Can You Put on Muscle by Working Out at Home? - Mind Pump Media
At home workouts aren’t just for people who can’t get to the gym. Believe it or not, it is good to take a break from the gym once and awhile to let your body deload or recharge to super compensate for the gains made the weeks or months prior. Guys especially think they just need to keep loading up the volume and resistance non-stop, and the gains will keep coming. This is simply not true. There needs to be what is called a “supercompensation effect” where it takes a week or so for your body to catch up to the sheer amount of volume it has just been put through.
Time Under Tension – One method would be focusing on the eccentric, or lowering part of the lift. Start with a 3 second lowering. So if you were doing a bicep curl with bands or dumbbells, make sure it takes 3 seconds to get to the bottom position. Next week try it for 4 seconds, and so on.
Isometric – You can also focus on holding the top of the movement and really focusing on squeezing. So if you were doing bicep curls, you could hold the peak contraction for 3 seconds, then bring it down at a nice pace. What I would recommend for this is, since the extra hold at the top will be new to you, you probably won’t need to add time. Your reps should amount to significantly less since you may have not tried this method before. Instead focus on adding quality reps each week while still maintaining that 2-3 second contraction.
Reps – You can stimulate growth anywhere from 1-30 repetitions. Just note, the higher you go in reps, the closer to failure you need to be. So focus on doing more reps than the week before, but make sure they are quality reps, and that you are close to failure as you approach the upper limit. If you hit the higher end, try turning it into a single arm/leg motion with the same band or dumbbell, or using one of the above techniques to make it harder and thus bring the reps back down.
Bodyweight – There is something to be said for even just focusing on your bodyweight. Most people focus solely on weights, and never really learn body awareness. You are leaving a huge amount of untapped potential if you do not spend at least SOME time being able to handle and control your bodyweight through a full range of motion. You’d be surprised at how hard this can be if you’ve never done it before.