Upgrade your Strength Training: Stay Strong and Hold onto Muscle at Home
By: Kieran Moore
Tags: Lifestyle, Health, Lockdown, Strength, Fitness

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When we can train with weights and in gyms, we have an easy way to vary the resistance we are putting our bodies under. Increasing this resistance is a way we can adjust the mechanical tension through our body.

Without equipment such as barbells, dumbbells, machines this can be much harder to do without using whatever you can find around the house (bag of carrots? Children? Books in a rucksack?).

To this end, it will be difficult to provide enough of a stimulus to our body to drive big gains in strength or muscle mass increases.

We have to find other ways to produce a favourable environment to bring about muscular and neurological adaptations behind strength and muscle growth.

Isometric holds

Isometric is a term meaning movements where a muscles length neither shortens or lengthens ie: no movement, or holding a position.

A common reference exercise here would be a Plank and it’s variations, but there are many ways that we can include isometrics into our training with a little imagination and willingness.

Looking at the physiology of isometrics, most of the benefits for strength and muscle growth comes from the metabolic stress (the accumulation of different metabolites in the bloodstream or working muscles) that is induced when we are holding a muscle in a highly contracted state for extended periods.

The effect this metabolic stress has is to initiate different pathways which signal further pathways in a cascade pattern. Eventually, these signals can result in the activation of processes responsible for muscle growth and strength gains.

How to do Isometric training:

Take nearly any bodyweight movement and find a position in that movement where you can feel the most tension. Generally, this will be the point that’s hardest to hold, typically at about the midway point of the movement.

Once you’ve found this position, hold it for as long as you can. Either until you start to lose the position with form breaking down or you can’t hold it any longer.

Rest anywhere from 30–60 seconds depending on how long you could hold it for and repeat for 3–5 sets as a starting point. Over time progress to longer holds, less rest, or more sets.

Some example exercises:

Wall-sits

Planks + variations

Side planks + variations

Split squats

Bear crawl holds

Pullup bar hangs

Push-up holds (Top, Halfway down, Bottom)

Single leg hinges

Static Deadlifts/squats/presses/rows (use a band or towel)

For more ideas of different movement patterns to explore check out this article:

AMRAP (As Many Reps As Possible) timed sets

Using AMRAPs with movements in a set timeframe can be another great way to promote this metabolic stress, as we saw in the isometrics.

Using these exercises on their own, as a finisher to a session or mixed in a circuit you can find plenty of variations and fun to be had here. Between sessions, you could aim to beat your reps from previous as well to add in a competitive element with yourself.

The rules here are pretty straightforward:

Keep the movements simple: Squats variations, push-ups, Bicep curls, Band rows. This is not the place to throw in complex or high-intense movements (Avoid the box jumps, weightlifting movements that require complex patterns or a high degree of cognitive/thining effort)

30–60 secs is a good starting point. Set the clock, press go and get after it.

If it’s burning, it’s working! Keep the rest periods short 30–40 secs and again repeat for 3–5 sets.

Another great way to include these is mixed together with the isometrics from before. Find movement patterns than are similar and pair them up to increase the metabolic stress effects. Try out Wall-sits + Squats, Split-squat holds + lunges, Bear-crawl holds + Push-ups.

Plyometrics for Power and CNS recruitment

Where strength is concerned (top-end strength) neuromuscular recruitment is king. In other words, strength is largely a result of more muscle fibres being used to apply force.

Power is a result of strength and speed. Essentially, the speed/rate that we can apply force (RFD).

In gyms, we can train these qualities by lifting heavy things or lifting moderately heavy things quickly.

Outside of the gym setting our best options are to use the power of Plyometrics/jumps and sprinting.

Plyometric training is an often misunderstood concept and subsequently, get completely butchered and applied poorly to training.

In developing power, movement quality is an absolute priority. As soon as things start to slow down, drop in force or get sloppy then stop. You are not doing better by doing poor quality work here.

Less = More. Specifically, Less high-quality work > More low-quality work.

How to do plyometrics properly:

Choose a jumping based exercise that is easily repeatable (Jumping onto or off of something requires too much resetting between). Exercises like Pogo hops, jump squats, Alternating jumps lunges for example.

Perform the exercise at a max effort for 8–12 seconds, as soon as it slows down/gets sloppy or you lose power STOP. The aim here is to perform the exercise with MAX EFFORT.

Rest for long amounts of time to keep the movement quality high. This should be anywhere from 40–90 seconds between sets of this length, but could easily be longer (90–120 secs) if necessary.

Repeat for 6–10 total rounds, increase only based on your ability to keep the force production quality high.

Aerobic Capacity: build your foundations

Now, this might seem counterintuitive. Surely cardio kills gains right?

Really, it depends (an unhelpful response!)

If your training leans towards that of an endurance runner training for marathons or similar then the volumes you are doing will not be conducive to getting stronger or maintaining muscle.

But the ability to both supply and use oxygen through our aerobic energy systems is a vital underpinning of our recovery and ability to handle stress (the type of stress we create through training). This is something that absolutely benefits our strength and muscle building goals.

If we can recover more effectively, we can handle more training stress and do more training volume.

Aerobic training is simple to implement, but that doesn’t always mean it has to be easy.

Here are some guidelines to follow:

Aim to be working for 20–40 mins. Less than 20 mins and your intensity will likely start to increase and you won’t be getting truly aerobic benefits. More than 40 mins and you will likely be starting to diminish the strength and muscle mass you are trying to maintain.

Choose exercises that are relatively simple, easy and don’t leave you flat out on the floor struggling for breath. Walking, slow jogging, easy circuits (mix bodyweight exercises with walking or carrying objects or short isometrics)

Keep the intensity low and pace sustainable. If you are forced to slow down or rest for long times between reps or exercises then it is probably too high intensity.

For a deeper dive into the Aerobic system and its benefits for health and performance check out this article:

Eat, Sleep, Rest & Recover:

Making sure you are getting sufficient protein and calories in your nutrition.

Aiming for 7–9 hours of quality sleep per night, ideally going to bed 2 hours before midnight.

Ensure that you are getting enough rest and recovery between sessions to let your body adapt to the training you are doing. Too much training without adequate recovery will knock you back a whole lot more than being conservative and doing too little.

This comes down to dialling in all of the big-ticket areas that make the biggest difference to our training, health and strength.

If you implement these things for a few weeks you will see the difference it has on your strength gains.