How To Transition Your Gym Workouts Home

Updated: Apr 6, 2020

Unfortunately for me as a powerlifter, I can't ship my barbell and stack of 45s home along with a power rack. Regardless of your goals, having to transition everything home due to our current world situation is not an easy task, but it is doable.

Here are a few simple ways to do it:

Transition from straight sets to circuits

You most likely will not have access to weight as heavy as you would use in the gym. For myself squatting over 300lbs, there's no dumbbell that's going to allow me the same training stimulus as a heavy barbell.

However you can change your approach to load up your legs in a different way. In the absence of heavy weights, increasing volume by means of circuit training works like a charm. This could mean performing sets for "time" as opposed to "reps" or it could mean supersetting multiple exercises that attack the same muscle group in order to adequately stress it.

For example,

Barbell back squats for 3 sets of 5 could become jump squats supersetted with alternating reverse lunges for 30 seconds each.

Here you load up the quads with volume as opposed to weight.

Get creative with what you have around you

Tables, chairs, and couches are all potential workout surfaces.

You can use your table to perform bodyweight rows. Chairs and couches act as raised surfaces to balance or push off of (for split squats, pushups etc). Your stairs can be used for step ups, lunges, sprints and so much more. Towels can even be used as sliding pads.

The point is, most things in your home can help when it comes to working out.

Resistance is not out of the question

If you don't have dumbbells or kettlebells handy, your household items can potentially help here as well.

I've turned my old school backpack into a weighted vest. I use soup cans as weights for various shoulder exercises. Bags of carrots, detergents, and jugs of water can also be workout tools.

Outside of adding external resistance, you can make exercises more difficult by slowing down your tempo and focusing on time under tension.

You may have to re-adjust your goals