While you can safely spend some of your time outside, as long as you’re socially distancing, a lot of people have found that working out at their house just makes the most sense. 

If this is something that you’ve recently taken on, here are three simple tips you should follow to ensure that you’re staying safe while working out at home. 

Keep Things Clear

In most homes, there isn’t a designated space where you can safely workout without running into something. But in order to protect your body from harm, it’s important that you have the space you need in order to move without bumping into things. 

In addition to clearing out space in your home, Melissa Malamut, a contributor to the New York Post, recommends that you also have cleared out the air in your space by bringing some fresh air into the room through your open windows. By doing this, you’ll be keeping your body healthy on multiple levels as you workout your body as well as getting some cleaner air into your lungs. If it’s a bit cold, rather open a window but dress warmly, which leads us to the next point.

Dress For The Gym

When you’re working out at home, you might be tempted to just begin working out whenever you remember without actually taking the time to get ready for exercise. However, exercising without wearing the proper attire can be dangerous for you. 

Especially when it comes to your feet, Mallory Creveling, a contributor to Health.com, shares that you need to dress just as you would when going to the gym. Ideally, you should be wearing tennis shoes that are only meant for indoor use.

If this doesn’t work for you, having bare feet is the next best option. And if you do choose to wear only socks, make sure they’re non-slip so you don’t fall and injure yourself. 

Mix Things Up

When working out at home, you might feel very limited in the type of exercise you’re able to do. But to give your body the time it needs to rest and recover, Sarah Winkler, a contributor to HowStuffWorks.com, shares that it’s wise to try cross-training as much as possible. 

As you do different types of workouts throughout the week, you’ll be training various parts of your body and letting other muscle groups rest. This will keep you from overexerting the same area, which makes your body more susceptible to injury. 

To help you stay safe while getting fit at home, consider using the tips mentioned above as you take on home workouts. 

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The following are simple ideas that can help get you into a decent routine. Some take place at the gym, others at home, and all will help you in one way and another. 

Keep a workout log

What we mean by this is keeping a workout log. You should record what you do on every trip to the gym, as it helps you keep track of what and where you are making gains and where you are not. It’s a simple thing to do, yet a lot of people don’t do it.

Keeping a log takes a few seconds each session, and that’s all. It’s useful to see what you did last time and what you need to do next, and it’s also a great way of motivating yourself. You can read back and see, in black and white, how well you are actually doing!

Set Your Gym Time

This is one for those who spend some of their gym time chatting with others. The golden rule is, don’t! Spend your time at the gym doing what you are there to do, working out. This way, you maximize your time in action, which is the bit that helps, and minimize your time hanging around.

If you want a few more tips you can also check out these tips that we reckon are also useful, and they recommend no more than 90 minutes each session, so long as you are keeping the intensity up.

Revise Your Diet

Working out is about looking good and feeling good, and also about being in tip top shape health-wise. So you don’t want to be eating rubbish when you are dedicating yourself to your gym routine.

A balanced, healthy diet is essential, and there are plenty of resources on line and in print that can help you devise a diet for your level of achievement and work out routine. Check them out, and you’ll be surprised at what you can eat when keeping fit!

Stay Hydrated

One big mistake that many people make is to not drink enough water. Hydration is essential for performance and dehydration can be dangerous. Working out will also make you sweat more than usual, so you need to take in plenty of fluids to keep yourself and your muscles hydrated.

Get Some Sleep

You might not think that you need sleep to improve muscle performance, but you do! The body is at its most relaxed when you sleep, and this is when muscle repair takes place. Try to get a minimum of six hours sleep per night to help you to function optimally inside and out of the gym.

Stretch

Our final tip, and this is by no means a comprehensive list as there are many more things you can do to help with a beginners workout, is to stretch before and after your work out. Dynamic stretches can be done at the start of your workout to increase blood flow and warm the muscles up.

After your workout you can include dynamic and more static stretches to increase range of motion and flexibility.

There’s plenty more you can do to get into the routine of working out as a beginner, so remember to keep reading, learning and putting what you research into practice.

Photos by 

• Alexander Mils 
• Steven Erixon 
• Victor Freitas 
• Daniel Apodaca on Unsplash

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There’s a reason the phrase ‘competitions are won from the back’ is so often used in bodybuilding and fitness shows. Having a thick and wide back, paired with a narrow waist and flaring quads creates that perfect X frame physique which so many of us strive after. It is all about achieving ideal proportions coupled with perfect symmetry across your entire body.

Now, by focusing your efforts on your back, and building a wider back you can create the illusion of a smaller waist, which plays into attaining that whole ‘X’ frame build. But this is not to say you should neglect training other body parts, no. Pay equal attention to every single body part in order to not have any muscle groups out of proportion.

In order to make the most of your back workouts here are 5 simple but effective Back Training tips:

1. Pull with your elbows

When performing any back/Lat focused pulling exercises, visualize pulling from your elbows and think of your hands, as part of or attached to the bar. By pulling with your elbows you reduce the involvement of your biceps and forearms in the movement and place more emphasis on your Lats, allowing them to do more of the work, which is want you want.

Try to think of your hands more as hooks onto the apparatus and not so much as using a stern grip when pulling, during a machine or dumbbell back workout.

2. Feel and visualize your back in each exercise

Carrying on from the first point, having that ‘mind muscle’ connection can play a major role in ensuring your back does the work and not other muscles such as your biceps.

What this means is, when performing a back exercise try to, in your mind, visualize the exact part of your back that you are working on as you pull the weight.

Also try to really squeeze that specific muscle as you approach the end of the concentric movement of each exercise.

3. Hit the back from a variety of angles with a few different exercises

The entire back is quite a large muscle group and in turn it needs to be worked from a variety of angles in order to place sufficient stress on it, to enable growth. So do not be scared to dedicate one whole training session to only doing your back, and try to include a number of varying exercises to focus on width as well as thickness. Most narrow grip exercises will contribute thickness, while most wide grip pull down movements will help with width.

4. Alternate your grip positions

By just altering your grip position, you can focus on working a different part of your back. For example take bent over rows with a barbell. By taking a wide overhand grip you focus more on your outer Lats. Alternatively by using an underhand grip you now work more on your lower and inner Lats.

So it is good to experiment and to see which specific positions you can feel more.

5. Schedule 2 workouts in a week

Sometimes a good way to bring up or improve on a lagging body part is to train it twice a week.

When doing this ensure you are eating enough as well as getting adequate rest in order to aid your recovery.

When planning 2 workouts, try to make one of them a heavy, compound day. This means choosing and including more compound exercises such as deadlifts and different types of rows, and lifting relatively heavy weight for them. (Try aim for a rep range of 10 to 6 or even down to 4)

Then on the other workout include more isolated exercises such as Lat pull downs, machine rows etc. and keep the weights relatively light. (Aim for a rep range of 15 to 8).

The Monster Back Workout

Download a printable workout log here:

• Editable Word Document: Monster Back workout Log
• Pdf Document: Monster Back workout Log

The workout below starts off with some heavy compound exercises and ends up with a few lighter isolation exercises like pull ups. You can break it up into 2 workouts if you like, as discussed in point 5 above.

Exercise 1:

• Deadlifts

Sets: 5
Reps: 12, 10, 8, 6, 4
Increasing weight each set

Exercise 2:

• Bent over (T Bar) rows close grip (Palms facing each other)

Sets: 5
Reps: 12, 10, 8, 6, 6
Increasing weight each set

Exercise 3:

• Seated cable rows

Sets: 4
Reps: 12, 10, 8, 6
Increasing weight each set

Exercise 4:

• One arm dumbbell rows palms facing forwards

Sets: 4
Reps: 10, 10, 8, 8
Increasing weight every 2nd set

Exercise 5:

• Wide grip bent over rows

Sets: 4
Reps: 12, 10, 8, 6
Increasing weight each set

Exercise 6: Tri set:

A ‘Tri set’ is when you perform 3 exercises, one after the other with no rest in between.

• Front lat pull downs

Exercise 6.1:

• Lat pull downs behind the neck

Exercise 6.2:

• Lat pull downs palms facing towards you

Sets: 3
Reps: 12, 10, 8

Exercise 7:

• Pull ups wide grip

Sets: 2 – 3 sets to failure

Exercise 8:

• Pull ups reverse grip

Sets: 2 – 3 sets to failure

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