How to maintain your strength and fitness with limited equipment
With lockdowns and gym closures becoming increasingly common, we can go extended periods of time without having access to our beloved barbells and cardio machines inside the gym. This can make it feel like we are going backwards in terms of our strength and fitness because we are not able to train with the equipment that we normally would and end up limited to using the few things we have at home or have borrowed from the gym such as a dumbbells, kettlebells and a skipping rope. Working out at home may not be the most exotic type of training but it is definitely enough stimulus to maintain our strength and fitness and even improve if you are following these training principles.
Stay consistent. This is number one on the list, if you are not doing any training or exercise when the gym isn’t open, obviously your fitness is going to start to go downhill, if you don’t want that to happen, you have to make sure you are maintaining some sort of training schedule, ideally you are still training the same amount of times per week as you would if the gym was open.
Just because we don’t have access to much weight, doesn’t mean there aren’t other options for strength training. We can:
Increase volume (do more reps)
Do tempo work (increase time under tension)
Do speed work (using lighter loads but moving faster)
Choose more difficult variations of movements (Doing a pushup with your hands closer together)
Do plyometrics (Jump Squats and Jump Lunges)
Gym closures are also a good time to work on weaknesses (you don’t need the gym to be open to go for that run you’ve been planning to go on for 3 weeks) or give yourself some time to heal that nagging injury that you haven’t quite given enough rest.
Minimal equipment metcons are actually great for improving your fitness, there is nowhere to hide when the workout just consists of running, burpees and bodyweight lunges, it gives you a chance to get away from the heavy weights and complex movements and helps get that cardiovascular system working at 100% capacity. As long as you put in the effort, you will improve, no matter what you’re doing.