With so much uncertainty about what the next few weeks and/or months hold, there comes an equal amount of uncertainty about how to keep your fitness goals progressing during these difficult times. Navigating your way through this can be challenging and sometimes will even feel frustrating as motivation will likely come in waves. However, there are 2 main concepts we can work on. How to progress/track your workouts and how to keep your goals in sight.

Progressing your workouts may seem harder than ever right now, but rest assured there are many methods to the madness. The easiest way to ensure you do not take any steps backward is to train NEAR failure during your at home workouts. It is well documented that training near failure with even very light weights can cause muscle hypertrophy. Now I understand that not everyone’s goal is to get bigger muscles, it would be in everyone’s best interest to KEEP as much muscle as possible. It may help to repeat workouts on a somewhat regular (every week/other week) and try to beat your previous time/rounds/reps in order to motivate yourself to push near failure. Another factor that we should consider is to make sure we are training every muscle group during each week. Some can get trained more than others (legs) and still recover but keep in mind that many of the workouts we do at home have a large amount of volume (total reps) being done and therefore still take time to recover from. So, keep 2-3 rest days in your program. It may even be helpful to look at workouts with an Upper and Lower body focus. This will ensure you are hitting all muscle groups at least 2x a week on a 4-day split. When you do workouts at home try to quantify how much work you are doing and make it repeatable. For example: AMRAP (as many rounds/reps as possible) is a common tool, or do a certain number of rounds for time, you can use work to rest ratios, or even a chipper style workout where you assign a number of reps for each movement (typically fairly high rep). These “CrossFit” style workouts can still be logical, specific and intelligent. If you can keep training consistently over this time you may even come out of this whole deal in better shape than you went in. Our coaches at Freedom Fit Online Coaching are experts at programming these workouts and progressing them over time. Of course, most clients will have some at home training equipment, we can even make all these factors work when faced with just bodyweight workouts. If you need help staying accountable and making intelligent jumps in programming visit us at www.gofreedomfitonline.com to see how we can help you!

Motivation is pivotal in order to keep progressing. Be sure you are setting goals that are realistic during this time. For example, it would be silly for me to set a goal of hitting a Deadlift PR (personal record) without a barbell. Set goals based around what you have. Improve a sprint or distance run time. Set a pushup or plank PR. Refine your squat technique. Use this time to FOCUS yourself on specific training goals and you may just be surprised at how fun training at home can remain. Try to enjoy the change of pace in your workouts, stay consistent, set realistic short-term goals, track results, and try to make steady progress.

Stay healthy and we wish you all the best in reaching your newfound fitness goals!