Tips For Training at Home During COVID-19

Is training at home not fun and challenging enough, or are you not doing it because you think you can’t make any progress with training at home? You can most definitely make progress IF you are willing to work hard and push yourself.

For many people, training at home is a lot less fun than working out at the gym, but what is the alternative at this time? Gyms are not open at this moment. In addition, a positive you can take away from this situation is how much progress you can achieve during this time, now that you have MORE time to exercise.

It’s really empowering being able to use this time you have to the fullest, especially in a time like this where we are indoors and at home most of the time, there are a lot of opportunities to develop yourself, in all areas. You can use this as an opportunity to get better coming out of isolation. We can all do what we need to do now, workout at home, stay active, create results and thank yourself later for not losing progress when you can train at your favourite gym again.

It all starts with the way you think, also known as your inner stance or mindset. If you look at home training as ineffective, it becomes really difficult to actually train effectively. One tip is to make a weekly and/or daily schedule and write down a routine that you will follow before you start training, just like you may have done when gyms were still open.

Plan Your Workouts

You can schedule which days you will train, what time you are going to train and where (even though options may be limited, there is still the option of indoors or outdoors). Choosing a place where you can stay focused helps a lot with training effectively. In addition, writing down and following a routine in which you actually put on your training gear, as well as possibly taking your supplements, choosing a good music playlist and factoring in a stretching routine will help you stay focused.

Another obstacle you may encounter is how to make your weight training more intensive with lack of gym equipment? Materials such as powerbands, fitness tubes, a set of dumbbells or kettlebells are good options to consider purchasing that are not too costly. Alternatively, there are many good bodyweight training options that do not require any equipment at all.

What to do with no equipment?

Besides, and in addition to equipment there are training techniques that you can also employ to assist with your home training such as:

1. Slowing down the movement - Slowing down the eccentric phase (tempo) from fast to 3-5 seconds will create more tension and make the exercise harder.
2. Paired sets - By pairing 2 (or more) exercises will ask more of your systematic condition (cardio) and create more metabolic stress.
3. Shorter rest periods to increase the intensity.
4. Kaatsu (also known as Blood flow restriction) which I will cover in more detail in my blog next week – stay tuned!

So workout at home, push yourself, and then some more.Any feedback or questions, feel free to send them through!

Bart de Winter
DEWINTER Personal Training
Instagram: @dewinterbart