Full Body Strength Training at Home — No Gym Membership Needed!
Myth: You need a gym membership, special training, and equipment to get strong, build muscle, and lose weight.
Fact: You have everything you need to transform your body no matter your budget, time, or space— right at home!
Strength training is so important not only for weight loss, but to your overall health. From bone density to cardiovascular health, building strong muscles will help you reach many of your health and wellness goals.
The problem so many people face is not knowing where to start. You might not be ready to invest in a pricey gym membership or special equipment, and that’s okay!
Starting with what you already have on hand is an amazing way to ensure you are building good habits that you will be able to sustain for the rest of your life.
The simple truth is that you can build muscle and improve your health right at home!
The Basics of Building Muscle
Building muscle isn’t just for athletes and body builders. Building strong muscles can enhance your metabolism and help you maintain a healthy weight.
It helps improve bone density which protects your body against injuries and prevents complications down the line like osteoporosis. Strength training also helps to prevent chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
In order to reap the benefits, you first have to nail the basics of building muscle. Let’s go over what exactly you need to create a solid routine whether you work out at the gym or at home!
Progressive overload
Strength training is a form of exercise which focuses on building muscle through a principle called progressive overload.
All you really need to understand is that to improve your strength and build muscle, you must gradually increase the intensity, volume, and/or duration of your exercise.
This means that wherever you start your fitness journey, as you progress and get stronger, add more weight or repetitions to continue improving and push past any plateaus.
Consistency
It’s also important to remember that the key to any successful routine is consistency.
Whether you are a weekend warrior or space your workouts out throughout the week, staying consistent and always showing up (even or especially when you don’t want to!) will help you reach those goals.
Create a routine and stick to it. Each time you do is like recommitting to your goal, strengthening your relationship to exercise.
Form
One of the most important parts of exercising is making sure you are exhibiting proper form.
Proper form will prevent you from getting injured and ensure that the exercises you perform actually work as intended! If you are unsure about your form, follow along to an instructor on YouTube and use a full length mirror to see any corrections you might need to make.
Rest
Just as important as proper form is getting adequate rest. When you do strength training exercise, you are creating tiny injuries to your muscle issues which communicate to your them, “Hey, we need to be able to do more and lift heavier!”
However, it is during periods of rest that your muscles do the work of repairing and building back tissue to become stronger. Without proper rest periods, you can actually overwork your muscles, causing injuries and strains.
Make sure you are taking at least one day off every five days of exercise to give your body time to recover.
Diet
The final component of strength training has nothing to do with exercise— it’s your diet!
The food you eat is a lot like the fuel you put in a car. Getting proper nutrition and enough calories is super important to make sure your body has the building blocks and energy to get stronger.
Focus on eating whole foods including grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, and most importantly, protein! Protein is made up of amino acids which your body actually uses to build new muscle tissue.
You Already Have Equipment!
You don’t actually need any special equipment to get a full workout right at home.
All you really need is a little bit of space to move around, so push that coffee table to the side and make sure you have a few feet of space around you in which you can move around.
A sturdy chair, bench, or even your couch or coffee table are great additions for exercises like tricep dips or inclined pushups but aren’t necessary if you don’t have them.
You can use household items to add weights to your exercises such as canned food, water bottles, milk jugs, books, or tote bags filled with rice or other heavy objects.
You don’t need any fancy gym clothes, just some comfortable clothing that you can move around with and a sturdy pair of shoes.
If you are looking to invest in some minimal equipment, a yoga mat, resistance bands, and a set of 10-15 pound dumbbells are a great place to start!
Full-Body Strength Training Routine at Home
Now that you know the basics and have all of your equipment ready, you are all set to get started! Let’s outline a simple routine that you can do from just about anywhere whether you are in your living room, in your backyard, at the park, or anywhere else!
Besides your warmup, start with 10-15 repetitions of each exercise, or if you can’t do that many reps yet, repeat until failure. Rest and repeat each exercise for 2-3 sets each.
Warm Up
Warming up is important because it gets your heart rate up, increasing the blood flow to your muscles. This literally raises your body temperature which makes your muscles more flexible and less prone to injury.
Repeat these exercises in 30 second intervals for five minutes:
Arm circles - perform these in both directions!
Spinal rotations - you can also do these by standing with your feet wider than hip distance apart and reach for the ground, twisting to lift one arm up towards the sky with the fingers of the other hand touching the ground. Come up to standing and repeat on the other side.
Upper Body
These exercises will target your upper body including your arms, back, chest, and shoulders. There are more exercises that you can do if you have equipment such as dumbbells or weights like bicep curls, shoulder presses, chest presses, and more but start here!
Push-ups - If you aren’t ready to do a full pushup, start with a modified version with your knees on the ground.
Tricep dips - use a sturdy chair, bench, or table.
Lower Body
Add additional weight to challenge yourself when bodyweight exercises become too easy.
Bodyweight squats - add variations to target different muscles like sumo squats and jump squats.
Lunges - switch it up with variations like walking lunges, reverse lunges, and Bulgarian split squats.
Glute bridges - add variation by moving your feet closer or further from your body, and by making your feet narrower or wider apart.
Core
Core strength supports your spine and posture, and prevents back injuries and pain. It’s important to engage your core in every exercise but there are a few exercises you can add to your routine to get even stronger.
Planks - you can do a static plank or challenge yourself by doing hip dips, plank rotations, up and down, side planks, and even more variations.
Crunches - do a basic crunch or variations like bicycle crunches, leg raises, scissor kicks, and more target different areas of your abdominals.
Mountain climbers - these not only target your core but also get your heart rate up.
How Often Should You Strength Train?
Experts recommend at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week, or about 30 minutes per day, five days per week.
Some of this exercise should include cardio which raises your heart rate including, walking, running, cycling, dancing, swimming, rowing, or whatever way you like to move!
We recommend making at least 2-3 of these workouts strength focused workouts, or you can always split your time with 10 minutes of cardio and 20 of strength training.
Like we mentioned before, it’s always important to incorporate rest days to give your body time to recover and build up those muscles.
As you get stronger, you might want to think about ways to start adding that progressive overload we talked about. You can add heavier weights, increase your repetitions, or increase the number of sets you do.
By gradually increasing the length and intensity of your workouts, you will continue to build stronger muscles and a healthier body.
Put It All Together
Strength training is an essential part of your exercise routine that helps you build stronger muscles.
Strong muscles support your health by improving bone density, strengthening your metabolism, preventing injuries and chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease.
Despite what you might think, it is totally possible to build an effective strength training routine without ever stepping foot in a gym or purchasing expensive equipment.
Use the basic exercises we learned today to start building muscle from the comfort of your own home and most importantly, start to create a routine that you can sustain to support your health forever.
