No Gym? No Problem! How To Get In Shape Training At Home
Hear me out before you give up on your 2020 fitness goals.
Being stuck at home is not an excuse to give up working on your physique goals.
Most people think that without having access to a gym, you’re never going to be able to change the way you look.
Truth is, you can still lose fat and build muscle without going to the gym.
Yes, having access to fancy machines is great, but it isn’t necessary to get in great shape.
Here are the 2 things you need to understand:
Building muscle comes down to progressively overloading them with resistance.
Losing fat comes down to consistently being in a calorie deficit.
Neither of these conditions inherently require you to have a gym membership.
You see, resistance is resistance.
Your muscles don’t care if you are using the latest cable machine, a pair of dumbbells or your own bodyweight.
For all that matters, you can get away with lifting rocks and build muscle.
The simplest way to understand it is this:
As long as you progressively increase the load placed on the muscles, they will be forced to adapt and grow.
Thus, we can use bodyweight training to build muscle.
That said, the way you should go about setting up your routine should be different from your typical bro-split.
While bodyweight training is great and I absolutely love it, it has one big downside:
You’re limited by your bodyweight.
This isn’t that big of a problem for beginners, but those with some training experience might find the need to make changes in their training protocol if they wish to perform primarily bodyweight exercises.
Here are the important things you should keep in mind while setting up your routine:
1. Higher Frequency Training
Make sure you are training every muscle group 3-5 days a week.
This could look like a full-body set up 3x a week for the beginners and a high frequency 5x a week full-body set up for those with a lot of training experience under their belt.
2. Higher Intensity Training
If you have been running a well set-up protocol, you must be used to training with a few reps shy to failure.
While keeping reps in reserve is a great way to set up your weight training, to compensate for the lower loads, it makes sense to push to (or even beyond) failure with bodyweight training.
Also, going to failure on a set of push-ups is a lot safer and less taxing than failing a squat mid-rep with a heavy bar on your back.
3. Higher Rep Range Training
Fun fact: You won’t lose your gains if you train above 15 reps.
For some weird reason, people associate everything outside the 5-15 rep range as “useless reps that will not build muscle”.
This is far from the truth.
In reality, 30 rep sets can build just as much muscle as 5 rep sets, given you are training with the same proximity to failure.
Thus, it’s a good idea to bump up the rep ranges on your training if the movements feel too easy for you.
I know what you’re thinking.
“All this is great, but some of the bodyweight exercises still feel too easy for me.”
Well, I got you covered.
How To Make Exercises Harder
1. Change Tempo
One of the most basic and effective ways to make an exercise harder.
Slow down the rep.
Now, this doesn’t mean you have to do 15 second reps and perform the entire routine in slow motion.
What it does mean is that you can incorporate controlled reps and use a slower than usual tempo.
For example, instead of repping out push-ups very fast and trying to break the push-up world record, control and slow down the descent till you reach the bottom.
This brings us to our next point.
2. Incorporate Pauses
Pausing a movement at the hardest point can be a very good way to make the exercise harder.
For example, pausing at the bottom of a squat, push-up, lunge, etc.
You can pause at both, the top and the bottom, of pull-ups.
This will make sure you are in control of the movement and help you increase the stimulation of the target muscles.
3. Incorporate Greater ROM
Greater Range Of Motion simply means performing the rep through the entire motion instead of cutting it short.
For example, taking a push up all the way down till your face almost touches the floor instead of just half repping it by bending your arms.
Once the standard ROM of exercises becomes too easy, you can increase ROM further.
For example, a Bulgarian Split Squat can increase ROM when compared to a lunge.
Similarly, you can elevate your feet (on a chair) and keep your hands on a couple of thick books while performing a push-up to get a deeper stretch because of the great ROM.
4. Incorporate Intensity Techniques
Intensity techniques like Dropsets, Supersets and Partials can be used to push your sets beyond failure.
Here are some examples.
Dropsets: Perform Feet Elevated Push-Ups and then drop to regular Push-Ups once you hit failure to squeeze out a few more reps.
Supersets: Perform exercises back to back with little (or no) rest between them.
Partials: Get in some extra reps with lesser ROM once you hit failure.
For example, after you hit failure with full ROM push-ups, crank out a few more “half-reps”.
I know, this might seem like it goes against the train with a greater ROM point, but what we are trying to do here is accumulate more tension on the muscle (with less ROM) even after it hits failure (with full ROM).
5. Incorporate Harder Variations
Probably the most simple way to make an exercise harder.
Just move to a harder variation or progression.
For example, move from squats to lunges to Bulgarian Split Squats.
Move from Push-Ups to Feet Elevated Push-Ups to Feet Elevated Side To Side Push-Ups to One Arm Push-Ups.
The Routine
Now you are ready to set-up your routine and start building muscle and losing fat.
If you still feel lost, I’ll attach a few sample templates below.
I’ll sort them based on access to equipment.
Pull-Up Bar
Resistance Bands
Dip Station
Dumbbell Set
No Equipment
No Equipment Minimalist Circuit
1. Pull Up Bar
Here is a full-body routine that you can perform 3 times a week with at least one rest day between workouts.
Take the sets to failure prioritizing good form.
*An alphabet broken into two parts indicates a superset. (Eg. A1. A2.)
This means that you will perform one set of A1., then one set of A2., then again one set of A1., etc. till you finish all sets.
Level 1
Workout
A1. Lunges (or Step-Ups) 5 sets
B1. Pull-Up Negatives 5 sets
C1. Push-Ups (Knee Push-Ups if strength is lacking) 5 sets
D1. Single Leg Foot Elevated Glute Bridge 3 sets
E1. Standing Calf Raise 3 sets
E2. Abs 3 sets
Level 2
Workout
A1. Bulgarian Split Squats 5 sets
B1. Pull-Ups 5 sets
C1. Feet Elevated Push-Ups 5 sets
D1. Single Leg Foot Elevated Glute Bridge 3 sets
E1. Standing Calf Raise 3 sets
E2. Abs 3 sets
2. Resistance Bands
Here is a full-body routine that you can perform 3 times a week with at least one rest day between workouts.
Take the sets to failure prioritizing good form.
*An alphabet broken into two parts indicates a superset. (Eg. A1. A2.)
This means that you will perform one set of A1., then one set of A2., then again one set of A1., etc. till you finish all sets.
Level 1
Workout
A1. Lunges (or Step-Ups) 5 sets
B1. Band Rows 5 sets
C1. Push-Ups (Knee Push-Ups if strength is lacking) 5 sets
D1. Band Bicep Curl 3 sets
D2. Band Tricep Extension 3 sets
E1. Single Leg Foot Elevated Glute Bridge (or Band Good Mornings) 3 sets
F1. Standing Calf Raise 3 sets
F2. Abs 3 sets
Level 2
Workout
A1. Bulgarian Split Squats (w/ bands to increase resistance) 5 sets
B1. Band Rows 5 sets
C1. Feet Elevated Push-Ups 5 sets
D1. Band Bicep Curl 3 sets
D2. Band Tricep Extension 3 sets
E1. Single Leg Foot Elevated Glute Bridge (or Band Good Mornings) 3 sets
F1. Standing Calf Raise 3 sets
F2. Abs 3 sets
3. Dip Bar
Click here to see an entire article with Dip Bar routines.
4. Dumbbell Set
Select sets based on training experience.
If you are a beginner or novice trainee, I’d recommend leaning towards the lower end of the range.
That said, this is just a template and I leave that decision on you.
Take the sets to failure prioritizing good form.
*An alphabet broken into two parts indicates a superset. (Eg. A1. A2.)
This means that you will perform one set of A1., then one set of A2., then again one set of A1., etc. till you finish all sets.
Alternate between the two workouts A and B.
Here’s what it will look like.
Week 1: A, rest, B, rest, A, rest, rest
Week 2: B, rest, A, rest, B, rest, rest
Level 1
Workout A
A1. Lunges 3-5 sets
B1. Floor Press 3-5 sets
B2. Dumbbell Row 3-5 sets
C1. Romanian Deadlift 3-5 sets
D1. Bicep Curls 2-3 sets
D2. Skull Crushers 2-3 sets
E1. Lateral Raises 2-3 sets
E2. Calf Raises 2-3 sets
F1. Planks 2-3 sets
Workout B
A1. Lunges 3-5 sets
B1. Floor Press 3-5 sets
B2. Dumbbell Row 3-5 sets
C1. Overhead Press 3-5 sets
D1. Bicep Curls 2-3 sets
D2. Skull Crushers 2-3 sets
E1. Lateral Raises 2-3 sets
E2. Calf Raises 2-3 sets
F1. Planks 2-3 sets
Level 2
Workout A
A1. Bulgarian Split Squats 3-5 sets
B1. Floor Press 3-5 sets
B2. Dumbbell Row 3-5 sets
C1. Romanian Deadlifts 3-5 sets
D1. Bicep Curls 2-3 sets
D2. Skull Crushers 2-3 sets
E1. Lateral Raises 2-3 sets
E2. Calf Raises 2-3 sets
F1. Planks 2-3 sets
Workout B
A1. Bulgarian Split Squats 3-5 sets
B1. Floor Press 3-5 sets
B2. Dumbbell Row 3-5 sets
C1. Overhead Press 3-5 sets
D1. Bicep Curls 2-3 sets
D2. Skull Crushers 2-3 sets
E1. Lateral Raises 2-3 sets
E2. Calf Raises 2-3 sets
F1. Planks 2-3 sets
5. No Equipment Workout
Pick exercises based on your strength level.
This is a full-body routine that you can perform 3 times a week with at least one rest day between workouts.
Take the sets to failure prioritizing good form.
I recommend filling up a container (with a handle) with water for this one, if possible.
Here’s what I’m talking about!
*An alphabet broken into two parts indicates a superset. (Eg. A1. A2.)
This means that you will perform one set of A1., then one set of A2., then again one set of A1., etc. till you finish all sets.
Workout
A1. Squats or Lunges or Step Ups or Bulgarian Split Squat 3-5 sets
B1. Single Arm Row (with heavy bag pack or container filled with water) or Inverted Row (off sturdy table {Be Careful!}) 3-5 sets
B2. Push-Ups or Feet Elevated Push-Ups or Knee Push-Ups 3-5 sets
C1. Hip Thrusts or Single Leg Romanian Deadlifts 3-5 sets
D1. Diamond Push-Ups or Diamond Knee Push-Ups 2-3 sets
D2. Single Arm Bicep Curl (with heavy bag pack or container filled with water) 2-3 sets
E1. Calf Raises 2-3 sets
E2. Planks 2-3 sets
6. No Equipment Minimalist Circuit
Fill up two water bottles (2 equal 500ml to 1.5l bottles) with water and perform the following exercises in a circuit fashion for several rounds.
If you’re just starting out, try starting with 5 rounds and try to add a round whenever possible.
You can perform this workout 3-6 days a week.
Workout
Squat Thruster 10 reps
Bent Over Row 10 reps
Romanian Deadlift 10 reps
Rest 30-60 seconds
Repeat
How To Cardio?
If you wish to perform cardio, here are some options:
Jump Rope
Jumping Jacks
Burpees
Jump Squats
High Knees
Floor Mountain Climbers
Option 1: Pick 1 exercise and perform in an interval fashion for the desired time. (eg. 15-20 mins)
Beginner: 15 secs work/ 45 secs rest
Intermediate: 30 secs work/ 30 secs rest
Advanced: 45 secs work/ 15 secs rest
Option 2: Pick multiple exercises and perform them in a circuit fashion for the desired rounds. (Eg. 5 rounds)
Burpees x 10
Jumping Jacks x 10
High Knees x 10
Jump Squats x 10
Rest 30 seconds
Repeat for 4 more rounds
What will bring results?
Here are the two things that will bring the majority of your results.
Nutrition
Resistance Training
The cardio is optional.
To get the quickest results, lock in your nutrition and training.
Here are a few things that can help with the nutrition side of things:
Get a food scale and set-up a meal plan.
Practice cooking recipes with simple nutrient-rich ingredients.
Pre-plan your day to improve adherence.
Eat foods with a high volume-calorie ratio.
Stay hydrated.
If you’re willing to go all-in and transforming yourself, here’s what you can consider buying.
The list is in order of preference:
Food Scale + Dumbbell Set
Food Scale + Pull Up Bar
Food Scale + Dip Station
Food Scale + Resistance Bands
It’s a one-time investment but it costs lesser than your gym membership and is totally worth it!
Even if you wish to do this without any equipment whatsoever, you can great results over the next few months.
Just be consistent and put in the work.
I hope you enjoyed this article and found it valuable.
If you have any questions, drop them down below.
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*This is education content and should not be confused for medical advice. Please consult a medical practitioner before commencing a new dietary or exercise regimen.
