Stronger Than Your Boyfriend
Stronger Than Your Boyfriend
Re-Release: How to Structure an Effective Home Workout Routine
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Years ago, we released this episode to help folks have effective home workouts. Today, we wanted to bring it back and remind you that you can get an awesome workout without ever setting foot in the gym.
In this episode, we go over how you can structure your workouts at home, using just your body weight or sparse equipment.
We first identify the tools you have to increase the intensity of a body weight workout such as tempo work, isometric exercises, and unilateral work. We give examples of how we incorporate all of them into different movements that we do at home.
Because of people’s busy schedules, many people can only workout 3 days a week. We go over how to structure a well rounded at-home workout plan, and give an example of what that actually looks like. We talk a little bit about how breathing and intention can up-level your workout routine. And, finally, we go over what equipment is really beneficial to have at home. A pull-up bar is high up on our equipment list, because you have to get creative about adding pulling movements at home without one.
If you’re going to be working out at home for long periods of time, you need to follow a program and get a good coach who understands how to challenge you and progress you with bodyweight movements. Go to barpathfitness.com to set up a free consultation to see if one of our trainers could be that for you.
Check out our bodyweight programs. These are three-month full body programs that aim to help you create a well-rounded physique and build on your strength with a measurable upper body and lower body goal.
- Bodyweight Basics: In this program, we focus on mastering push-ups and ATG split squats.
- Bodyweight Plus: In this program, you’ll master the pull-up and possibly crank out solid reps of pull-ups. We will also teach you how to master skater and shrimp squats.
And if you want to read along, check out the blog here: How to Structure a Home Workout Routine
Welcome to the Stronger Than Your Boyfriend Podcast. A podcast for anyone into fitness, especially all you hermits out there who don't really want to leave your house. We are Heather and Katie, owners of Far Fast Fitness, here to help you sift through the bullshit and toxic misinformation that permeates the fitness industry. And if you didn't catch it from the intro, today we're talking about working out at home and how to structure at-home workouts.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I wanted to do an episode on this because I do see a lot of questions pop up about how to structure home workouts. And usually what people mean by that is how to structure bodyweight workouts. So we covered how to start strength training and what your the movements that you're going to train would look like in episode 39, I believe. It's basically just called how to start train uh how to start strength training. So those the principles that we cover in that episode apply to what we're going to talk about today, but we really didn't go over a lot of, you know, we we didn't go over a section of like, oh, if you do train at home and you don't have any equipment, what could those movements that you're doing potentially look like? So we wanted to break that down today, as well as give you some in intensity techniques that you can apply to your bodyweight training to get a little bit more out of it and to make it a little bit more challenging. So um I also think a lot of people are still, you know, they're they're still weary about going to the gym since COVID was pretty rampant, or at least when we thought we were all gonna die back in 2020 when COVID, you know, first came about. Or I usually see a lot of people, women especially, intimid intimidated to go to the gym, which we shameless plug, listen to our gym Timidation episode. We talk about, we we basically walk you through how to get get over that, I guess you should say. Yeah. Um, so yeah, in in, but like I said, we we want to just cover more of like the bodyweight focus movements because a lot of people think you can't get a good workout too much.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and some people started working out at home and they realize how much they love it. Exactly. So then they just don't want to leave now.
SPEAKER_00And I will say, a lot of my clients who were working out in gyms when we had to pivot to home workouts, they didn't have any equipment at home. So we were doing a lot of bodyweight movements. And yeah, maybe it was like six months we were doing that, and then we went back to the gym and they were like, holy shit, I feel way more stable, I feel stronger. They noticed that they didn't lose a lot of strength with their main compound lifts, like you know, barbell back, squat, side lifts, et cetera, because we're for focusing on a lot of unilateral stability and a lot of shit that they don't want to, they didn't want to do, but I basically forced them into it and it carried over a lot into their just general strength training, you know, lifting movement.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, I think a lot of people think that they can't get a good workout if they're only using their body weight. But there's this misconception that we need to be able to add load every time we work out to increase the intensity. When sure you want to progressively overload, but you can't actually use a ton of other methods to do that and make your workout harder, right? So we wanted to give some of those options to you so that you can have an effective training session when you're at home or without traditional gym equipment.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So we're basically gonna start with with going over some intensity techniques. I'm going to call them, and then we'll give an example of what a workout with your body weight would actually look like, right? So I want to start with tempo work. So the this is the easiest way to increase the intensity of your bodyweight movements you're utilizing in your workout. So, what does tempo work look like, right? Let's say you could do a million air squats and barely feel the burn, right?
SPEAKER_01Okay, let me just plug in. You know those funny like uh squat everyday um home workout things that you find on Pinterest? What what a like they start and they're doing one squat a day, and then the next day they'll do two, and then the next day do three, and then like they're doing like 700 by the end of the month or whatever. That's so dumb.
SPEAKER_00I think it's so funny. But anyway. Yeah, basically you're just I feel like you're you're doing endurance training if you're getting up to like a thousand squats a day, right? So, okay, you can do a millionaire squats, you barely feel feel the burn. Well, if you make your eccentric portion, which is the lowering part of the movement for let's say five to six seconds, and your concentric, which is the up part of the squat, five to six seconds, I guarantee you will increase the difficulty twofold of your body weight squat, and you will definitely quote unquote feel it, right? So that's just one example. You can also add in some pauses at the top of the bottom of movements as well. So maybe push-ups are super easy for you. You could do a billion of those, right? So maybe you add in the same type of technique. Maybe you're doing five, you know, five second lowering, five second, you know, up portion, but maybe you're also adding a two to three second pause at the top and bottom of the rep as well. So you're getting way more time under tension by doing that. And you'll notice like every rep is taking a shit ton of time because you're just increasing the tempo so much.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. The important thing with tempo work is that you actually time it because it sucks, right? Yeah. So in your head, you've definitely been on the descent for five seconds. And really, it's two. Yeah. And really it's been two seconds. So if you really count the seconds or you have a stopwatch or you watch the clock or whatever it is you need to do, you're gonna feel a difference here. I think I told the story of that clock in our old garage at our old house. Oh, yeah. There was like this old clock in the garage that would tick, and I was like, oh, this is great because I would just use it when I was doing tempo work. Yeah, it really helped.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And the one one note with it with the tempo work, like you have to figure out where you're at with this. Like, if you're like, oh yeah, I could do a set of 10 push-ups and you know, it's pretty challenging by the end, but I think I could add in some tempo work. Don't add in like a bunch right away. I know I said you could do like a five-second eccentric, a five-second eccentric with some pauses in between. Maybe you could do like two reps with that. So maybe just start with like a five-second lowering and then work your way up. Like if you're, you just have to know where you're at with your training, right? So if you're more of an advanced lifter, you could probably do all of the tempo work I described. But maybe, you know, a set of 10, like you could probably do more. And now we just want to do sets of six. But to make that challenging, we're gonna lower the, we're gonna do the lowering or the eccentric portion for six seconds or something like that. So with anything that like like with anything that we talk about, go slow. Like you don't need to add in everything at once just to make it difficult, just because we're talking about it here. So right.
SPEAKER_01I what is your your least favorite tempo exercise?
SPEAKER_00So I feel like most people would say the Bulgarian split squat, which is yours. But I actually think push-ups, I don't know why. Yeah, I think I have always been a weaker pusher. So I just have weaker pushing strength. So anything time under tension-wise with push-ups, like I honestly feel like I want to throw up when I do that. Really? I don't know why, not really, but like kind of. So right now, the phase, my current phase that I'm doing that my coach has me doing, we're doing a lot of push-ups as like an accessory. And he's having me doing amraps this phase, which is as many reps as possible, right? Basically, like one or two shy of failure. And like every time I'm just like, am I gonna, am I gonna finish? Am I gonna die? Like, am I gonna push back up? Am I gonna throw up? Like th that's what I'm thinking while I do those. But I'm gonna face plants. I like I love training lower body, so the split squats, I could like, yeah, it fucking sucks, but like, damn, I don't know. It feels good to me. I'm a weirdo though. Yes, you are. But yours is your least favorite is the split squats, or yeah, for sure. I love all things upper body push. That's my favorite. Okay, so you're doing a tempo push-up, you would love it. Yeah, I'd be fine with that. All right. I guess you could do one arm push-up, so whatever.
SPEAKER_01I don't know if I can anymore.
SPEAKER_00But I feel like most everyone's answer would be Bulgarian split squats. That honestly, like it's really we're gonna talk about this too, but it's really hard to load the to sorry, to increase the intensity of the lower body or loading the lower body without weights. But damn, like if you're even if you're like a seasoned lifter and you're squatting a lot, you're deadlifting a lot, and I get you doing bodyweight tempo Bulgarian split squats, like most of my clients want to cry. So keep that in mind, right? Yeah. Okay, the next intensity technique that I want to apply to your bodyweight workout is isometric. So isometric exercise is just a contraction where you're creating tension in your muscles in a static position, right? So the muscle length stays the same when you're performing the movement. So there's no eccentric or concentric contraction during the movement, like I was talking about with my squat and push-up, for example, um, a little bit earlier. I think that isometrics are super underrated and pretty rarely utilized by most people. And in most programs, I see, right? I love isometrics to improve strength at certain positions of the movement. So I've talked about this um in our pull-up podcast or how to get your first pull-up. Um, so with the pull-up, for example, it's the best way you could build strength to actually get like full reps is to strengthen the end range and the top range of the movement. So essentially you're doing an isometric hold with your chin over the bar for 10 to 20 seconds to build strength, right? So that's gonna solidify the top part of the movement. And then uh basically like to work your way up to um uh from the starting position, you want to strengthen the full hang position with your arms fully locked out. So generally I like to see people be able to hang for you know 60 seconds or so, right? So that's just one example of how you can re-utilize isometrics, if especially if you're trying to achieve a certain skill. Like you can apply this to push-ups too. You can, you know, maybe hover right above the floor if you're um with your arms bent at 90 degrees, maybe you're hovering right there and just holding for 10 to 20 seconds. So that's just another example. Another nice benefit of adding in some isometric exercises is that you don't get really super sore from them, um, even when introduced as a novel stimulus, because you don't have that um lengthening under load, which is the eccentric part. Most people just throw in like planks is their isometric exercise. Um, but you can really make your workout intense if you're doing them right. So, okay, I'm gonna give a really cool example of this. We're gonna go back to the push-up here because most people are gonna think, all right, upper body push, I'm gonna do a push-up if I'm training with my body weight at home. So let's try to make this harder with an isometric movement. So, it in order to do this, you're going to protract your shoulders as much as possible. What I mean when I say protraction is pulling the shoulder blades forward, or even you can even think of it as rounding your upper back, or I don't want you to like round your whole back. I feel like people will kind of get confused with this, but think of like you're pulling your shoulder blades forward to make your upper back kind of look like a cat that's scared.
SPEAKER_01I think of separating the shoulder blades. That's even better. Love that.
SPEAKER_00Separating the shoulder blades, right? So you're protracting the shoulders and then you get into the isometric hold position. And as you're doing that, you're going to shift your weight forward into your fingertips as much as you can handle, right? This is way harder than it looks. You're essentially taking a lot of the loading out of the legs and putting more of it into the shoulders and obviously the core a little bit too. If you're a more advanced lifter, you can think about incorporating um some more like advanced calisthenics movement, like calisthenics movements like this. Um, you know, you could do obviously, like if you're if you're more advanced, you can do like lean forward push-up. So essentially the the position that I just described, now you're doing a trying to do a full push-up in that position. And let me just tell you, from someone who can do a million push-ups, even though I hate them, I could do maybe like when I first started doing this variation of of push-ups, I could maybe do like five. So that's how more intense it makes the movement. Granted, you want to make sure that your wrists are prepared for this. Like if we need to work on your wrist mobility and strength a little bit before we do this, then yes, you know, make sure you talk to your coach or just kind of look it up on Google or YouTube some videos on how to build your wrist strength. But um, you could also, if you have the uh a bar set up, like a pull-up bar, you can do like tuck lever holds or more different or different um planch variations. You probably if if you're you some of you might have have no idea what I'm talking about, but if you're a little bit more advanced, you can look these up and this might this might apply to you, it might not, but this just some examples of isometrics.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so even in competitive power lifting, there are serious benefits using isometrics, right? Yeah. So one of my favorite ways to train power off the chest, for example, is with an empty barbell and then pins placed on the rack just above the start of the lift. I know this isn't a bodyweight movement, but I just wanted to demonstrate that compared to like someone who can lift, you know, one to two times their body weight load on bench, like a competitive athlete, even they will use an empty bar and isometrics to create more force and power off the chest in their movements. So it really is beneficial in in all areas and really is, can be a really, really great add-on to your program no matter your level.
SPEAKER_00Well, I would even say like the example that I gave with the lean forward pushup, even just an isometric hold or full range of motion push-ups, that would seriously carry over to their bench press strength. And you don't have to be a competitive power lifter to do this either. Like if you're just trying to increase your strength overall, like I think isometrics are a really good addition to your program. But it's funny, I feel like we've given this example before, like the the power lifter who could deadlift like 500 pounds, but then you'd have them do like a single leg toe-touch or single leg hinge with no body weight, they can barely do it. So it's like you probably need some of this anyways. So totally, totally.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so uh we went over isometrics um the tempo. The last thing to challenge yourself, like Katie was just saying, if you're doing an at-home workout, is to ensure that some, if not most, of your movements are unilateral, right? Single leg or single arm stability and strength are key to getting stronger and correcting any imbalances you have when you make when you do bilateral movements, right? And can guarantee a single side anything is harder than using both appendages.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so you're probably if you're just more of an intermediate, like you've had some experience with train with strength training, you probably are gonna use a lot of the unilateral work with the lower body, just because, like I said, it's really hard to increase the intensity with just your body weight. So at some point you probably will need some load. But you know, again, like we're gonna work with what you got. So a lot of the the movements with uh upper with uh lower body, sorry, are should be done unilaterally, in my opinion. Unless you're a pure beginner, like yes, you should master bilateral body weight squats, bilateral bodyweight hinges, things like that. But for most people listening, I feel like they have some experience doing that. So um, I just feel like unilateral upper body work, like you know, with pushing, like we're not doing one arm push-ups. Like I don't even think really advanced lifters can do can do that.
SPEAKER_01I think that some of them could do like a high boxer bench, single arm, lowering kneecam. Yeah, yeah. I do think that is, I actually feel like I've done that before with uh a client who was like an intermediate lifter. They weren't like a competitive athlete or anything, but yeah, they have they were pretty strong.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But it was just a very high box. And the really cool thing about these bodyweight movements, like let's say you're doing that, for example. You're doing maybe, maybe that is your goal. Let's just say a one-arm push-up is your goal. And maybe doing it uh, you know, a single arm eccentric push-up to a box is too much for you. The really cool thing about body weight is that you can use your body for assistance as well to kind of to build up strength. So let's say that's even too hard. Maybe you're lightly supporting yourself with your opposite hand as you lower, and then over time you're just gonna go, okay, I'm gonna take one finger off the box, and then I'm gonna take another one until you get, you're getting just like lightly uh assistance from like maybe like one fingertip, right? And then you're getting the full, you know, one arm push up eccentric to the box on that one side, right? So it's really cool. It there are so many different ways to train with your body weight and to actually make it intense. You just have to know what you're doing and have to um totally, you know, work on incorporating these techniques. So um, okay, I want to go into an example now of how to structure a workout program if you're training at home. So, like we plugged in the beginning, you definitely need to incorporate our eight foundational movement patterns. So we talk about that in the how to how to start strength training episode. Um, we actually talk in depth about all of those and what those look like. So we're gonna structure this as a three full, three full body day or three-day per week full body workout. I don't know why that didn't come out that well. Because realistically, that's what we see as the training split that tends to be the most realistic for people. And that's what most of our clients are currently on. Three days of full body lifting, whether it be body weight, whether it be with weights. Um, so okay, exercise one. We're gonna make it a unilateral unilateral lower body pushing movement. So let's do Heather's favorite, a Bulgarian split squat. Um, or we could do a knees over toes one. Um kind of just depends on where you're at and what you need to work on. But the Bulgarian split squat, so you're elevating your foot probably on your couch or a desk or whatever that doesn't do back. Yeah, your back foot. And then your working leg is just on the floor, your foot is flat on the floor, and you're just gonna drop that knee that's elevated on the couch down to the floor, feel a nice little stretch in that quad and a little burn in the front quad, and you're gonna push back up. And whatever intensity technique you're applying, great. If you're adding in tempo and a pause at the bottom, that sounds amazing. Have fun with that. Um, as far as sets and reps, like you know, that is just gonna depend on your programming, your structure. But maybe you're doing sets of 10 at first and just see how that feels. If it's easy, you could do more. If it's if you don't want to do more, then maybe you can just add in more tempo work. So there's a couple different ways to go about it. So um, so that's gonna be that's gonna be exercise one. If you want to do the knees over toe split squat variation two, that's really good. If you want to work on, you know, ankle mobility, your um hip extension, so your hip flexor uh flexibility mobility, this would be a really good one for you. So um we talk about both of those a lot in yeah, we have YouTube videos. Yeah, we have YouTube videos too. So that's exercise one. Exercise two, since um, like I said, the since the lower body is so hard to overload with just body weight, I want to do two lower body movements back to back. So that way you're a little fatigued from the split squads. Now we're gonna go right into um a unilateral hinge type movement, right? So I love, I talked about it earlier, the single leg hinge for that, um, for this option. So essentially you're just doing, um, you're lifting your back leg, your slight bend in your working knee or on the on the working side. You're just gonna try to touch your toe on the floor while hinging your, hinging your hips backwards. So the important thing is here is your pelvic position. You wanna make sure you're maintaining an anterior pelvic tilt and you're not rounding your back, your upper back, to reach low. You can do it a little bit, but there's some nuances from person to person. You just don't want to make, you don't want to look like a dog taking a shit as you try to reach down towards your toe, right? So you don't want a big hump in your back. You want, try to keep a nice quote unquote flat back as you do this, and you'll really feel a nice little semi-stretch in the hamstring, but a lot of the load's gonna be placed in your glutes.
SPEAKER_01So I think that I need to pause here and talk about my appreciation for body weight single leg hinging movements. Yes. Because I was deadlifting a lot. Um, and you know, I would still have back issues. And just because I was a strong, like a decently strong deadlifter didn't mean that I understood what like my pelvic stability, nor did I have it mastered. So it was interesting because I would have all these back issues, et cetera, et cetera. And then Katie had me really like step back and add to my program a focus on hinging with an anterior pelvic tilt and like single leg stuff. And oh my goodness, it's just it was like so humbling. Like I can literally hinge like a few inches before I lose my pelvic position. And that's huge because now we're thinking about the deadlift and how when you lift all this weight off the floor, you want to maintain the position you start in. And if you can't do that, you should not be lifting three times your body weight. Yeah, right. And I can't do that. So that really was like eye-opening and made me take a step back and really focus on fixing some things before I hurt myself even worse.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, this is why this stuff is so important in general. Like, let's say you do have access to a gym and you love going to a gym, maybe you incorporate this, you know, these two movements, or if maybe if you're deadlifting, maybe you're incorporating the single leg hinge in your deadlift or in your warm-up for your deadlift, like you do now. Yeah. So it's really it could be a blessing in disguise if you do have a setback. Maybe you you don't have access to a gym right now. Like, don't just think, okay, I'm gonna try to maintain the gains that I've made. But no, you could make some serious gains, and it will carry over to when you either start training at the gym with barbells and dumbbells and et cetera, et cetera, or you know, getting back into it, even if you were competitive like Heather. Heather was the bro who deadlifted three times her body weight, but couldn't, you know, hinge on one leg. So she was that bro.
SPEAKER_01I don't think it was quite three times. It was close. It was close. It was like 10 pounds off. Yeah, very close. Yeah. Anyway, um, all of these exercises, by the way, that we're talking about, if you're if you want a visual, there is a blog that accompanies this or an article, whatever you want to call it, on our website, and we will have this full workout with YouTube videos. So you can you can just click on that in the show notes and it will take you to the workout. You can you literally have a free workout program. Yeah, you can call this for four to six weeks. Okay, so we did the lower body um of our uh at home workout. Now we're moving into upper body. Remember, we want to get a push and a pull because we're doing those foundational movements. We've talked about the push-ups a lot. We've talked about adding tempo to make it harder. Let's talk about making it easier, right? So if you're someone who cannot do a full push-up or you think you can do a full push-up, but it looks like it looks like asshole. It looks like crossfit reps. No, no, no shame. No shame. You know, all of us be aware. Um, so a lot of people, what they do to modify this, if you will, is go to their knees. I am gonna recommend not to do that because the problem with going onto your knees is it really changes the movement quite a bit and it doesn't necessarily work you toward getting better at a full push-up, right? Um it's kind of like using a band with pull-ups, right? Yes, there is a benefit there. You're going to get some sort of stimulus, it's gonna assist you. But if you want to get better at the actual movement, let's find a more similar variation with more carryover at an easier angle, right? Yeah. So we recommend elevating your hands on a surface, right? Like your couch or the arm of your couch or a table or a chair, wherever you have to start, that you can get a full range of motion push-up on your toes. Let's get your hands as high as you need.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So another way you could work, uh, build work to building strength for full reps is doing eccentric. So I do this with a lot of my clients right now. Um, we so my client G, who she was on, she was on here on this uh podcast. Shout out, G. Cash at Grave Carbs. Uh, we do a lot of, we're working to build up her push up strength. And and like she talked about in the episode, she trains at home with a lot of her body weight and just a few light dumbbells. And we're doing a lot of push up eccentric. So we're Just having her slow down the lowering, and that's the whole movement. So I'm having her lower from the the full push-up slash plank position, lower her chest all the way to the floor, and I'm making her do it for like 10 to 12 seconds. So that's a really good way and has a little bit more carryover than the knee push-ups because, like Heather said, you want it does it changes the angle and the leverage a little bit, and you want to a big part of maintaining strength in in the push-up to actually have good form is to uh make sure that your pelvic position is in the proper position as well. So I said position a lot there, sorry. Um, so you're you're not really gonna be able to train that posterior pelvic tilt, which is what we want when you're on your knees. It's a lot harder to do that. So really build doing it to an incline will help you build your core strength as you're doing this as well, which will carry over a lot more. Yes. And you wanna get so I like the eccentric. So doing that, working through the the full range of motion of the pushup, and then to get accumulate more volume. Maybe the other day we're doing like um reps to an elevated surface, just so we're getting it a little bit more volume and going through a full range of motion versus just the eccentric. So I like that too. So cool.
SPEAKER_01Um, so then like that's making them easier, right? And then if you want to make push-ups harder, we talked about tempo, we talked about pauses, we talked about how you could try single arm eccentrics if you're super strong. Uh don't recommend until you're advanced.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But um, you can also make push-ups harder by adding a decline, right? So we elevated your hands to make it easier. If we elevate your feet, it could make it a little bit harder.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Just be careful with that one. Yeah. People, people have some interesting setups I've seen with the deficit push-ups, really. But yeah. But yeah, as long as your your torso position looks good and the angle is right, like sometimes people they the angle is way too high. Yeah. So it's like a mix between like a handstand and a regular pushup. So now it just looks weird. So uh I I don't, I don't really don't have a recommendation, especially with with the the setup you have at home. I don't really have anything to recommend. Just make sure if you take take a video and make sure it's not too high. So it looks like a weird breed between handstand push-ups and regular push-ups.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay, cool. Um, for the pull, so we've done the push exercise. For the pull exercise, these are harder to come up with, right? Because you don't have equipment and gravity exists. So we we have to find angles that work against gravity when we're pulling, right? So I ideally you get yourself a pull-up bar or some sort of bar uh for your doorway or whatever. Yeah, so that you can do pull-ups or progress to them over time. But if not, um, you could do something like a prone pullback as your option. And again, all of these videos will be in the blog, but it's basically when you're lying prone on your belly and you kind of, I don't know if windmill is the right word, your hands like above your head and you slowly go, woo, in a circle, you can't see me. You pull them back and you retract your scapula back and down.
SPEAKER_00They're having fun with this one. So I'm over here dancing. Yeah, she's basically over here dancing, having a really good time. She's doing it in the air.
SPEAKER_01So yes, just look at the video on the blog.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but essentially you're yeah, your palms are gonna be facing each other, and then you're gonna slowly lift your head up as you're pinching, really focusing on pinching your shoulder blades back and down and really feeling that squeeze in the upper back.
SPEAKER_01So that's a better explanation than mine.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, so the the intent matters a lot, which we're gonna talk about too. But with this one especially, with any pulling movements, you have to really focus on squeezing the shit out of your back. So, but I would highly recommend getting a pull-up bar. They're what, like 30 or 40 bucks. I don't know, yeah. That you can put in your doorway, and then we can start working on some pull-ups. So cool. Okay, let's get a rotational movement in there. I love windmills for this. So with the windmill, there are a couple different ways I've seen people do it, but I like, so you're um set up your feet about shoulder width apart. Okay, one arm is gonna be overhead, so your shoulder is nice and stacked. So the arm overhead is completely locked out, right? You're really trying to create tension in that shoulder, and then you're gonna slowly rotate. So let's say your right arm is the arm that's locked out overhead. You're gonna slowly rotate down towards your left leg. You're basically trying to get your palm in the middle of your feet, so in between your two feet with your left arm as you lower. And you can have a slight bend in you in your knee as you do this. But if you really want to maximize the quote unquote stretch you're feeling in your hamstrings, you can keep your legs locked out. So if you need that, uh if you if your hamstrings are pretty immobile, then I would recommend bending your knees as you do this. And then as you do it, go nice and slow. So you basically want to focus make sure you're getting that nice torso rotation. And at the bottom position, you should be looking up towards your right hand that's overhead, right? So I really like to do start people, even if they have access to a gym, um, with their body weight with these, because um, it's a pretty there's a lot going on in this movement, but it's a really good rotational movement, and you can progress to eventually holding a kettlebell or whatever overhead if you have access to it. So, which pretty much all these movements you can progress to holding weight um if you have access to it.
SPEAKER_01So is that the same as a bent press? What? When you have a kettlebell in your hand and you you do like the windmill and then you press it?
SPEAKER_00No, so this one, your arm is fully locked out the whole time. Okay, okay. So yeah, I know what movement you're talking about. That's not it. Okay. The windmill, specifically, like your arm, your shoulder is stacked. Like we want that overhead position as you're rotating. All right.
SPEAKER_01So I just don't know the names for movements still, but it's fine.
SPEAKER_00What do you do?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay, so you could do a simple workout like this, like we talked about two days a week, three days a week, whatever. Um, or and you can take these same principles, the foundational movement patterns, and apply them to a different workout, right? So, you know, this the squat, the hinge, the push, the pull, the rotation, um, things like that. Um, maybe you're doing, you know, for example, maybe you're doing bilateral squats, bilateral hinges, a side plank hold. Uh, maybe you're getting pretty strong and you can start doing like chest to wall handstand holds for an upper body push, Katie's favorite. Um everyone's favorite. Yes, everyone's favorite. Uh, these are much harder than you think. Uh, just make sure that you're staying with the same workout for three to six weeks before switching it up, right? Or the same workouts. Like, so if you do, even if you do three different workouts in that week, you're gonna repeat those same three workouts for three to six weeks, right? Because like we've talked about before, you're going to want to um wow, why can't I think of the word? Not acclimate. Uh progress. What what's the adapt? Adapt. Oh. Wow. Okay. My brain. You're going to want time to adapt um to these movements, and that and that takes time, right? We got we have to have the time for that adaptation to take place. So don't change your workouts, your rest periods, your rep ranges, all that every single week, right? Stick with the same workouts for these six weeks. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So the workout that we described, there's five exercises. You know, every person can be different, right? If you have more time, you can add in a little bit more. I would recommend like probably another upper body pulling movement if you have time. Um, and I like the windmill one just because it does, it gets that rotation and also works your core too. So um, but then yeah, like we'll we're gonna write up the the other workout too. So like maybe this this workout, we're doing a lot of unilateral work. And then for the for the second workout, maybe we're working on a lot of time undertention with bilateral squats, hinges, et cetera, et cetera. Right. So we'll write up two workouts. And again, you basically have a free workout program if you work out at home. So click the link in the show notes. Yeah, those. Um so yeah, I honestly, I think that if you're a beginner at strength training, I think this is the way to go in general. I don't think you need to go to the gym at first. I think you can get it done in the the comfort of your own home because these movements are literally foundational, right? They're gonna build not only strength, but your mobility and stability at the same time as well. So that's why, like when my clients, I had to shift on the shift them to bodyweight workouts at home when COVID was happening. It carried over so much because it's like these things are important to train and they're just so foundational and you'll just feel a lot stronger, um, carried over to your weighted movements while doing these. So if you're a beginner, start with these, really. Um, you can listen to the how to start strength training episode just to get like more in-depth kind of analysis on the movements that we recommend. But yeah, I would just follow this and you'll be you'll be able to do that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and it'll help you build your confidence before you even have to set foot in the gym. So then you know that you're you move well once you move get into the gym, and then you'll be a lot more confident to add that weight.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. So another thing I will add is that with doing workouts at home and mostly utilizing your body weight for resistance is to do each movement with intention, right? So sometimes you'll go to the gym and kind of, you know, just go through the motions and you have added load, you know, the weights you're using as a kind of a buffer in a sense. It's still providing, you know, a somewhat extreme load to the body and telling it to adapt, even if your head isn't completely in the workout. For these bodyweight movements, your head needs to be 100% in it every single set and rep. Okay. Focus on feeling each muscle that you're working and creating so much tension there, you'll be surprised by how effective that is. And if you do have access to a gym, do that too with your weighted movements. But it's it's even more important when you're training with your body weight because mind muscle connection is real. And if you don't have any outside forces helping you do that, you have to really, really focus on it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think if you ever look at any like really good calisthenics person or gymnast, that they have such control with their body weight, and it's because of the discipline it requires to do bodyweight workouts. Like you really do, like Katie's saying, have to be intentional and focus. And that's why I like to go to the gym a lot because sometimes I don't want to do that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, cop-out. I know. I need to be more disciplined with that. So yeah. If you have watched like high-level gymnastics, like they they're doing these movements and they look like they don't fuck around, y'all. Like they're most of the movements they do is body weight, but damn, it's it looks intense. They they move so beautifully, and it's really awesome to watch too, just because they put in the reps of just slowing it down, focusing on the breathing, focusing on you know the tension they're they're creating and just mastering their their body. Yeah, it's impressive. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So you also um while you're doing this stuff, um, I don't even know. We've talked about it in a few episodes, but you'll want to go back uh to some of those and listen to when we talk about diaphragmatic breathing, right? And you you do definitely want to use that when you're working with your body weight, move with your breath, um, understand the breathing. That's part of the whole intention here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that, yeah, exactly. I think that is one of the best ways to move to utilize these movements with intention, right? So is I think the best episode that um that we have for that is the interview with Christina, Dr. Christina Molly. Yeah, we should have a lot of things. She explains it really, really well. So if you haven't listened to that, go back if you don't know what we're talking about with diaphragmatic breathing. There's gonna be a lot of links in these show notes. I guess. Oh. So, okay. Um if you're doing home workouts, it well, okay, let me just backtrack a little bit. I feel like people, a lot of people that I've seen, they do home workouts and then they eventually want to add some equipment to their space, right? Which is totally normal. Like if you have access to to be able to do that, that's great. Um even if you have access to like already already like a couple set of dumbbells or kettlebells or a set of resistance bands, like you can you can still take these workouts, you know, what we've basically broken down today and and use the equipment that you have, even if it's just lightweights um or bands, right? So if you want to build out your home gym, I want to go over order of importance of slowly integrating some equipment, right? So first things first, get a set of resistance bands because they're cheap and really versatile, right? Um, you can pretty much hook them up anywhere. I don't think, yeah, I don't really need to. You can also not hook them up and still get some pulling in. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, if you do need to hook them up for certain exercises, they can pretty much just hook into your doorway, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I think so. Yeah, a lot of them come with the thing you can put on the attachment. Yeah. And they're in like I said, they're really around a tree or you know, whatever.
SPEAKER_00Go outside. Yeah. Good times. So next most most important piece of equipment is a pull-up bar. Yes. So these are also fairly cheap. They could just go in your doorway, right? And it's a it's a nice, easy addition. If you have a set of resistance bands and a pull-up bar, you're really good to go. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And if you live in a nice climate where you can work outside all year long, you could do this at a playground.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. You can just go to a playground. I don't even need a pull-up bar. Yeah. They most playgrounds have monkey bars, so just use that as your pull-up bar. So um, okay, the next thing or the next pieces of equipment to add are is gonna be things like your dumbbells and kettlebell sets. So I really recommend if you are gonna going to add some dumbbells, get some adjustable dumbbells. That way you don't have to like build out a whole rack and and try to buy like, you know, these sets of dumbbells every time. Yeah, because if you're going up to like 50 pound dumbbells, two 50 pound dumbbells is a shit ton of money. Yeah. So I like the the adjustable dumbbells, it'll definitely be an investment, but it'll be like the equipment, you'll get uh basically five pound dumbbells up to I think some of them can go up to 100 now. But well, I don't know. That's crazy. Maybe I don't know. I don't know, I could be lying, but at least 50. So you're getting 1950s, yeah. So you're paying the same amount as you would for just one set of like 50 pound dumbbells or whatever. So it's a and it's in it's an investment, but it's definitely worth it. And then if okay, if you have space, you could potentially thinking about building your home gym with a rack. Um, but it again, it's not necessary, but some of you fitness enthusiasts might want to buy that. And we have a pretty cheap rack. I mean, not cheap as in like bad. It's it was just cheap to buy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was a good deal. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So we got a barbell, we got the plates, um, like every set, right? 10.
SPEAKER_01Well, we did like a big set of bumper plates. Oh, right. Right. So the 45s, the I think there's even 35s, right? Yeah, there's 45s, 35s, 45s, 10s. Then we had to get like the smaller plates, the fives and the twos, and then we ended up getting some metal plates too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but that was the that was an addition over time. Yeah, yeah, over time. But the rack also has a pull-up bar, so it's a nice, you know, kind of two for one deal there. So um, like I said, my our client G, she trains at home and is getting strong as shit. She just has some uh light dumbbells and bands and a pull-up bar, and she's getting crazy strong, which is awesome. So again, listen to that episode.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, yeah. The most important thing to know if you're going to be working at out at home for long periods of time is that you still need to follow a program. Okay. And you can get a pretty damn good one if you've got a good coach who understands how to challenge you and progress you with body weight movements. Cough, cough me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So, yes, just kind of piggybacking off of that. If you are working at home and you're on Instagram, please don't follow Instagram workouts. Like if your program is having you jumping around doing a bunch of burpees and like mountain climbers and like jumping on your couch and back down, please don't do that. Please listen to this and follow it. And I promise you, you'll get way better results. Yes, yes. Those are okay to do occasionally on vacation for fun. Yeah, we've done that before.
SPEAKER_01Maybe. Maybe, maybe, maybe. I don't know about that. All right, awesome, cool. Well, if you liked this episode, please share it with your friends. We would really appreciate if you could go into your podcast app and leave us a rating and maybe even a review. It really does help with visibility.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, help our little small business drive. Yeah, and follow us on the social media at BarFestFit at BarFestFitness on Instagram, a little bit of TikTok, join our Facebook group, join me to boyfriend, and you can email us if you're cool too. All right, get peace out.