Aye, mate!

So, except if you live under a rock, you can’t possibly have missed all the global mobilization to slow down and prevent the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. I am no scientist, nor virus expert or anything close or distant related to this. However, I do know one thing or two about home workout with minimum to no equipment, and how to handle drastic changes regarding training and programming it.

All gyms are now closed, so are sports grounds and clubs. Most sports events (competitions, meets, matches, etc) have been canceled, leaving hundreds of competitors in the middle of their prep and even more athletes into an unexpected longer off-season. It sucks, but it is what it is. Don’t be upset longer than necessary about it, and try to use stoic thinking.

Unless you are a lucky lad with your own home gym, allowing you to keep training like every other normal day, you are now home stuck and wondering how to properly set a home workout plan. In this series of articles on lockdown and home training, you’ll get insightful info on how you can keep in shape and get energized. You can either get as lazy as a couch potato, or keep moving and work differently, on several things, by switching parameters, exercises, frequency, goals… Your choice.

Now, I’ve seen far too many promoted home workout shit videos that have recently popped up on the Internet. From million jump lunge workouts to weird protocol push-ups, squats requiring a table, three chairs and a workbench without first conditioning the elbows, knees and shoulders… I must admit I’ve never felt so disheartened and disappointed by a whole “industry” trying to take advantage of you with the sole purpose to sell you more useless crap (and overpriced by the way, since they know this is the perfect timing to pigeonhole people), and by so many influencers and so-called/bad trainers getting such huge visibility and audience that it shouldn’t even be allowed for them to give their opinions. But then, this is unfortunately the typical social media monkey wrench…

Period. Truth is, it doesn’t need to be complicated. You need to tackle it the same way as you would for regular gym programming. You need result-yielding exercises that you can do properly and get a progression from, along with difficulty parameters, proper rest and enough stimuli. That’s it.

1. First things first: define how many days you want/can train: since you are basically stuck at home with very low daily activities, we can assume that you are likely to train every day, if not several times a day.
2. Secondly, choose the template: Full body? Half body? Push/Pull? Push/Pull/Legs? Split? I will always promote and push the first three options forward as these are merely the most efficient ways to go as a natty (and even for most gear users). Look at your grandparents’ idols and their own idols if you don’t believe me.
3. Only then, choose exercises for each body part (and you most likely already know them) depending on your equipment, possibilities and willingness to get the job done.

As for recovery, you will for sure get sore, muscle fatigue and damage, but it will feel different since you aren’t used to this type of training. However, whenever possible, you don’t want to look like Sleeping Beauty, lie down or sit all day long: just do your workouts. This shouldn’t be a problem if proper warm-up and stretching are done. Remember that your joints are -and will always be- the ultimate limiting factor, either from not being used in some exercises or from total volume or joint worked angles. Listen to your body and use internal and external signals accurately. If you are uncertain, use Google and trustworthy trainers to show and illustrate proper form. Should you need a few names, search for John Meadows, Eugene Teo, Christian Thibaudeau and Joe Bennett. Oh, and take advantage of this time to clean up the diet and get good sleep habits.

 

Home Workout with Calisthenic Training

I’ve already tackled this subject here. 

Long story short: it’s about training your whole body very effectively, promoting strength, mobility and joint integrity, and training muscle chains that you couldn’t hit with typical basic lifts or pulley/machine work at the gym. Think handstands, push-ups variations, pull-up/chin-up variations, dips, squats, split squats, inverted row, levers, just to name a few. Added to that, it’s only a matter of rotating variations to avoid overuse and boredom (even if you will eventually get bored (but shouldn’t care about it)): day one is for wide grip push-up, the next day is for the diamond push-up, the day after is dedicated to elevated feet, then one arm, then supinated hands, and so on.

How do you track progress? Easy! Either you do progressively harder variations and/or more volume/reps and/or decrease rest periods to increase density (same work in less time). You may also try adding reps to your max chin-up, and/or do them one arm assisted, or on the minute/beat the clock style. Any will work, as long as you are consistent and keep at it.

You can go “Herschel Walker” style (very high volume, doing like 500 push-ups a day and, say, 800 squats) or with a more traditional 3-5xmax rep on pistol squat type of thing, or as many reps as possible in 20mn on dips for example. Nope, this isn’t Crossfit. Even if it was, Mat Fraser and Rich Froning look and perform better than you do, so maybe you should look up a bit what they do!

 

Home Training With Band Training

Although it is easy to find useless Insta booty bullshit things to do with bands, I reckon they are a fantastic tool overall in regular training as in conditioning/GPP/Home Workout. The resistance isn’t a dead weight but a progressive one, meaning there is always some degree of tension. The weakest part of the movement is where there is less resistance while the easier it gets, the more the resistance increases. Softer on the joints, great to build up connective tissues and make them recover faster along with muscles, it’s nice to throw them around in many situations. If you got some, consider them an all-in gym simulator as you can do… Hmmm, let me think… Well, basically anything with them: bench press, bent over row, squats, lunges, good mornings, shrugs, curls, extensions, face pulls, overhead press, crunches, calves and neck work. ANY-THING, mate.

Still, having enough resistance, or a proper one for every movement, is the main problem. Even though you achieve that, not the same curve as normal weight which can be just as great as awkward. In any case, it still a nice way to complement any bodyweight routine and add some auxiliary work. Things like max rep during 2-5mn time, drop set by going from doubled band to normal to looser band are things I personally like.

 

Home Workouts With TRX/Ring/Aerial Silk Training

Although they are completely different, I am putting them in the same category for the purpose of this article, in order to get everyone an easier time to overview things. They are basically another tool to work more patterns, especially upper body wise. They make your hands unstable and increase the stability required for basic moves like push-ups, dips, inverted rows, chin-ups. They also enable you to work advanced gymnastic/calisthenic/circus training, like bodyweight flyes/reverse flyes, plank, Maltese, iron cross, and all the artistic figures and transitions they allow. Pretty much what you would see in a circus artist do! They can also be used for glutes bridges bodyweight leg extension, or sliding leg curl. Whatever the exercise, the level of stability they require will make a lot of athletes discover imbalances for several movements. A dip on parallel bars is nothing compared to a dip on rings. They will fatigue connective tissues areas faster but also help strengthen them, giving your joint the possibility to get to move in and around a movement pattern, while the muscles keep steady and firing to move. That’s like unstable training but done the right way.

 

Read on to the next articles, mate! We will delve into what inmates, military-enrolled guys and athletes from ages ago achieved with a bit of imagination and dedication.

If you are stuck at home yet willing to get your hands dirty, you just need to check my remote online services. I promise we will figure out a way to get the job done together.

For now, keep calm like a Viking, go do some push-ups, and then some hundred more.

Until next time: man the helm.

Your lightkeeper,

-Hersovyac