Due to recent coronavirus-related events, the Church of Iron, also known as collectively as gyms, are closed for business until further notice.
The temporary loss of the gym is a tragedy, especially to those who depend on it for physical activity. However, COVID-19 doesn’t have to steal all of your hard earned gains. You can still maintain and even add on to your gains from the comfort of your own home.
Now, I’m not going to lie to all of you – home workouts aren’t optimal. There’s a reason why I pay, or at least have recently paid, a monthly gym membership. Gyms have good equipment and an atmosphere that encourages productivity and growth; my current residence has neither of those things.
But since gyms have effectively ceased operations for the time being, I figured I can provide some helpful workouts and tips you can do from home.
Since gyms across the countries have closed their doors, you’ll have to scrape together whatever you can at home. You can look up ways to improvise at home, but I myself use four tools to workout away from the gym: bodyweight, the UTM fitness trail, a cinder block and two full jugs of water.
Cardio is my least affected workout since I don’t need equipment for it. As long as you have access to a trail, green way, neighborhood sidewalk or just space to run in general, you can still do cardio. Use your phone, which you likely already use for music, to record your mile splits.
If you want to efficiently burn fat through cardio, I suggest going for an early morning run as soon as you wake up. Not only will a morning run make you feel accomplished and focus before the start of the workday, but it also helps burn fat faster.
According to Vice, “Most research shows that exercise done on an empty stomach leads to more fat being burned than the same amount of exercise done after a meal.”
The old-fashioned way of exercising your upper- and lower-body away from the gym is using your bodyweight. Classic bodyweight exercises include push ups, sit ups, pull ups and so on.
To exercise your chest, traditional push ups (hands shoulder-width apart, elbows bend straight backwards) is a great exercise that targets primarily your chest, but also your triceps and shoulders.
However, variety is the spice of life, and push ups are also an easily modifiable workout. If you want to increase the intensity of your workout, find a chair or other elevated surface to put your feet on and do decline push ups.
If you want to put more emphasis on your triceps, use the diamond formation. To focus on your core and legs, put a roller under your feet. The instability caused by the roller forces you to engage your core.
Another staple of the home workout is the sit up. Sit ups are a great way to train your core, after all, all you need is someone or something to secure your feet. But there are also a number of ways to train this section of your body.
Planks, ideally for 30 seconds, are fantastic for core workouts. You can also do burpees, crunches, hanging leg raises (if you have access to a pull up bar) and so on. You can instructions for these exercises and more on Bodybuilding.com.
If you have a bar that can support your weight, you can’t go wrong with traditional pull ups or chin ups either.
When it comes to improvising with household objects in place of gym equipment, you can use just about anything. Filling a backup up with heavy items is a popular method of making a weight.
However, I’ve been using a cinder block and water jugs as weights. The cinder block is good for overhead shoulder presses, bicep curls and a chest press, with either a bench or the floor.
You can easily create a makeshift barbell with two cinder blocks and a PVC pipe, wooden plank or rebar.
As for my water jugs, I use those for bicep curls, overhead tricep extensions and makeshift kettlebell swings, but their uses extend much further than that.
When using equipment that is lighter than what you normally use in the gym, compensate for the lighter weight by doing more reps and shortening rest time in between sets.
You can find all sorts of resources online to aid your home workout routines. You’re not alone in the home workout struggle. As long as you keep working and eating right, you won’t regress much, if at all, being away from the gym.
