Training at the gym is great, whether its once a week or five times a week. But what about the extras that you can do away from the gym to supplement your training?
Bodyweight exercises are a great accessory alongside your usual dumbbell, barbell, kettlebell work! Everyone knows the basic bodyweight movements: squats, lunges, press ups, variations of sit ups and crunches, variations of pull ups..all great exercises, and put them into some sort of cirucit and you have a great full body workout that can be performed anywhere! But how do you progress these??
Beside the obvious increase of sets and reps, the three best ways to make it a tougher workout are:
- Cut Rest Times: Perform the exercises you’ve chosen as a circuit and give yourself no rest between each one.
- Vary Tempo: Instead of just performing a squat for example, try and take four seconds on the negative phase (lowering) and then explode back up. Then maybe add in a two second pause at the bottom of the squat. A great way to add constant tension to the muscle and really develop your muscle development!
- Pick A Harder Exercise: Lets take the squat for example. Try to develop it by performing a jump squat rather than a standard squat, or have your feet wider to focus on the hamstrings more, or narrower for quad emphasis. All these are great ways to progress from a standard bodyweight squat!
The good thing is, in many cases thee home workouts will be an addition to your gym programme, so go for it, mix it up each time, focus on your weaknesses, do whatever you want! Do it for ten minutes, or an hour! Either way its all extra work and will go a long way to helping you reach your goal sooner!