With 6 years of experience under the belt and recent online webinars done to sharpen my knowledge, I want to share some tips to those who can’t afford a personal trainer or exercise at home.
Increasing strength with no equipment
If you are someone who exercise at home with no equipment, you are probably using your own body weight with all the exercise you are doing. To increase your strength, do your research with regards to progression and regression. Progression in exercise is increasing the weight, time, reps or type of exercises. To ensure progression, change up the exercise program every 6 weeks, increase your weight and reps. So how do I increase weight in body weight training? If you have been doing a squat for example, then you can do a single leg squat.
Regression in exercise is where you make the load of the type of exercise that you are doing less, decreasing range of movement and slowing things down (1). For example, slowing down an exercise by doing a pull up and when you lower your body weight back to the start position, you do that at a slow tempo.
Supersets
Supersets is where you exercise the same muscle group consecutively. For example, you do pull ups and the next exercise is rowing exercise with a towel around a pole at home. Super sets build strength and endurance in the muscle. You will feel as if you can train this way because of hard it is, but you will build up strength in that muscle group (becoming stronger).
These are just two ways in how you as a home exerciser can progress. There are other ways as well. There are personal trainers out there who are happy to help you with a home exercise program or tips at a more affordable price than in person personal training. I am one of them. You can contact me for a free quote. Email is askfitness@marleenspersonaltraining.co.za