If your at-home training in lockdown has hit a ceiling, it’s time to up the intensity to reignite your results.
Whether you train at a gym or at home, the body adapts best when it is progressively overloaded as this stimulus forces it to adapt.
Adding weight to a bar is the obvious answer to accelerate your results but gyms remain closed. Thankfully, there are other ways we can reignite that adaptive response.
READ MORE: Your Complete Lockdown Home Training Guide
Tip #1: Up the volume
The main variables that we have at our disposal when training at home are intensity and/or volume. If you’ve been working in the 15-25 rep range, it’s time to go higher, much higher.
Try working to failure for a few weeks to significantly boost the volume. You can also add more sets or circuits to your normal routine so that you perform more work over a set time period.
You can also restructure your daily sessions to predominantly target one muscle group a day instead of the usual full-body sessions that are synonymous with home training.
For example, you could perform squats, lunge variations, step ups, and stair climbs back to back in a single session to overload your quads. Apply the same principle to your other body parts over the course of the week to overload each muscle group.
READ MORE: Got a band? Try this full-body workout
Tip #2: Explode
Explosive plyometric movements are a great way to take your normal exercises to the next level to keep seeing results.
When you reach the ceiling in terms of traditional bodyweight training, you can start performing a few jump squats at the end of a set to really fatigue the muscles.
You can also add in a few new exercises like box jumps or clap push-ups as suitable alternatives to traditional moves. Performing dedicated plyometric sessions is another option to really boost the intensity of your training.
READ MORE: Got a sandbag? Have some fun with this workout
Tip #3: Harness the power of one
When you get to a point where a common exercise like squats requires less effort to perform than it previously did, it’s time to think unilaterally – one-sided exercises that is.
Bulgarian split squats, pistol squats, one-arm pull-ups, Romanian deadlifts, single-leg calf raises, and one-arm push-ups are all great ways to make common exercises more difficult.
These movements will also incorporate more stabiliser muscles and require greater core stabilisation.
They are, therefore, ideal exercises to ensure progression in a workout, which means continued gains!
Author: Pedro van Gaalen
When he’s not writing about sport or health and fitness, Pedro is probably out training for his next marathon or ultra-marathon. He’s worked as a fitness professional and as a marketing and comms expert. He now combines his passions in his role as managing editor at Fitness magazine.
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