How to do Strength Training at Home

How to do strength training at home is a very common question for various reasons.

You might want to save time on the commute to and from the gym, believe me I can relate to that. Luckily I have a gym right where I work and don’t have to commute to the gym.

You might also feel more comfortable doing your strength training workouts at home.

This article and video discusses

the benefits and shortcomings of strength training at home
basic strength principles that should be considered when deciding to do strength training at home
How to think about useful progressions when you do strength training at home
Which movement patterns can be strength trained at home and which movement patterns are difficult to strength train at home

What does strength training mean? How can you do it at home? What essential factors must you keep in mind while doing it? What are the associated shortcomings in strength training?

What is Strength Training?

I have outlined a definition of strength and strength training in the articles

Essentially Strength training is training the ability to overcome resistance or in simple words, it’s all about getting strong via a physical exercise. It means training your body to be stronger and be more resilient. The adaptation of actually getting stronger does not happen overnight; it happens over time, and you must be consistent in doing your strength training workouts to reap the benefits of it.

How to do Strength Training at home and considering the progression principle

One thing that makes strength training have meaning is the progression in it. I have outlined the progression principle on the example of Milo of Croton in the article

The Fundamentals of Strength Training

to do is to look for an exercise that is challenging and can be increased or made more challenging over time. Training is not strength training if it does not involve an increase in exertion. The exertion must be progressive to get all the benefits of such an exercise.

How to do Strength Training at home considering exercise selection

Let us consider Pushup which is considerably challenging and can be progressive. This means you can increase the number of pushups you do every day. For one, you can start with five pushups per day and increase the number to 7, and progress later to 10 and 15 and so on. As you persist in doing the pushup, you will find out that you can do more than you were doing at the beginning and this is an indication that you are getting stronger. It is a typical example we show those asking how to do strength training at home. You only need to make sure that you are doing it properly.

You do not need to limit yourself to push up only. You may consider other exercises that are challenging at the start and also create an avenue for increasing the challenge over time. Another recommendation for those asking how to do strength training at home is to change the way they carry out their push up from the easier method to a more challenging mode. You will get more benefit from the strength training if the challenge keeps increasing. As you make the resistance heavier and heavier, you will get very stronger both internally and externally.

How to do Strength Training at home and its shortcomings

However, you may reach a point when you may not be able to continue with increasing the difficulty of the strength training at home by the conventional method you have been using. At a point like this, you need to lay hands on some equipment that can help you perform the strength training at home. There are times such equipment may be too expensive also, and you may not be able to afford them. The gym may be your best bet at such time.

However, you should still do your strength training at home if you can afford the equipment. If the new ones are too expensive, you can go for the used ones. They will do the same job and give you the same value. Some of the equipment you can buy are resistance bands and bars. The bar can be attached to your door frame.

Concluding How to do Strength Training at home

No matter the amount of convenience you feel with your strength training at home, a time will come when the exercise may get too complicated or too difficult to perform at home, and you will have to move to a gym. However, the most important thing is that you have already built the foundation and covered the basis at home. And that is all you need to know about how to do strength training at home.