Best Tips For Maximizing Home Workouts
Well first its super important to acknowledge how difficult it can be to work from home. With the distractions of everyday life staring you in the face or just upstairs, It's easy to skip workouts and do the things instead. SO KUDOS TO YOU for showing up to your workout and carving that time into your routine.
The 3 best bits of advice I'll give you in regards to home workouts,
(which is where my journey actually started!)
1. Try to make an intentional movement space.
This can be in a basement, garage or spare room. Even your living room. But keep your equipment together and try to have this be a distraction free zone if it can be!
If you have small kids, learning to workout with them near you is healthy for BOTH of you. It helps the kids learn some safe independent self play, and you can hopefully get your workout in. What worked for me was to lock us all into our play room with a baby gate. Bring in snacks and water. set them up with everything they need and explain, YES EXPLAIN, what was happening to them. "MOM is going to workout now, she will help you with what you need when I'm done." and I'd continue repeating that especially the first few days until it sinks in. Within a week or so my big one was helping put the paci in the little ones mouth saying "Mommy's working out now! I help you!" Added benefit of this is that during nap time you get some MOMMY time!
2. Intensity: MUSIC.
This goes for in the gym too, but I can directly correlate my strongest workouts, to music. You're missing a huge opportunity to maximize your intensity in a home workout if you're watching Netflix. Put on your rap music, or country, or whatever pumps you up, and start associating the music with the hard work. It'll also help motivate you as part of your routine!
Speaking of Routine...
3. Try to set a routine with workouts!
I know this is not always easy. Believe me I know. Especially because as we move through life, through seasons, routines shift hundreds of times!
My best advice is to start small. The first thing we tend to do is when we begin to shift into our workouts we tend to start at the goal. Which usually isn’t maintainable. If your goal is to workout x days per week, you should still start with what is feasible NOW. Start with 2 SCHEDULED workouts. Tuesday and Thursday AM. Carve that time. and add on to that as we go.
Write these workouts on a physical kitchen calendar or put them on a work calendar, but visually seeing where your workouts are in your week helps you to check them off the list. If you have to write “workout 1” and “workout 2” on post it notes, and stick them to your fridge or bathroom mirror and pull them off, crumble them up and take pride in throwing it out and checking off the box! whatever works!
Below I’ve linked a few things I think everyone should have in their home gym!