Build Your Own Home Workout Programme

Contributed by Lee Eldridge, The Athlete Tribe – Home workout programmes have long been a staple for fitness enthusiasts and athletes to supplement their training. In recent months, as gym and sports facilities closed in many places around the world, home workout programmes have become the go-to solution to stay in shape until we can all get back onto the field or into the gym. 

The good news is that home workouts are an extremely effective way to stay fit. At present, we have tribe members all over the world training and seeing results from home workouts: progressing with exercises, improving their fitness and strength, and losing body fat. 

Benefits of a Home Workout Programme

The benefits of a home workout routine are numerous. The most common reasons I hear from our clients at The Athlete Tribe for choosing this option are to:

1. Save Time: Avoid travelling to the gym or waiting for equipment.
2. Control Your Environment: Choose everything about your workout. Do you prefer to work out with background music or silence? Outdoors or indoors? 
3. Gain Freedom: Train whenever you want—you can avoid evening sessions at packed gyms or very early sessions before work.

Are you convinced to give it a go? Ok, so then, where do you start?

How To Plan A Home Workout

Over the next eight weeks, we will guide you every step of the way through how to plan, develop and succeed in making the most of your home workout. Next week we’ll look at what goes into planning a session, including warm-ups, exercises and cool-down. Before starting any training programme, however, it’s important to have a clear idea of your goals and time frame.

Remember the importance of why: this is the thing that is going to keep you consistent.

What do you want to achieve with your home workout programme? Are you looking to improve or maintain your overall fitness level? Lose weight? Build strength and power to stay strong for your preferred sport? Increase mobility to recover from and protect yourself against a nagging injury? The list can be long. The key to success is to make your home workout programme goals SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Bound. 

Specific

The more specific you make your training goal, the more likely you will stick to the programme and achieve better results. One good way to do this is to define the deeper purpose behind your goal. For instance, last year I worked with Tim, a busy corporate executive who initially told me his goal was to “get fit”. Tim’s long work weeks and extensive travel were taking a toll on his energy, productivity and overall well-being. In order to create the right online training programme for him, we first needed to dig further into his underlying motivation. As we talked, it became clear that being a good father to his children was a top priority for Tim. We were then able to connect this deeper meaning to a more specific training goal: “I want to improve my overall aerobic capacity and conditioning to run with my teenage kids in the local half-marathon next October.”

Measurable

Can you measure progress towards your training goal? So we can see that Tim has a quantifiable goal: to be able to run a half-marathon. The next step is to make this goal more measurable. To do this, we defined an exact time for Tim to run the half-marathon: 2 hours and 15 minutes. This allowed us to plan Tim’s training, as we knew that for him to achieve this goal he needed to average 6 minutes and 25 seconds per kilometre. 

Attainable

Are you being realistic about your training goal? If you haven’t run for ten years or ever swum in open water, perhaps completing an Ironman race next month is a little ambitious. Many factors influence what is possible for us to achieve: the amount of time we can commit to training, our current fitness levels and past injuries. Tim had a bit of background experience in running and no injuries. Therefore, when discussing his goal, we both agreed this was an attainable target.

Relevant

How relevant is your training goal to the other priorities in life? For Tim, his goal to run a half-marathon with his kids lined up with his main priorities: spending more time with his family, being a role model in healthy living for his kids, and improving overall energy and productivity levels, leading to better performance at work. Remember the importance of why: this is the thing that is going to keep you consistent.

Time-bound

It is essential to set a time for you to complete your goal; otherwise, it is easy to get distracted, put off training and not keep progressing. For Tim, the run was in mid-October, so we had five months to get the training in.

Consistency is Key

Once you have your SMART workout goal, the next step is to determine how many times per week you are going to train, and the duration of those sessions. Remember, it’s better to aim for consistency over the long term than a short-lived heroic effort: there is no point in training every day for the first few weeks of your home workout programme and then not training at all in the last few weeks.

What matters most is your mindset and commitment: The mindset that you are going to focus and concentrate on your training session, and commitment to get the training sessions in.

Generally, the ideal workout frequency is three or four sessions per week. If this isn’t possible to fit into your schedule, you can still achieve a lot with only two sessions per week. And, ideally, you should schedule at least 24 hours in between each workout, especially if they are working similar muscle groups. 

How long does a session need to be? That is down to you, and the time you have. You don’t have to train for an hour to be effective. Often 30 minutes is enough to get in a good session. This is where having a clearly designed plan helps: when you know what you are doing, there is no wasting time.

What Equipment Do I Need for a Home Workout Programme?

One of the biggest concerns I hear from clients transitioning to a home workout programme is about limited space and equipment. How much space do you need to train? Of course, more space makes things easier. But even the size of a yoga mat will work. Remember, most of your home workout exercises will use bodyweight, so the actual surface area required is minimal.

As for equipment, a few home gym accessories can go a long way in adding to the variety of exercises you can do. If possible, you’ll want to have an exercise mat, some elastic bands and a Swiss Ball. Don’t have these on hand? Not to worry! There are still plenty of things you can use around the house instead.

Be creative and have fun making your home gym. A thick towel or two makes a practical substitute for an exercise mat. Water bottles are a great way to increase weight for certain exercises: toss them into a bag or rucksack for your squats or lunges. Many exercises only require light loads, so you can use tin cans or bags of flour as hand weights.

Other standard household items, such as chairs, stairs or steps, can also be incorporated into your workout. Remember, the gym is not the only place where strength and fitness is achieved: it is simply a tool to support your training. What matters most is your mindset and commitment. The mindset that you are going to focus and concentrate on the training session. The commitment that you are going to get the training in. Now, this does not mean that we have to force ourselves to train; this is the importance of a plan, with recovery days and easier days. 

What’s Up Next?

In summary, before you start a new home training programme, have a plan in place. Think about what you want to achieve, how long it will take and what it will feel like once you have accomplished that goal. Next week we’ll dig deeper into how coaches build sessions the right way, from start to finish.

Lee Eldridge (@theathletetribe) is the founder of The Athlete Tribe. He has more than 15 years of experience working with professional athletes and high-level corporate individuals. He believes that everyone is an athlete. Are you ready to reach your optimum physical potential and get better results from your workout? Do you want to receive structure, guidance and support from an accredited strength and conditioning coach who has trained leading professional athletes? Sign up here for a 14-day free trial of The Athlete Tribe remote home workout programme. 

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Want to hear more from Lee? Have a listen to our conversation on the WAKE UP SHAKE UP podcast. In Part 1: Grow Your Resilience in Uncertain Times, Lee describes the fundamentals of peak performance and the role of mindset in how we experience success or failure. In Part 2: Ease Back Into Your Workout Routine, Lee describes how to stay motivated with a home workout and when to pick up your favourite sport after a pause. 

Feature photo: Content Pixie on Unsplash