Tips To Do Strength Training At Home
Ready to begin your journey to a stronger, healthier you? Whether you’re brand-new to strength training or only have a little bit of experience from group fitness classes, here we present tips to do strength training at home.
Strength training, also called weight training or resistance training, is an important part of any fitness routine. It helps make you stronger and also builds muscle endurance. Our goal is to help you feel stronger and more confident working with weights.
Now let’s get to know what strength training is and what its benefits are!
What is Strength Training?
Strength training is the practice of using resistance to train your skeletal muscles to get stronger by enhancing their endurance, strength, or size (or all three).
There are many ways to strength train and various types of strength goals. For example, one can train for muscular explosiveness with plyometric movements or muscular endurance with higher repetitions and lower weights. You can train for hypertrophy (muscle size increase) or ultimate strength (like a power lifter). All are phenomenal ways to strengthen the body, and depending on your personal goals, you might decide to train more in one or two different ways.
Benefits Of Strength Training At Home
- Better blood sugar regulation
Other than your liver, skeletal muscles are glucose (blood sugar) deposits. With the help of the hormone insulin, glucose is carried from the blood and drawn into the cells of the muscles. This helps the body use less insulin overall to bring down blood sugar levels and contributes to insulin sensitivity, according to the American Physiology Society. Chronically high blood sugar and blood sugar dysregulation can have a myriad of detrimental health consequences.
- Enhance bone building
The NIH Osteoporosis and Related Bone Diseases advocates for strength training to help build bone and slow down the rate of bone loss as we age. The activity of our muscles when we train enhances osteoblast (bone-building cells) activity.
- Metabolic health support
Newer studies in the past few decades have found that the contractions from skeletal muscles influence myokine secretion—special peptides from skeletal muscles that can communicate with other organs and tissues. Research published in Frontiers in Physiology suggests that myokines have the ability to prevent or improve metabolic diseases.
- Improvements in self-confidence & quality of life
Strength training helps promote physical capability. Whether you’ve struggled to put your overstuffed carry-on in the overhead bin or get your laundry up four flights of stairs, with increases in strength, everyday tasks will feel less effortful.
- Accessibility & Convenience
Perhaps you don’t feel comfortable in a room full of strangers or simply don’t have the resources to get to a gym regularly—carving out a little space and time for yourself at home will get you through whatever phase of life you’re currently in. Working out at home can be just as efficient as working out at a commercial gym, and it’s arguably much more convenient.
Tips To Do Strength Training At Home
1. Start with a short, simple program.
Your goal is to do a strength-training routine that works for all muscle groups on two non-consecutive days a week. This will help you build a strong foundation and progress from week to week.
2. Choose the right amount of weight to lift.
The key to strength training is to use weights that are not too light or too heavy. You’ll know it’s too light if you can do an entire set with minimal effort. It’s too heavy if your form is sacrificed or it feels too taxing. Just right is a challenging effort that you can do with proper form and control and without excess strain.
3. Warm up first.
Warm muscles are less susceptible to injury, so do 5 to 10 minutes of cardio or some warm-up sets of each exercise in your workout using a light, easy-to-lift weight.
4. Focus on form.
Good form lets you reap all the benefits of your workout and avoid injuries. To maintain proper form, pay attention to your posture (stand tall with your chest lifted and abs engaged), move slowly (this ensures you’re relying on muscles, not momentum, to do the lifting), and remember to breathe. Many people hold their breath while exerting, but exhaling during the hardest part of the exercise helps fuel the movement. Many modern interactive fitness mirrors bring the guidance of a trainer right into your living room.
5. Give yourself at least a day of rest to recover.
Rest days are crucial for building lean muscle tissue and preventing injury, so try not to work the same muscle groups two days in a row. Some people like to break up strength training by concentrating on their upper body one day and their lower body the next, and that’s perfectly fine.
6. Aim to challenge yourself, not overtax yourself.
The first few weeks, focus on learning how to do each exercise rather than how much weight you’re lifting or how many exercises you’re doing. You have plenty of time to build muscle.
7. Change things up.
After six or more weeks of consistent strength training, which is about the time it takes to start seeing improvement in your body, you can change your routine to make it more difficult. Lifting the same weight for the same exercises every week will keep your body in the same place. You can modify weights or repetitions, choose different exercises, or change the order. You only have to make one change at a time to make a difference, although more is often better.
The Bottom Line
Doing 30 to 45 minutes of strength training two to three times a week is an excellent way of building lean muscle mass, burning calories, and boosting your metabolism. This, in turn, can help you burn body fat and make weight loss easier.
In addition, strength training can strengthen your bones and joints, lower your risk of chronic diseases, improve flexibility, posture, and balance, and boost your mood and energy levels.
Many strength training exercises can be done in the comfort and privacy of your home. Use just your body weight or basic, low-cost equipment as resistance.
If you have any health concerns or an injury that makes exercising difficult, talk to your doctor. Or a certified personal trainer before you start an at-home strength training routine.
FAQs on Tips to Do Strength Training At Home
Q1. Is strength training at home possible?
A: You can get stronger right in your living room. If you want to learn how to start working out with weights, you can definitely start a strength training routine at home. There are some things, though, you need to know first so you can do so safely and effectively.
Q2. Is 20 minutes of strength training enough?
A: You don’t need to spend hours a day lifting weights to benefit from strength training. You can see significant improvement in your strength with just two or three 20- or 30-minute strength training sessions a week.
Q3. What are the five basic strength trainings?
A: Exercises are typically based on five classes of movements that encompass all types of motion your body typically performs. They are – lower body push, lower body pull, upper body push, upper body pull, and core.
