Working out from home can be really great for some people. Although it doesn’t work for everyone people who are busy or don’t have the means or time to get to a gym each day often find great benefits in working out from home.
Although the benefits are fantastic in a lot of ways there is one thing that can be a struggle when working out from home. Often you have access to some or limited equipment and if you have access to weights you may not have a large variety like you would in a gym…which leads to the question, how do you increase the intensity of a workout from home?
Today I’m sharing 5 things you can do to help increase the intensity of your workouts and help take your fitness goals to the next level from the comfort of your home.
INCREASE THE WEIGHT
The most obvious way to increase the intensity of your workouts from home is to increase the weight. While this isn’t always feasible for all (and if it isn’t stay tuned) some people can make this work. Slowly building a supply of weights over time and purchasing new weights when you reach a new milestone can be a great way to increase the amount of weight you have access too without breaking the bank all at once. When you reach a point that you feel like you could use more weight then look at investing in new equipment. This prevents you from having to go out and drop huge amounts of money all at once on fitness equipment.
INCREASE THE STABILITY REQUIREMENTS
Increasing the stability requirements is a great way to increase intensity without needing access to any fancy equipment. Taking double leg exercises to single leg exercise is often enough to up the intensity and make those moves you are comfortable with currently more challenging. Think things like Pistol Squats (single leg squats), Single leg bridges or hip thrusts. You can also use offset movements as well to increase the stability required to complete a move. For example, try a squat with only one dumbbell at your shoulder instead of two or things like single sided Farmer’s Carry.
INCREASE NUMBER OF REPS OF SETS
In the fitness world we call this increasing the volume. If you are limited to a smaller set of dumbells for example and you typically do 3 sets of 10, try to increase it to complete 3 sets of 12. It seems small but that’s 6 extra reps over the course of 3 sets and sometimes that’s enough to push that intensity up for many people. You can always continue to increase as you see fit in order to increase your volume. This can be a really great option if you have access to weights that you feel are a bit too light for your needs.
SLOW THE MOVEMENTS DOWN
We call this increasing time under tension. If we take a squat for instance and slow it down so that you are counting to 5 on the way down and counting to 5 on the way up we are placing load on the muscle for a longer period of time (this is called time under tension). When we slow movements down in this way we don’t require as much weight to fatigue the muscles in the same way. Basically with this concept we are making the muscles work for a longer period of time overall which can lead to a greater feeling of fatigue without increasing the weight at all.
SHORTER REST PERIODS
Shortening the amount of rest we are taking between sets of exercises is another great way to increase the intensity. Basically when you shorten rest periods you are doing the same amount of work in less time…which will probably tire out your muscles a bit more. So instead of taking 30 seconds rest try taking 25…even 5 seconds on each exercise can make a significant difference.
The beautiful thing about all of these options is that you can also mix and match them. You might find that adding weight makes sense in certain situations but in others it make more sense to increase stability or slow the movement down. To take it up another notch try increasing the stability and slowing the movement down by combining two different concepts. Not everyone who works out at home has access to a full gym, but that doesn’t mean that the intensity of the workouts has can’t increase. Try out some of these concepts on your next at home workout day and watch them step up your fitness game from the comfort of your home!
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