The Champion Guide to Home Workouts
Can’t get a good workout at home? Well, we’re here to help change that! One thing that you can learn from 2020 is how important it is for your workouts to be adaptable.
When gyms (and really the whole country,) shut down for months, we were shocked and a little unsure of what to do or where to start. Many of us had no workout equipment at home, so we rushed to the internet to purchase some equipment. Some were probably lucky and others, well not so much. The silver lining here, we had to push ourselves in new ways and adapt.
If anything, we learned that the workout programs we follow need to be adaptable.
Gym closed? No problem!
Minimal equipment at home? No problem!
Want to workout outside? No problem!
It shouldn’t matter where we workout, our workout should be adaptable just like us!
HOME WORKOUT EQUIPMENT
One of the biggest challenges people had with their home fitness was finding exercise equipment.
While having a small set of home workout equipment is a great idea, you probably don’t need as much as you think, and you definitely don’t need to but a $3000 bike!
There are a few key items that we recommend for your home gym:
- A pair of moderate weight dumbbells
- A moderate to heavy kettlebell
- Variety of resistance bands with different tensions
- Mini bands with different tensions
- Light to moderate weight medicine ball
- Yoga mat or some kind of rubber mat to protect the floor
For many of you, any combination from the list above will give you a great workout! The good news is, you don’t need a full set of weights, choosing 1 or 2 sets of dumbbells or kettlebells at a moderate weight will definitely do the trick!
Here are a few tips for choosing a weight:
- Try to find a weight that is at a level 6 or 7 out of 10 in terms of difficulty
- Find a weight that is something you can hold in a goblet position just as easily as you can hold by the handle.
- Choose a weight that is easily adaptable to many exercises (i.e., squats, lunges, lateral lunges, presses, rowing, weighted carries, and more!)
HOW TO MODIFY WORKOUTS WITH MINIMAL EQUIPMENT
Don’t have any weights? No problem!
If you don’t have any weights at home and the stores are still completely sold out, there are still plenty of ways to still get a workout in at home! Whether you’ve been working out for years or are new to a fitness routine, you can STILL get a great workout with no weight.
Here are a couple of examples of what you can do to turn up the intensity with no weight or minimal weight:
- Increase the volume of your exercise sets to include more repetitions. The more weight you have, the fewer repetitions you need. But if you don’t have enough weights, try more reps!
- Tempo-based exercises allow you to turn the “dial” up or down which can completely change the dynamic of the exercise. Try this next time: start by going down slowly for 3 seconds, pausing, then slowly going back up for 3 seconds. Want to make it harder? Go even slower or hold your pause longer!
- Use items around the house to create resistance. You don’t always need fancy dumbbells to get a great workout at home, everything around you can be used as a weight! Try a backpack with books or gallon water jugs. Get creative!
Here’s a video that we use as part of our Champion Strong At Home online training program going over this in more details:
SETTING UP YOUR HOME GYM
One thing we heard from our clients was that it was difficult “not going to the gym”. All of a sudden, everyone’s spare bedroom, kitchen, or living room quickly became the classroom, home office, and gym all at once. It was tough because EVERYTHING was done in that one room and it was mentally exhausting!
Learning small tricks to help change your home gym setup and mindset can be an important part of working out at home.
Here are a couple of tips to help break through these mental blocks:
- Create a designated “gym” space and if possible make it different than your home office or workspace. It doesn’t even need to be its own room, just a corner or room is enough. But keep that area for your workouts only if possible.
- Stick with your “normal” routine. If you consistently worked out at 6 am, keep doing that, just do it at home. It will provide you some normalcy during this time and help keep the rest of your personal and professional routines consistent.
FOLLOW A PROGRAM
Another thing that we feel is very important to make sure you are getting the most out of your home workout routines is to follow a well-designed program.
Sure, any fitness routine is better than no fitness routine. But we can always be better!
When we all first transitioned to working out from home, running through some random exercises did the trick.
But if you really want to see improvements in your fitness, it’s best to follow a well-designed routine to help you achieve your fitness goals.
At Champion, we call this “training with a purpose.”
CHAMPION TRAINING AT HOME
For those looking for a smart home workout program, we created online versions of many of our acclaimed training programs that we use with our clients every day at Champion.
Like we discussed earlier, building your home gym does not need to be complicated or expensive, in fact, you can complete a lot of the Champion Online workouts with bodyweight and resistance bands!
One thing we’ve learned from 2020 is that workouts need to be adaptable to ANY situation. Whether you’re ready to be working out socially distanced in a gym or not, any of our Champion Online programs will be a good fit for you. We’ve made sure that each and every one of our programs can be completed in a gym setting or in the comfort of your home.
We understand that it can be challenging to navigate through your workouts at this time, so we wanted to make this as easy as possible for you!
TRY OUR FREE HOME WORKOUT PROGRAM
If you’re still not sure where to get started or want a comprehensive program to follow, we want to help. We want everyone to have access to a solid home workout program to help you get through this time.
We created a free workout program you can follow along at home. Remember, you can get a GREAT workout in at home with little to no equipment,
