As we work through the third week of COVID 19 shutting down most businesses around the country (and world), one of the most prominent questions being asked by people is how to workout at home. Rather than just jumping on a treadmill or some other cardio machine, I want to go over the components of a workout and provide a structure that you can build on.

The workout can be divided into 3 parts, the warm up, the lifting or workout portion, and the cool down. 

 

The Warm Up:

The warm up is exactly what it sounds like, this is when you are looking to elevate the heart rate and get a little sweat going. Mobility is also a big portion of this. A typical warm up will be about 10 minutes in length, enough to get a little sweat going and limbering up the muscles. Some examples of warm up activities would be: running (in place), skipping, jumping rope, body weight movements such as squats, lunges, and push ups. Yoga movements are good for incorporation here, such as downward dog, warrior poses, or a basic vinyasa flow.

 

The Lift

For the lifting/workout portion, generally about 40 minutes in length, is where we incorporate your traditional “exercise” activities, such as squatting, lunging, pressing, etc. Movements can be divided into 5 different categories: push, pull, squat, hinge, and core. Push and pull generally refer to upper body movements while squatting and hinging refer to lower body. Squats are anything that has a predominant knee flexion component to it, like a lunge. Hinges are predominated by hip flexion, like a glute bridge. In addition to these five categories, there are three planes of movement: sagittal, frontal, and transverse. An easier way to think about it though is forward and backwards, side to side, and rotation. When you build your home workout, try and include one exercise from each category and have each plane of movement present in the workout. 

 

Example: 

Lateral Lunge (squat movement and frontal plane)

Push Up (Push and sagittal plane)

Dumbbell/Kettlebell/Heavy backpack Row (Pull and sagittal plane)

Glute Bridge (Hinge and sagittal plane)

Bicycles (Core and transverse plane)

 

For sets and repetitions of each exercise, 10 is always a safe bet to start with, if you want to make it harder up the reps, if you want to do less reps try to add a little weight. 3 sets of an exercise is also a good starting point but more is fine too. If you have a weight go ahead and use it. If you don’t have weights but want to get some, check out my previous post on building out a home gym for recommendations. Finally, for those on a budget, get a backpack and put heavy stuff in it and voila, a weight!

 

The Cool Down

For the cool down, mobility is king here. This is all about helping the muscle stretch out and relax from the load and activity. For this, revisit some of the stuff you did in the warm up, but rather than dynamic movement, such as a vinyasa flow, more static stretches like hamstring or quad stretches can be used here. A cool down is generally 10 minutes or so but you can stretch it out longer if you feel the need for that.

 

To make sure this will be effective and you won’t sideline yourself with injury, pay attention to technique, use assists (such as a wall) to help support your balance if needed, modify the activities if they are too challenging in the moment, and do NOT push through pain. Discomfort you can push through, but don’t do that with pain, it’s not worth it. 

If you found this helpful, share it with friends and family who might be curious about how to manage their home workout routine. Email me with any questions and as always, thanks for reading. Stay safe and wash hands!