What Strategies Are There To Add Intensity and Build Lean Muscle At Home?
By Korey Walz – NSCA Certified Personal Trainer, NSCA Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialistst
There are 3 common techniques you can use to increase the difficulty and intensity of your workout at home without any additional equipment. These approaches are “negatives” or eccentric muscle contraction, plyometrics, and holds.
Negatives are typically the lowering portion of an exercise (although with some equipment in the gym they can seem to be physically moving upwards). So for example which will be shown later in the post a negative only push-up would be where you lower your body to the floor for a slow count usually about 5-10 seconds without pushing yourself back up to the top
Plyometrics commonly known for exercises where you jump or leave the floor can be used to increase difficulty. The jump squat, which will be shown later, is a common plyometric exercise.
Holds are the point in the range of motion of an exercise where the difficulty is greatest. For example the top position of a superman would be the most difficult part of the exercise and is where the hold would take place for a prescribed amount of time.
Full Body Workout
Give this circuit workout a try! It includes all 3 intensity techniques.
Timing for this sequence will be 45 seconds on 15 seconds off, 5 times through the circuit:
- Jumping Bulgarian Split Squat
- Negative Only Push-ups 5 second negatives
- Squat Hold
- Superman Hold
- Jump Squat