (add more resistance) or intensity (reduce your rest period between sets). All of these will push you to failure.
What counts as failure? That’s the point where you can’t complete the exercises with good enough form. ‘Good enough’ is the important bit - your form doesn’t have to be perfect under fatigue, but it has to be good enough that you’re still hitting the target muscles.
Push to failure on every set of every exercise and you’ll see some strength gains.
Mistake #3 - Too much focus on isolation movements…
There’s a simple rule in muscle building - the more muscle you use, the bigger the muscle gains you make. If you train a lot of muscle in an exercise, you stimulate more muscle and you release more growth hormone. That’s the reason compound exercises such as squats, pull ups, deadlifts, shoulder presses are better for muscle growth than bicep curls, lateral raises, tricep kickbacks etc.
A lot of people are using their resistance bands to perform curls, fly’s, kickbacks etc but that should come AFTER you’ve pre-exhausted your muscles with exercises such as squats, lunges, push ups, pull ups (if you can). Your home workout isn’t likely to consist of a huge range of exercises, but the ones you do have to be a high quality if you want to make it an effective workout.
Mistake #4 - Not using progressive overload…
What progressive overload means is that you’re not making your workouts progressively harder. If you don’t have weights at home, you can’t measure the increase of weight you’re lifting, but you can certainly measure the volume or intensity of your workout by tracking reps, sets and rest periods.
If last week you managed performed 4 sets of 12 of an exercise, see if this week you can push that to 5 sets. If you did 5 sets of 20 last week, see if you can do 5 sets of 22 this time. If you did a plank for 30 seconds last week, see if you can make it 40 this week.
Seek to increase the volume. Likewise, monitor your rest periods. If you were giving yourself a minute off between sets last week, see if you can only rest for 50 seconds this week. Increased intensity is another measure of progression.
Seek to progress every week if you can.
Mistake #5 - You’re not programming with the changes in mind…
If in a normal week you head to the gym 3 times to do a big, heavy workout and then throw in a long walk on one of the other days, you’ll need to up the training frequency at home because the intensity just doesn’t match up if you replace like for like.
If you simply swap your three workouts in the gym for three bodyweight workouts at home, you’ll lose some serious progress. Instead, you’ll need to increase the frequency of your home workouts to compensate. The three gym workouts may need to be swapped for 5 home workouts and the walk can remain. If something is less taxing on the body (home workouts are typically easier than gym workouts) you’ll need to do more of them.
The walk should remain - you always need some outside space. Just make sure it’s within the rules!
Bonus Tip - Get creative!
You may not have weights or a kettlebell, but you can still add weight to your workouts. Fill a rucksack with water bottles, books or tins of food and wear it to do push ups, squats, lunges, the plank.
You don’t need to run far to get a good cardio workout - find a local park and do sprints or shuttle runs (just stay away from people).
Use your furniture to make workouts harder. Use a chair for rear foot elevated split squats, feet raised push ups and step ups. Use your stairs for calf raises - look around, there’ll be workout options you hadn’t considered before!