Trying to find ‘The One’ is a daunting task.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to start talking to you about all that soppy stuff.
What I’m talking about is so much more important…
Your workout.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been there.
When I first started taking working out seriously, I searched endlessly for the workout that would change everything.
The workout that would build lean muscle extremely quickly, while increasing my core strength and fitness levels.
Oh, and let’s see if we keep the body fat to a minimum.
Can you see a problem here?
I was searching for the perfect workout that will give the best results in the shortest space of time!
However, does the perfect home workout exist?
A model home workout with no flaws does not exist.
This is because a workout needs to be built based on what you want to gain.
With some guidance and a bit of help from this article, you can build the perfect workout for yourself.
Whether that’s understanding what exercises are most effective for you, or how many reps or sets you need, it can be possible to have the perfect home workout!
This can be quite a difficult one to determine when working out at home.
Rather than the exercise just being to push a barbell or pull a cable, you must know and understand how to use your body and other pieces of equipment (such as good ol’ resistance bands, which I’ll be talking about later, as per usual) to feel the burn and get the perfect workout for you!
What Are The Most Effective At-Home Exercises?
The most important platform to base your perfect workout on is the exercises you perform.
At home, some of the most successful exercises are in fact fundamental bodyweight exercises.
A variation of the core bodyweight exercise can provide you with an amazing workout.
I can only provide you with an example set of these exercises and it will be up to you to decide which ones work best for you.
If this endeavor feels a little bit too tough, then you can always seek guidance from a professional who can help discuss your goals and whittle the choices down to a perfect workout for you.
You can email me here if that approach is more suited to you.
Onto the good bit now, what home exercises are best for your perfect workout?
The foundational bodyweight exercises!
These are the essentials when first starting, and if you master them, you will achieve more targeted muscle activation, causing you to get better results!
You may be familiar with these exercises, but I will list them here, along with the standard ‘push, pull, legs’ workout that is excellent for a lot of people!
- Push-ups – A great foundation to build a huge chest, performed on a ‘push’ day.
- Burpees – An immense workout if you want to build your chest and get fit at the same time! Another ‘push’ exercise.
- Pull-ups – An exercise that targets your back and biceps, great for a pull day
- Bodyweight squats – All things legs. Enough said. We all know they are burners! Perfect for ‘leg day’.
- Lunges – These are also brilliant for leg day!
Of course, you can’t just do 1 or 2 exercises and say “job done”.
These are your foundations.
As someone searching for their perfect home exercises, you must determine the muscle groups you are aiming to build on each day and pick the variations of each exercise that do so.
Close-grip pushups are great for your triceps, while pike pushups burn those shoulders! It’s all to do with your end goal.
There are 100s of variations of exercises.
Now, rather than just searching the internet looking for some, why don’t you give my free eBook a read?
All of the home exercises you might need in one place, ‘Train Wherever The F*ck You Want’, even comes with a sample workout that you can try!
How Many Reps And Sets Should I do?
This age-old question.
This discussion can cause some big disagreements in the fitness industry, hence why it is so difficult to get that perfect home workout.
Luckily for you, there are some rough guidelines to follow which you can use to decide what reps and sets you should be doing based on whether your goal is any of the below.
- Muscle endurance
- Muscle strength
- Muscle hypertrophy.
Have you chosen one of them?
Let’s get into it.
Muscle endurance
This is, more or less, the fitness of your muscles.
Basically, training them to be able to work for extended periods of time.
You will be doing a hell of a lot of repetitions.
Pretty much you want to go until failure on a light load (so no sandbags for extra weight).
For this, you want about 2-3 sets of 15-20+ reps to improve that endurance.
This will also build a bit of size, however, the lack of overloading of weight will limit that.
Perfect choice for those of us who love running, or all things cardio and want to improve a bit.
It is also great for your cardiovascular health and is extremely beneficial for weight loss!
Muscle Strength
Training for a sport and wanting the explosive power to drive through, let’s say tackles in rugby, then you want this type of strategy.
You want sets of 3-5, with long breaks between each set.
The reps are going to be limited at 5, as you are going to be outputting A LOT of energy and shocking your central nervous system into getting stronger!
The one problem with this training plan at home is you are most likely not going to have access to the heavyweights required for this type of lifting.
The solution?
Get filling those milk jugs and bags with sand, water, or anything else you can find! More on how to overload weight later.
Muscle Hypertrophy
The final system you can follow is hypertrophy.
This is growing the size of your muscles and your strength equally.
This is what most people follow, and what bodybuilders will follow to get those huge 25-inch biceps!
You want your repetitions to be between 8 and 12, and the sets to be between 3 and 5.
The rest between each set also wants to be about 60 seconds, quite short so we are continuously working the muscle.
I personally like to finish all my exercises with a final set until failure to help feel the burn!
How Can I Make My Perfect Workout More Difficult?
We have got our exercises, and we have our variations with the correct number of sets and reps.
You have stuck to them and started to see some progression!
Great!
The only problem is, what do you do once you start getting used to these exercises?
When you don’t get the same satisfaction and burn as you did a couple of months ago?
The first trick… let’s add some weight to those bodyweight exercises! How can we do that?
That’s pretty simple.
Milk jugs with sand in, large water bottles, a backpack…
Wait, what?
A backpack?
That’s right, all you need to improve those squats or pull-ups is to simply add some weight into a bag!
I show you how it’s done in my one piece of equipment video, below!
My next tip will be to introduce a bit of equipment.
Nothing too crazy, maybe 1 or 2 kettlebells and a resistance band.
A lot of people opt for dumbbells and weights when trying to overload the weight they use, but a home workout can be subsided perfectly by a resistance band.
It is not easy to compare the two, but if you want to see which matches your goals better before you go and spend all your money on a set of weights, check out my article having a go at differentiating them here!
My third and final tip would be to aim to change the variation of exercises you are performing every 6 to 8 weeks.
This is why you cannot find that one ‘perfect’ workout!
A lot of workouts are great until you begin to adapt to them.
Make sure you have stocked up on a multitude of exercises from my eBook, though, and you will have no problems.
Should I Workout Every Day
Working out more frequently will not make your workout better.
In fact, working out longer does not make it better.
I talk about a conversation with a bodybuilder in this article here, who actually told me how unnecessary those 3-hour sessions are!
Your workouts should be about quality, and getting the movements exactly right.
That is when you get closer to having that perfect home workout!
I would even go as far as saying those workouts with the correct amount of rest are the better ones!
Just because you are training more often does not necessarily mean you will achieve your goals quicker!
If you are one of those people who just love the intensity in their workouts and are not happy until they are dripping with sweat, have a go at switching your format into high-intensity interval training (HIIT).
These workouts are great to get the blood flowing and really help if your overall aim is for weight loss!
Summary
So, if you are going to take anything from this article, I want you to realize that not one single workout is going to be perfect for everybody.
This is why you need to learn how to build your perfect workout.
If that doesn’t work, seek professional guidance through a personal trainer, or even my eBook!
Combine your workout with a good amount of sleep, hydration, and motivation, you will be on your way to achieving your goals in no time!
You have got this!