One of the great things about the COVID Lockdown (and there weren’t many) was that most of us were forced to change up our exercise routines and get a bit creative. Now as we start to enjoy the benefits of having a fully stocked gym again, there are 2 things I think you should keep doing that you most likely had to perform in your home gym.
- Keep changing up your routines. Way too many people do the same old exercise routines week after week without making any real progress. By being forced to be creative during lockdown, a lot of people experienced new growth by doing new exercise and varied rep ranges. The high rep range routines (most people didn’t have enough weight at home) worked great for about 3 or 4 weeks and again things started to get stale.
While it is nice to add a few kilos to the bar from time to time, progressive overload in terms of extra poundage is a very slow process. Fortunately, there a variety of training styles you can rotate through every 4-8 weeks to ensure you don’t run into any plateaus.
- Keep Free weights in your exercise plan. There are so many cool machines in the gym that are simple to use and generally take less time to warm up with than free weight exercises like deadlifts and squats. While machines have their place, free weight exercises are harder, requiring more effort, burning extra calories and I believe, delivering better results.
Get out of bed 10 minutes earlier and give yourself the time to start each workout off with some free weight exercises. You can always add some machines in on your subsequent exercises or just stick with the free weights all the way through for an old school training session.
Barbell and dumbbell work require a bit more stabilizing work than machines, thus providing the added benefit of auxiliary muscle activation. By bringing stabilizer muscles into play not only do you have a more functional body plus you will also require a greater calorie expenditure (fat burning) than just using free weights.