The Complete Guide to Home Workouts ( MEN )

 Get motivated

Maintain workout mojo to achieve your goals!

Set realistic, measurable goals Don't set yourself up for a fall with unrealistic aims such as losing a stone in a week.A measurable goal, such as wanting to lift 80kg on the bench press, will give you focus and you can track your progress.

Change your routine Every two weeks, change up your routine. It could be a tiny thing such as the exercise order, or variations of a move. This keeps your workouts fresh and gives your body the stimulus it needs to keep progressing.

Give it five minutes If you're struggling, get into your workout kit asap and have everything set up the night before. Start with five minutes; you'll probably end up doing your full workout. If you're unmotivated to carry on, study your goals and routine to see why. Perhaps you need a change of scene, or some new kit. Negative, limiting thoughts are easily beaten if you take a step back to reassess.

Keep a training diary Recording and seeing your progression down on paper gives you great motivation. You don't have to record every detail of your workout, you could just write down your performance for the two biggest lifts in your workout. That will also help you realise when you need to change your routine because you'lleasily spot when you've stopped progressing.

Working out at home is an accessible way of getting fit and stronger. This guide tells you all you need to know to hit your muscle targets

M elcome to the Complete Guide To Home Workouts, your comprehensive resource for exercising at home. Think of this guide as your personal trainer in booklet form, no matter if you're a complete beginner to exercise, or an experienced home fitness fan. Firstly, consult your GP before embarking on a new fitness regime if you have any concerns. For example if you have any personal or family history of a heart condition, or previous injuries or illnesses that could be worsened by exercise. By using the exercises, advice and workouts in this guide, you'll develop a lean and muscular physique. The moves and training systems we've selected will give you great results, whether you've been working out for years - or are a fitness fledgling! The exercise demonstration pages show you how to perform effective moves with perfect form, while the workout pages give you some examples of common training methods. You can then design your own workouts by arranging your exercises according to the principles of the best training method that you have chosen for yourself. All you have to do is make sure

that you structure your workouts to give your muscles progressively tougher training challenges. Working out at home is incredibly accessible because you can start without having to buy any kit. If you want to make fantastic progress, buying simple equipment such as dumb-bells and a gym ball will allow you to do a wide variety of workouts, helping you to keep progressing and stay motivated. What's in the guide? This guide starts with a clear and full guide to basic training theory. By understanding the key variables involved in a workout, such as the number of sets and reps you perform, you stand a better chance of achieving the body that you've always wanted. The exercise demonstration and workout pages of the book are split into chapters focusing on different bits of kit. The first contains all the best moves you can do by using bodyweight alone, as well as some sample workouts you can use depending on what you want to get out of your training sessions. That's followed by a chapter on dumb-bells and gym balls, which includes a gear guide, multiple muscle-building moves and three intense sample workouts. The extra kit chapter explores how adding a few simple items such as a pull-up bar, medicine ball and resistance band - which is what the exercises that follow focus on - can allow you to train in new, interesting and productive ways. The barbell and bench and chapter complete the training section and show you how to use big moves for maximum muscle growth. What else should I know? What you eat has as much of an impact on your shape as the amount of training you do, so be sure to keep your diet in check. Our nutrition guides such as Meals That Make Muscle (from shop.kelsey.co.uk/ subscription/MEG) explain how vital it is to support fitness with nutrition.

Don't let these common muscle myths hamper your training

Myth: Weight training will make you bulky Reality: Even if you train regularly you won't suddenly sprout huge muscles. Training properly will increase your muscle size, but this happens over time. If you don't want your workouts to have a muscle-building effect, you need to adjust key variables, such as how many reps you perform, so they have more of either a strength or endurance effect than a muscle gain one. Myth: Enough sit-ups give you a six-pack Reality: Doing crunches will strengthen and define your abs but it will do little to remove any body fat that's hiding them. You can't lose fat from any one part of your body so, if you want to shift your spare tyre, eat healthily and perform exercises that burn lots of calories too.

Myth: It's safer to lift weights slowly Reality: In rehabilitation, patients perform exercises at a slow tempo to retrain their bodies to move smoothly – a tactic used in gyms too. If you're always in control of the lifting and lowering phases of an exercise there's little risk ofinjury. Indeed, performing reps with speed trains the muscles to react quickly in unexpected, real-world situations, which is how you protect yourself from injury. It also activates more muscle fibres. leading to greater gains. 

Myth: Machines are safer than free weights Reality: The makers of weights machines advertise that their equipment isolates target muscles and prevents injury by eliminating room for error. But the restrictive movements of machines might actually increase the risk of injury.Machines are rigid and therefore limit natural movement. Free weights make your body adjust naturally through the exercise's range of motion according to your strength level, speed of movement, and proficiency.

Myth: More training means more muscle Reality: Muscle growth happens while you're recovering, not while you're working out. If you don't leave enough time between sessions, you won't let your muscles complete the repair process that makes them bigger and stronger.

If you're new to weight training, follow this advice to avoid injury

Warm up properly Always warm up properly before any exercise (p12) to stay injury free.

Stop if it hurts injury. Indeed, performing reps with speed trains the muscles to react quickly in unexpected, real-world situations, which is how you protect yourself from injury. It also activates more muscle fibres. leading to greater gains. Myth: Machines are safer than free weights Reality: The makers of weights machines advertise that their equipment isolates target muscles and prevents injury by eliminating room for error. But the restrictive movements of machines might actually increase the risk of injury. Machines are rigid and therefore limit natural movement. Free weights make your body adjust naturally through the exercise's range of motion according to your strength level, speed of movement, and proficiency. Myth: More training means more muscle Reality: Muscle growth happens while you're recovering, not while you're working out. If you don't leave enough time between sessions, you won't let your muscles complete the repair process that makes them bigger and stronger. If you're new to weight training, follow this advice to avoid injury If you feel pain at any time during your workout, stop. The saying 'no pain, no gain' is for old-school PE teachers who don't know what they're talking about. Working through pain could do serious damage to muscles, joints or tendons.

Watch your form

Maintain perfect form for each repetition of every exercise, which is detailed in this guide. If you don't have good form you won't get the full benefit of the time and effort of exercise and may injure yourself.

Start light

Pick a weight you can manage easily the first time you perform any lifting. This way you can perfect your performance first, then build up weight over time.

Brace your core

You can help to stabilise your body and reduce your injury risk by engaging your core during an exercise. To do this, start by ensuring that you are standing or sitting up straight with your hips in line with your torso. Now imagine that someone is about to punch you in the stomach and you have to tense your abdominal muscles to take the blow. You need to maintain that contraction throughout the move to protect your lower back from muscle strains.

Keep training - and measuring

Bad news: your body won't magically stay buff once you hit your goals. Stick to healthy eating (the odd cheat is ok), and tweak cardio and weight regimes if you notice unwanted gains or losses.

Use the following advice to create workouts that will help you achieve your exercise goals

S knowing what you want to achieve, what exercises you're going to do, or how you're going to perform them... is not going to give you optimum results. To achieve workout aims, design and stick to a specific programme. Of course you can't do that without understanding key variables involved in how you perform each move. The main are:

Repetitions - Also known as reps, this is the number of times you lift a weight or perform a move within a set.

Sets - Reps done back to back.

Rest - Rest between sets/moves.

Tempo -The speed of your reps.

IFrequency - How often you performaworkout.

Once you know the variables, you then decide how to use them to achieve your muscle-building goals. There is, however, no such thing as the perfect muscle-building routine. You simply need basic knowledge of what makes your muscles grow. For example resistance exercises create microscopic tears in your muscles. Your body then responds to this stimulus and your muscles repair themselves to become bigger and stronger than before. But if you repeat the same workout, your body will stop adapting to the stimulus and your gains will plateau. To avoid that, make sure you regularly alter the variables described on the left. The most common and effective methods of grouping exercises have been given workout names. These names tell you broadly what the session involves so, for example, a superset workout will typically involve doing pairs of exercises performed back to back, resting between sets of pairs of exercises rather than sets of individual exercises. More information about these common routines can be found in the workouts section of each kit chapter as you progress through the rest of the guide. But remember, there's no one way to address workout variables. That's partly because people respond to training in different ways and partly because strength and conditioning research is always evolving. Having said that, it's rare for new findings to challenge credible workout research.

Repetitions

The number of reps per set for each exercise is, arguably, the most important variable. Rep numbers affect all other variables and impact whether your goal is developing muscle strength, size or endurance. Strength coaches generally agree certain rep ranges have particular training effects and these are shown in the box overleaf. Low reps, e.g. 1-8 are best for strength; between 8-12 reps is best for adding muscle mass; and 12-20 reps will develop muscle endurance. In each case, to get the desired effect, aim to reach failure. This is where you are unable to complete another rep without compromising perfect form on the final set. If you reach your target rep and feel you could perform more, then you need heavier weights! As well as people responding to resistance training differently, separate muscles in the body respond differently depending on function. For example, slowtwitch muscle fibres - which are smaller fibres used in longdistance endurance exercise - will get strength gains at a higher rep range. Fast-twitch muscle fibres are the larger fibres involved in short, explosive movements. And whilst this guide is great to learn about losses and gains and plan for home workouts, if you have any niggling doubts, book a one-off personal trainer for a face-to-face tutorial on kit and form. 

Sets

The usual weight training guide is to do three sets of ten to 12 reps, as that allows you to fatigue your muscles in a time that maximises training effect. Current guidelines from the American College Of Sports Medicine (ACSM), for example, say beginners should do 1-3 sets of 8-12 reps. The number of sets you perform should be directly linked to your number of reps. Generally, the two should be inversely related, so the more sets you do the fewer reps you perform and vice versa. Studies show the most effective workout duration for strength and muscle building is about 45 minutes. After that, training efforts can be counterproductive because testosterone levels drop and stress hormone levels rise, so the number of exercises in your workout should affect how many sets you perform. If you include a high number of exercises in your workout you may need to reduce the sets per exercise you perform. Your level of experience should also be a factor. If you're very new to training, you may want to consider doing just one or two light sets of each exercise to get your muscles used to performing the movements without overstressing them. As you improve, you can steadily increase the total sets you complete. Experienced lifters get better strength and hypertrophy (muscle growth) results by doing more sets with fewer repetitions. That's why the ACSM guidelines for advanced weight trainers suggest doing 3-6 sets of up to 12 reps to maximise that muscle growth.

Tempo

The number of sets and reps you perform isn't the only variable that How reps affect your training determines the training effect you'll get from your workouts. The speed at which you complete each phase of a rep also plays a part. For example, doing ten repetitions of a biceps curl, as fast as possible won't have the same effect on your muscles as doing the move slowly. To maximise strength and size gains, conditioning research suggests that your muscles should be under tension for between 40 to 70 seconds per set, provided you're not using extremely low repetition ranges. Lifting in this way uses more anaerobic energy, which produces lactate and prompts the release of

Training principles

growth hormones and testosterone. It's also important to use the right lifting speed within a rep. To make sure your muscles are under tension for long enough, take one second to lift the weight, pause then take two to three seconds to lower. The reason you should take longer to lower the weight is that size gains are best made during the eccentric (lowering) phase of the lift. Taking your time will also help you recruit stabilising muscles, which protect your joints and support bigger muscles when you attempt heavy lifts. Another benefit is that slower lifting takes any risk of using momentum during the exercise. Some exercises, however, such as the snatch, have to be performed at speed because they require explosive movement to lift weight that's heavy enough for you to get a training benefit. As with sets and reps, it's also important to vary the tempo, so try to avoid using the same speed for every exercise and every workout.

Rest

The rest you take determines whether or not you're able to complete the next section of your workout. As a rule, sets with few reps will require the most rest. This is

because they train the nervous system and fast-twitch muscle fibres, which fatigue easily and take longer to recover - up to five minutes when you perform very low reps of an explosive move with heavy weights. As you increase the number of reps, you train your slowtwitch muscle fibres, which are harder to fatigue. Different exercises also require different rest times. Big compound moves such as squats and deadlifts require longer rests of about two minutes. Single-joint isolation moves, however, may only require 30 seconds' rest between exercises. Those new to weight training may need to take longer rests than more experienced lifters, who have a higher tolerance to the lactate produced during lifts. How much you weigh can also affect your rest times, with heavier lifters needing longer to recover between sets. 

Essentially, your rest periods are effective if you can reach positive failure on the last rep of the set. This means you are unable to lift the weight with perfect form but can lower it under control. If you don't reach that point, your rest may be too long or inconsistent. It's vital to remember rest is the same as any other training variable and you should change rest you take to stimulate new muscle growth.

Selecting and ordering your exercises

The exercises you choose depend on what you want to achieve! The sample workouts in each of the chapters will give you an example of how to select exercises according to goals, such as developing a particular body part, losing fat, or developing explosive power for sports. Structuring your workout properly is important because various moves place different demands on your body. Some workouts use multiple muscle groups, whereas some isolate small muscle groups. The speed, pattern of movement and body parts targeted should all influence how you order your exercises. The following guidelines will help you to structure your workouts to maximise muscle growth and strength gains and minimise injury risk. 

Start your workout explosive Explosive exercises such as the hang clean are very demanding so they need to be performed when you are relatively fresh. Do these moves earlier in your workout than simpler moves such as triceps extensions.

Hard moves first; easy ones last Complete large muscle group moves, such as squats and deadlifts, at the beginning of your workout to ensure perfect form. It also means your core is strong enough to stabilise your body and reduce injury. Do easier moves, such as biceps curls, later in the workout. 

Keep workouts balanced Unless you are specifically doing an unbalanced workout - for example, one made up exclusively of pushing movements - try to keep your workouts balanced. So, for every pushing exercise you do, you should do a pulling one. See p45 for more.

Frequency How many workouts you perform each week is often influenced by work and family commitments. But if you lead a busy life, the good news is you don't need to work out seven days a week to see great results. Doing from three to five workouts a week should be sufficient to achieve your workout goals. Exactly how many sessions you do will depend on a number of factors. One thing that should influence training frequency is what sort of workouts you're doing. A hard full-body session may mean you need to leave at least 48 hours between sessions in order for your muscles to recover and repair themselves to be stronger then before. However, if you are focusing on a particular body part in each workout, you may be able to train the following day if you work on a different body part. One common mistake is to think that the more workouts you do, the stronger and more muscular you'll become. As mentioned in the previous page it's while you're resting, rather than while working out, that your muscles get bigger and stronger. If you stress your muscles before they've had a chance to repair themselves this may cause what's known as overtraining, where you lose strength and muscle mass and feel lethargic. Some muscle groups take longer to recover than others. Larger muscle groups, particularly those with a comparatively higher percentage of fast-twitch muscle fibres such as the hamstrings, may take longer to recover than smaller muscle groups such as the calves. Doing big compound lifts such as deadlifts also places more stress on your nervous system than smaller lifts, such as wrist curls, so you'll need longer to recover. You should also take longer to recover from intense sessions, where you do low reps of heavy weights, than you do from endurance and stability sessions, where you do high reps of light weights.