For many athletes whose daily routines revolve around training and practice, this period of time can feel overwhelming and confusing. Maybe you don’t know what to do with yourself, maybe you’re worried about losing progress, or perhaps you’re just bored. Whatever you’re going through right now, we are with you. And we want to help in any way that we can. So, we’ve put together some of our best tips to ensure that your at-home workouts are effective and help you to keep striving for your goals. Let’s go.
1. Up the Intensity
One of the quickest ways to make your workout more challenging is by increasing the intensity. This can be done by switching up the exercises to more plyometric style training, such as jump squats instead of air squats, and training in intervals. An example of a typical interval training format is as follows: perform burpees for 20 seconds, rest for 10 seconds. Repeat this four to eight times and then switch to a different exercise. To get the most out of this workout, you must give your absolute all for those 20 seconds of work. For athletes whose sports involve short burst of high intensity action, this type of training will be vital to keeping you in shape come game day.
2. Add Resistance
If you have equipment, use it. If you don’t, you might have to get a little creative. You could use anything from resistance bands and free weights to a jug of milk, a heavy book, your kid, whatever you have handy and that adds some extra resistance to the movement.
3. Wear the Right Shoes
Just because you are in the comfort of your own home, it doesn’t mean that you should be working out barefoot. Put your gym shoes on put in some work.
4. Switch Things Up
Adding variety to your workout will help keep you interested and keep challenging your body. Switch up your workouts, vary between training different body parts, at different intensities, do some cardio, some weights (if you can), try yoga. This is your chance to try new things without worrying as much about how it will affect your performance.
5. Consider the Tempo
Changing the tempo of your movements can substantially affect the difficulty. Slow things down or even stop and hold a specific position. For example, if you are performing squats, you could go down for the count of 5, hold for 5, and then go back up for 5. Trust us, you will feel the burn.
6. Set Goals
Although you may not be able to hit a new PR while working out from home, you can still set goals to keep yourself accountable. You could do a higher intensity workout for time and then try to beat that time. You could challenge yourself to be able to perform 50 burpees without breaking. Whatever goal gets you excited and wanting to train.
7. Make a Plan
Just like you wouldn’t go into the gym without a plan, you also shouldn’t go into your at-home workout without a plan. Take even 5 minutes right before you start to decide what your workout will look like. The benefit of working out at home is you won’t have to change your plan due to a busy gym.
Although these are challenging and uncertain times, we can still prioritize our health and continue working to improve our performance, so we are ready when the season starts. Give these tips a try and see how effective and fun our at-home workout can be.
