How to Plan Strength Training When the Future Is Uncertain
All have home workout ideas ( we’re included ), but when you know you will be home workout for a few weeks to arrive, you don’t just need ideas; you need a plan.
I am a person who is motivated to put an appointment on my calendar and stick to a schedule to get ready for it. Even if you’re not as competitive as I am (I’m the most competitive, okay ??), training at home without the proper equipment can seem pointless.
So I asked strength trainer and powerlifter Greg Nichols about how to train on your own without losing ground and what to expect when you get back to the gym. (Nuckols also have their own no-gym workout guide ). Surprisingly, the news is actually good!
“As long as you can apply enough tension to the muscle to adequately resist it, you won’t have much of a problem building or maintaining muscle mass,” he says. Uf.
A break from the season is good, in fact
Without heavy weights, you won’t be able to train at the same intensity as before (although there are a few tricks we’ll talk about in a minute). If you’re used to doing heavy barbell squats, but now you don’t have a barbell or rack, your workouts should change.
But setting aside time to train with more reps and less weight “can actually be a decent thing in the long run for many strength athletes who are mostly doing exceptionally low reps,” says Knuckols.
Footballers and other athletes who compete in seasonal sports often have a formal offseason when they shift their focus from specific athletic skills to building a more general fitness base. If you’re a lifter, this can lead to more hypertrophy (muscle building) with more reps and less intensity. This may mean that it will take longer to recover. And that can mean conditioning.
“If there ever was a time to do cardio,” Nakols says, “then it probably is.”
Customize your training space
Part of why we miss the gym so much is because the gym is the place . You leave your ordinary life and go to this special building or room where nothing else matters but training. It’s hard to recreate that feeling when you’re doing push-ups in the living room.
But you can try. If there is another part of your living space that can be repurposed, use it. Lately I’ve been keeping my car in the driveway to work in the garage. I have seen people doing yoga on their decks. But if you can’t find a secluded spot, Knuckles notes that while exercising, you can simply face the wall. That way, at the very least, you don’t look at the dirty dishes or your game console when you rehearse.
Don’t forget the music to change the scene further. Headphones can block many distractions.
Improvise equipment
At home, you are not limited to bodyweight training, but you may need to get creative. Even with light resistance – say, a pair of dumbbells – you’re not necessarily wasting your time. According to Nichols, if you hit failure for about 60 reps, it still does something for you.
However, you may crave something akin to heavy lifting. Here are some options:
- Heavy-duty drag bands (like the Nuckols from EliteFTS ) that can provide hundreds of pounds of drag if you combine them all. Most of the powerlifting moves can be converted to the expander version.
- Pull-up bar. Theover-door style works in most doorways and requires no tools to install.
- A backpack full of books or any heavy items that might be found in the house. Wear it, hug it or carry it by the handles for a variety of exercises.
- A five gallon water jug. “It’s a bit of a bulky 40-pound dumbbell,” says Knuckles. The water weighs about eight pounds per gallon.
Look around your home for more ideas. (My daughter loves to climb on my back when I do push-ups, which I have to admit is pretty effective!)
Create or find a plan
I believe that even if I shift my priorities from training to competition, it still helps me have a plan so I know how I’m going to get along next week and next month. Just because you’re creative doesn’t mean you have to sigh every time.
According to Nichols, if you are following a bodybuilding style program, you may not need to change much at all. Just swap out exercises that you cannot do with others that work the same muscles, but using the equipment you have.
In terms of a powerlifting program (which focuses on squats, bench presses, and deadlifts), you can get close to pretty much everything with these heavy weight bands. It’s not exactly the same, but at least you don’t need a completely new program.
If you really want to switch to bodyweight training, Nuckols has some good advice on choosing a program: “Look for it in the sources that have been talking about bodyweight training for years. Not only are people who you know 90 percent of their content is about barbell training, they say, “Oh, I put together a 4 week bodyweight training program! It will be great! ‘No, probably not. (We’ve both heard good reviews for the recommended program fromr / bodyweightfitness .)
You may lose some strength, but in time everything will be fine.
This is not a routine workout. It’s off season, remember?
If you can’t do all of your regular exercises, you may already be spoiled by the time you get back to the gym. In fact, you get a little rusty every time you change exercises for an extended period of time. The good news is that if you continue to train enough to maintain your strength base, the results will return.
As Knuckles put it, when people get back to the gym, “they’ll go back under the bar and see, damn it, my highs dropped 20%, maybe 30%, and they freak out and think they’ve lost all their gain. But as long as you’re trying to do some productive training in quarantine, you’ll get most of it back in a month, maybe two months. “