Progression. What the hell is progression when it comes to all things fitness?
Well, progression can come in all shapes and sizes, and tracking it isn’t an easy feat, but is the progress we want and need to see after putting in all that effort, especially when working out from home.
When that pesky ol’ Covid 19 decided to swoop in and change how we workout (or how we live our day-to-day in general), we had to find a new way to train.
If you’re like me, you decided to workout from home, and stuck to doing so, even when the gyms re-opened!
This is because I began to realize that you can work out wherever you like, whenever you like.
Hey, I even wrote an EBook about it, ‘Train Wherever The F*ck You Want’, which can teach you a lot about working out from home!
Working out from home obviously, works, but is it easy to track your progression?
Can you even track your progression at all?
Of course, you can!
It can be as complicated or as easy as you like, for example, weighing yourself now and again.
But what if we want to track our strength or our muscle size?
Can we do that at home, without all the equipment and weights a gym has to offer?
Again, yes.
It is a little bit more time-consuming, but other methods can be a little bit easier, as well!
From the few words I said in the intro, you can probably guess that the answer to this is going to be yes.
Home workouts can show improvements in your strength, your weight loss and even help with your muscular size.
One of my favorite ways to get results from a home workout is to use bodyweight exercises.
This type of training can usually guarantee you some type of result from your home workout, whether that be weight loss or muscle gain, a bodyweight routine can be adapted to suit you and your fitness goals.
For more on whether bodyweight training can help you get results from home, check out this article here.
However, you must remember that “can” is a lot different from “will”.
If you are not putting enough into your workouts, training consistently, and following a strict diet that matches your aims, you will not get results.
If all these aspects are in check, training from home can get results.
Before we get into the many methods we can use to track our progression, we must first make sure our home workout is working.
There are a few telltale signs that your home workout is working, from the amount of energy you are exerting to the muscle aches you feel after your workout.
That being said, as long as you are doing some sort of exercise, you are still doing more than most!
First and foremost, if your workout is right for you, you will feel motivated to work out every single day.
Training should be fun, alongside pushing your body past its limits, and so we must have a workout that is both exciting and physically demanding.
The next part of making sure our workout works is the pain we feel is in the right places.
Obviously, training your muscles is going to have some aches, but if our joints start to feel strains and pains, we can probably guess that our workout is not working how we want it to.
Feeling like we cannot lift our arms above our head after a workout because the joint is in agony is not a sign of a good workout, it is a sign we are working out wrong!
The final sign that your workout is working for you is that you feel great satisfaction with the intensity of your workout.
If you prefer a more intense home workout, like HIIT, then dripping with sweat and having no energy to move should be great with you.
On the other hand, we can have a less intense workout that still works for you, it is all about choosing the best one for you!
There are two simple methods to track your progress when working out.
Quantitative is a little bit more difficult to track when working out from home, rather than in the gym.
If we are limited with the equipment we have access to, we cannot just track the resistance and weight we are using, or increase by each week.
The first step to tracking the numbers of your workout is by starting a workout journal.
I tend to write down the number of reps I can perform each week.
Let’s say we are consistently able to do 1 more push-up each week, we are tracking a slight progression in our workouts.
After a month or so, push-ups seem to be getting easier, and so we need to start varying them, or adding weight via a backpack!
The next step to tracking your progress is the length of your workout, and whether you are plateauing or not.
If we are noticing that we are smashing our goals every month, and the length of our workout tends to be increasing, then we are definitely progressing.
The next quantitative way to track progression is pretty simple – getting on the scales every 2 weeks.
If our goal is to be losing weight, and the scales are saying just that, we can see the progression!
The next form of tracking progression is arguably more important but is not as easy as writing down numbers in a journal.
Qualitative tracking tends to be observing how we feel about our workouts.
If we are noticeably feeling stronger, fitter, or bigger, then we can track our progression!
You are beginning to notice less pain, less aching with the same workout, and feel the need to up the intensity.
Your confidence with the form of your exercise is sky-rocketing and you begin to feel like you are mastering the exercises!
Being able to track your progress is very important when working out, and doing so can increase your motivation majorly, especially when you see yourself making steps towards your end goal and seeing light at the end of the tunnel!
Now I could try and tell you an exact time and date you will start to see progress with your home workout, but this is pretty impossible.
Everyone sits there after a workout and wonders when they will start to see progress, but we must remember that it is a long and slow journey, and progress may vary from person to person.
What I tend to notice with beginners is that after 3-4 weeks, we may see a bit of a development in our posture and fitness levels.
With a good diet, after 2 or 3 months, a beginner might see changes in their body, with their muscles developing and increasing in size.
This is not set in stone and will depend on things like genetics and working out regularly and consistently increasing the work we do on our bodies.
Do not be disheartened if someone you know is losing weight or getting bigger quicker than you because, at the end of the day, this is your journey.
Comparing yourself to others is not what you want to do to track progression, you want to be comparing yourself to yourself a week, a month, or even a year ago.
Setting up long-term goals and smashing them consistently is where the biggest satisfaction tends to be!
Check out just how easy it is to get a workout in at home with just one resistance band!
We have begun tracking our progression and noticeably seeing our bodies develop more and more.
We want to keep ourselves on track and consistently getting closer and closer to our end goals, but how can we adapt our workout to do this?
To progress your home workout, there are a few simple methods:
Exercising from home is so much easier now than it used to be.
Especially with the Grizzly Online Gym, do all my workouts when and where you want, with whatever equipment you have.
Or without equipment! I have options for everyone, check it out here.
Tracking your progression, whether it is in a gym or at home, is a major part of someone’s fitness journey.
Being able to run further, lift more, or just notice your waistline is getting smaller is so important for your motivation and keeping yourself on track towards your end goal!
Keep working for the long term and do not worry yourself so much about the short term!
