Full Body Home Workout

I have written this post because I want to share with all of you the workout that I am recommending the most lately. It is designed for beginners who want to start working out at home with the minimum equipment necessary, although it is very similar to the one I would recommend to someone who starts going to the gym but with some exercise modifications.

The problem with most home workouts

To maximise success in creating a new habit it should be as simple and feasible as possible but not more. In our case, which is creating the habit of training and strengthening our bodies, we don’t want to sacrifice results, balance or health for convenience or comfort. This implies we are going to train the full body in order to avoid imbalances, including the back, which means we will have to incorporate an upper body pull into the routine. I am specifically talking about this because most home workouts are done without any equipment and almost always fail to include pulling exercises, which creates muscle imbalances.

This problem can be easily solved by buying an adjustable dumbbell for one arm dumbbell rows or a suspension trainer that can be secured to the door in order to perform australian pull ups (APU). Note that though this may be good enough to start training, in this last case you will only be able to progress to a point since the door limits how much you can move your feet forward, which is the main way to progress in APU besides switching to one arm APU. When possible, what I recommend is finding a place to hang the suspension trainer, preferably gymnastic rings, near your place if not at home. Read this post to get some ideas about where to hang your suspension trainer or rings from.

Now that we have already solved this issue, let’s start talking about creating the habit to work out and the actual routine you’ll be doing.

How to do Australian Pull Ups

The Australian Pull Up is a splendid exercise for your back and arms, and a good one to start building your pulling power. It is also a good way to gain strength when preparing for your fist pull up, and it will teach total body tension, a good technique for pulling and proper posture for your shoulders and shoulder blades.

Besides, it will keep your shoulders healthy by balancing all the horizontal push you may do (push ups, bench press…).

They are also known as inverted rows and fat man pull ups, but don’t get me wrong, they can be as hard as you want them to be, going from a vertical pull for total rookies, all the way to one arm Australian pull ups to advanced trainees.

In these two videos I show you how to go from vertical pulls, which are the easiest version, to the regular Australian pull up, which is an intermediate level version. Even if Australian pull ups are not the hardest exercise you can find, it is important to do them with great technique and don’t underestimate them.

Once you have mastered this movement, you will notice you have a better mind-muscle connection with your back, an important thing to get bigger, and you’ll feel stronger. A strong back lays the foundation for a strong push, so you can expect your push power to increase as you train properly your back.

Here’s the video where I show how to do them on rings:

And here you can see me doing them on bars:

Don’t hesitate to ask me any question you may have, be it on this blog, on my Facebook Page, or on my youtube channel.

Train hard!

Gabri

                                       To read this post in Spanish, click here.

Why get stronger?

            I’ve heard many people say things like “I just wanna get big, not strong” and “I don’t care about strength, all I want is to get ripped”. Other times, they say worse things like “I just came to workout a little” and “I don’t want to get huge like Arnold!” The latter is the funniest, because if you add some weight to the bar, you will surely wake up in the morning looking like Arnold… Common! Do you really think so?

Poor Arnold, nobody wants to look like him...

             Strength is the foundation you need to build before anything, whatever your goals are. To gain 20 kg of lean muscle, you need to get stronger. You ain’t gonna gain a lot of muscle lifting the same weights year after year, especially if you’re weak. If your goal is fat loss, lifting big weights will make you many more calories, and even if you diet to lose weight, if you don’t strength train, you will lose all your muscle and end up like a scrawny kid.