How To Set Up Your Training Plan With No Gym
It’s been nearly a full year of training with sporadic access to gyms and despite the unpredictable circumstance, many people have achieved the best results they’ve ever experienced.
So, what is the secret sauce? How have we planned for and adapted to the circumstances in order to succeed at building a more athletic body?
This article consists of the principles and techniques that I’ve applied to client programmes. I hope you find it useful and if you have any questions please feel free to ask me any questions in the comments.
Mindset
Training from home feels different and perhaps even limited, if you’ve ever used heavier gym equipment. Different however, does not mean ineffective.
Contrary to social media would have you believe, you don’t need the heart and focus of a lion to ‘take what’s yours’ each and every time you workout. But you will need to cultivate an approach that enables consistent action. Satisfaction and enjoyment play a large role in consistency, and having read this article, what could be more satisfying than knowing you’re moving forwards each time you workout!?
Activity
There’s no getting around the fact that you’re probably more sedentary having spent an increased amount of time at home. Our bodies ability to burn calories is affected most by how much we move in any given day. Therefore, it is essential you plan some sort of activity into your day. It doesn’t really matter how you manage this, but below are some examples that you could apply and are easy to keep on top of:
Step count target
Movement time target
Get up and move for 5 - 10 minutes every hour
Change your seating position ‘x’ number of times per day
Equipment
How much you’re willing to invest will determine the equipment you have access to. The good news is that you can train every muscle group with your bodyweight, resistance band(s) and gymnastic rings:
If you have access to a pull-up bar, dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells etc, the principles of progression in this article can be applied with whatever kit you have available.
The Training Plan
This is not a high intensity or calorie burn-focused workout plan. Whilst both modalities have their place, neither contribute towards strength or muscle growth as effectively as resistance training, which is what we are aiming for. In the pursuit of a more athletic body, it’s crucial we promote the growth or maintenance of lean body mass (muscle) and nothing does this better than resistance training.
Step 1: Exercise Selection
The exercises you choose to perform dictate the outcome. Whilst you could just perform one exercise over and over again (think push-ups), there is a lot of benefit in using multiple muscle groups in different exercises. Therefore, a great starting point should consider these criteria:
Full Body - Each week you should aim to work the main movements and muscle groups a minimum of twice.
Control - You should be in control of every exercise you perform. If not, you are either lessening the effectiveness of an exercise or increasing the risk of injury, or both.
Full Range - Exercises that take a muscle through a greater range are preferential for stimulating a muscle. For example: a lot of people can perform a greater range of movement in the lunge than in a squat.
Consistency - Whilst variation is beneficial, chopping and changing every time you workout is no good either. Focus on mastering a handful of exercises should be a priority.
Movement: Horizontal Push Variations
Target muscles: Chest + Triceps
Movement: Vertical Push Variations
Target muscles: Shoulders + Triceps
Movement: Horizontal Pull
Target muscles: Lats + Rhomboids + Biceps
Movement: Vertical Pull
Target muscles: Lats + Rhomboids + Biceps
Movement: Squat
Target muscles: Quads + Glutes
Movement: Hip Hinge
Target muscles: Glutes + Hamstrings
Step 2: Bringing it all together
You’ve got your activity planned, you know you need to embrace the higher rep home workout burn - so how do you pull together a home training strength workout?
Things become a little more nuanced at this point, because the possibilities are endless. A well put together plan considers how much time you have, your training age, your fitness level, past injuries, mobility restrictions, your desired outcome, personal preference etc. With this in mind, view these recommendations as your starting point.
How many exercises? As mentioned, for best strength and muscle progress you should be working a muscle group a minimum of twice per week. So every time you workout, you should attempt to cover each movement once. E.g:
What about exercise order? To start with, focus on giving each muscle group a bit of time to recover within the workout. You can do this by following a simple model:
1st) Upper Push, 2nd) Upper Pull, 3rd) Lower Body.
This means by the time you work a muscle group again, it’ll be more recovered allowing for better quality work. As you progress you can consider moving the exercises you value most towards the start of the session. This is because fatigue will play a bigger role the longer your workout lasts. For example, if you’re more concerned about building a strong, athletic lower body - bias your workout towards lower body work first.
How many sets and reps (volume)? Meet yourself where you’re at. If you’ve not done any resistance training before, it WILL make you feel sore and there’s no need to perform any more repetitions than you can control. Start on the lower end of the volume spectrum below and work your way up. Doing more than your body can handle won’t ‘fast track’ your progress either, it just means it’ll take you longer to improve and increase your risk of injury.
Lower volume example:
As you can see, each muscle group (Upper Push / Upper Pull / Lower Body) gets 12 sets per week. You could space this out over more workouts per week and do slightly less work per workout but the principle remains the same.
Step 3: Adjusting
Now you know what the principles of an effective workout are and how to apply them, the final step is knowing how to adjust as you move forwards.
It goes without saying, if you keep doing the same thing over and over again, you’ll eventually stall. So how can you guarantee progress?
Progress is monitored in your ability to do something better or do more of it (progressive overload). Can you do more reps than you used to? Can you lift heavier weight than you used to? Are you able to get into a better position?
If you want better progress, try to remember it’s a long term process. The person who makes most progress in a week isn’t guaranteed to get better results. Going at it with maximal intensity all the time becomes very difficult to sustain, very quickly. So here’s a simple progress template you can always refer back to:
There are more advance methods of progression (periodisation), but as you start out it’s a case of getting to grips with using muscles in a controlled environment and building strength through increased repetitions interspersed with periods of lower lower volume when necessary.
Final word
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading - I appreciate your time. As mentioned at the start, there is no reason you can’t progress without access to gym. Be creative, stay safe and enjoy the process!
