The number of people now doing homework’s has skyrocketed thanks to Covid 19 and with another National lockdown just announced make sure your getting the most from your workout and not falling victim to these common mistakes.

Mistake #1 – Too much HIIT, not enough strength work…

It’s easy to assume that without weights, you can’t really grow much muscle. People equate weight lifted with muscle built. Whilst that’s true to a point, it’s not the only way to build strength and muscle. You can build muscle at home with targeted exercise.

A lot of people fall into the trap of ‘if it’s not hurting, it’s not working’, so fill in their workout time with really high intensity efforts that raise your heart rate and get you sweating A LOT. These are great for cardio and calorie burning, but not for building strength. There’s definitely a time and a place for HIIT work, (I LOVE it 😊) but don’t omit strength work or you will lose muscle mass.

You may not have weights or a kettlebell, but why not fill a rucksack with water bottles, books or tins of food and wear it to do push ups, squats, lunges etc. Use your furniture to make workouts harder. Use a chair for rear foot elevated split squats, the stairs for calf raises – look around, there’ll be workout options you hadn’t considered before!

Mistake #2 – Not pushing to failure…

When you sacrifice weight, you have to increase volume. There’s no point in sticking to sets of 10 if sets of 10 aren’t challenging you. You have to create overload if you want your muscles to grow – overload can come in the form of volume (do more reps), weight (add more resistance) or intensity (reduce your rest period between sets). All of these will push you to failure (failure being that point where you can’t complete the exercises with good form).

Mistake #3 – Too much focus on isolation movements…

There’s a simple rule in muscle building – the more muscle you use, the bigger the muscle gains you make. If you train a lot of muscle in an exercise, you stimulate more muscle and you release more growth hormone. That’s the reason compound exercises such as squats, pull ups, deadlifts, shoulder presses are better for muscle growth compared to bicep curls, lateral raises, tricep kickbacks etc. However, these exercises should come AFTER you’ve pre-exhausted your muscles with exercises such as squats, lunges, push ups, pull ups etc. Think high quality exercises if you want to make it an effective workout.

Mistake #4 – Not using progressive overload…

What progressive overload means is that you’re not making your workouts progressively harder. If you don’t have weights at home, you can’t measure the increase of weight you’re lifting, but you can certainly measure the volume or intensity of your workout by tracking reps, sets and rest periods e.g. if you did a plank for 30 seconds last week, see if you can make it 40 this week.  If you were giving yourself a minute off between sets last week, see if you can reduce to 50 seconds this week.

Mistake #5 – You’re not programming with the changes in mind…

If in a normal week you head to the gym 3 times and do a long walk at weekends, you’ll need to up the training frequency at home because the intensity just doesn’t match up. If something is less taxing on the body (home workouts are typically easier than gym workouts) you’ll need to do more of them.

Now is the time to simplify your programs and get creative. If you need help writing a training program get in touch clare@esicygh.cluster028.hosting.ovh.net