I’m a little bit late in doing this post because gyms have reopened since the pandemic and a lot of people have gone back. But I’m going to start with the six key things for how to improve your home workouts.

Some of these will be super obvious, but sometimes you need to remind yourself.

Follow A Plan

Try and follow a structured plan.

That’s so that you can track your progress.

So many home workouts are just about doing 30 seconds of one exercise, 30 seconds of another exercise until you burn yourself out or at least burn out a certain muscle group.

There’s some structure to that, but it’s not really something that’s trackable.

If you do a workout where you’re doing 30 seconds of squats into 30 seconds of pushups into 30 seconds of lunges and one week you go all out on the squats, your legs are still tired when you get to the lunges, it’s going to feel like you didn’t do well in lunges.

But then if the next week you hold back on the squats and you’re actually doing better on lunges doesn’t mean that you’re, you’ve progressed. It just means that you’ve held back more energy.

So if you set more specific like rep targets or set targets you know, something like that, to give you something more tangible that you can track, you’ll be able to monitor your progress a hell of a lot better.

Schedule Your Workouts

Especially when we’re home and there’s no sort of divide or separate zone to do your workouts, it’s easy to sort of put them off or cut them short or start a little bit late.

What you really, really want to do is schedule the time in, use a calendar if you need to block it out, and don’t compromise on it. That way, it’s your dedicated workout time.

And mentally you can give yourself a signal that anything else can wait apart from emergencies of course.

Try To Create A Dedicated Workout Space

It’s not always going to be possible, especially if you have space restrictions or if you’ve got a family at home as well, but try and find a space that’s away from where you work and away from your sort of rest or chilling area.

There’s something about being able to step into a gym that it’s your dedicated workout zone, which you’re not going to be able to recreate 100% at home, but you can at least get close by trying to create that separate, dedicated space.

Block Out Distractions

I am sure a lot of you probably do this anyway, but try to block out distractions.

I recommend finding a motivational playlist, putting your headphones in, setting your timer, set your watch, whatever, and just going for it.

Put your phone on flight mode if you need to. Make sure that you’ve got nothing that’s going to take you away from your workout for that moment and just absolutely nail it.

Find A Buddy

Train with a friend or find someone else to hold you accountable.

Maybe on a Sunday, you’ll send them a message saying, “I’m going to do these workouts on these days.”

You can either invite them to join you virtually or just ask them to check in with you and make sure that you’re actually doing them.

When you know you have to report back to someone on something it gives you that little bit more motivation to actually get it done.

Add A Pre-Workout Ritual

Try and use some kind of pre-workout ritual to get you into your zone. So if you imagine, like when Clark Kent goes from Clark Kent to Superman, he steps into a phone booth or whatever pulls off his suit and he becomes Superman.

So it’s like that shift in identity. It’s that shift in mindset.

It’s finding something that’s going to tick that box and say, okay, “I’m no longer that person that I was like two minutes ago, I’m now this person that’s going to do this workout and then I’ll change again afterwards.”

One of the mistakes I’ve been guilty of is that when I get up in the morning, I’ll have my shower and then I’ll just put my workout clothes on because I’m working from home anyway.

So then I don’t have to change anything when I’m about to start my workout later in the day. And what that means is I haven’t been able to sort of like make that shift or have any kind of ritual. So my mind is still kind of in work mode.

What I started doing was wearing something else after my shower, while I was working. And then gave me a sort of mini ritual just before my workout.

I would change my clothes. And I would do a little bit of stretching mobility to warm up.

And then like a Clark Kent coming out of the phone booth as Superman, I went into the bathroom as a “work me” and I came out as “workout me”.

How To Improve Your Home Workouts

There you have it. Six tips for how to improve home workouts.

A lot of them can actually apply, even if you’re going to the gym, like don’t wear your gym clothes at home, blocking out distractions, training with a friend anyways, or getting them to hold you accountable, following a structured training plan again.

So really the main one is just making sure that you’ve got that divide between work or chilling at home and actually getting your training and workout done.