Great article for the many people who, for different reasons, don’t have access to a gym or prefer not to go to one. I train exclusively at home, mostly with a set of adjustable dumbbells, and I’ve been doing it for years. My DEXA scan is proof that you can build plenty of muscle without setting foot in a gym. And I’m turning 50 in less than a year.
Curious if you have any tips for traveling? For me there are some trips that are true vacations where temporarily breaking away from my regular routine is the goal… but then there are other trips, like when I visit my in-laws, where I’m essentially trying to maintain my normal routines from a different location. In this example, they own one set of 10lb dumbbells. I feel like I always try to take my gym routine and adjust it the best I can with those 10lb dumbbells, but I usually walk away from the workout questioning whether or not it was actually worth it.
The key variable in here is the constraint itself. With only dumbbells and bands, progression has to come from reps, tempo and range, and that builds better training literacy than a full gym ever does. Eighteen months of that and the gym becomes optional rather than required. The consistency point is the real headline.
Wow, haven’t thought about Kayla Itsines since Covid, what a throwback! Thank you for this post, you nail how progression works and how to do it at home. I still can’t reiterate enough, to anyone with ears, that while, yes, you need to challenge your muscles to stimulate growth, you need to keep showing up, in whatever capacity you can, over a long period of time. And if working out at home is how you do that, paired with the right nutrition, muscle growth is certainly possible.
Great article for the many people who, for different reasons, don’t have access to a gym or prefer not to go to one. I train exclusively at home, mostly with a set of adjustable dumbbells, and I’ve been doing it for years. My DEXA scan is proof that you can build plenty of muscle without setting foot in a gym. And I’m turning 50 in less than a year.
Curious if you have any tips for traveling? For me there are some trips that are true vacations where temporarily breaking away from my regular routine is the goal… but then there are other trips, like when I visit my in-laws, where I’m essentially trying to maintain my normal routines from a different location. In this example, they own one set of 10lb dumbbells. I feel like I always try to take my gym routine and adjust it the best I can with those 10lb dumbbells, but I usually walk away from the workout questioning whether or not it was actually worth it.
The key variable in here is the constraint itself. With only dumbbells and bands, progression has to come from reps, tempo and range, and that builds better training literacy than a full gym ever does. Eighteen months of that and the gym becomes optional rather than required. The consistency point is the real headline.
Wow, haven’t thought about Kayla Itsines since Covid, what a throwback! Thank you for this post, you nail how progression works and how to do it at home. I still can’t reiterate enough, to anyone with ears, that while, yes, you need to challenge your muscles to stimulate growth, you need to keep showing up, in whatever capacity you can, over a long period of time. And if working out at home is how you do that, paired with the right nutrition, muscle growth is certainly possible.