Ever wondered if you can make your home workouts a little harder? You totally can, babes!

Whilst home training does have it’s own set of challenges, like limited space and equipment – there ARE ways you can easily intensify your home workouts. The pandemic has taught us that it is possible to stay fit and active whilst at home – but how can you actually progress with your fitness at home to get mega results?

I’m going to share with you my top 6 ways to intensify your workouts and take your home training to the next level!

Increase time under tension
One of the simplest ways you can intensify your exercises is to increase time under tension. This is a technique that makes your muscles work harder by maximising the duration of muscular tension. This means that you perform each rep slower so that your muscles are under greater stress for a longer period of time.

Not only does this fire up your muscles, but it is an easy way to build muscular strength and endurance without having to increase your resistance!

So how can you achieve this? Increase the time spent doing the hardest part of the exercise. For example, when doing a squat, take longer when squatting down to increase the load on your quads and glutes.

Get creative with variations
It’s time to switch things up, babes! Not only can it be super boring when doing the same old exercises, but it may actually be less effective in comparison to variations!

By getting creative with your exercises, you will be able to find ways to make the exercise more challenging without having to increase the resistance.

For example, when doing a hip thrust, instead of just doing a regular rep, you can add a triple contraction. When your hips have thrusted upwards, do a triple contraction (which is three shallow pulses/hip thrusts) before you lower your hips back down. You’ll definitely feel the burn!

Unsure of which variations you should do? Be sure to utilise the ‘swap’ feature on the LSF app! You are able to swap individual exercises within your workout plan. When you press ‘swap’, other variations of the exercise, or alternative exercises that still work the same muscles will come up. This way, you can choose the best exercise to suit you!

Experiment with unilateral exercises
Okay, this one is definitely challenging! Unilateral exercises are exercises performed on one side of the body at a time. This helps to fix muscular imbalances, improve stability, posture, and strength! If you’ve been feeling like you’re plateauing with home workouts, this is a must-try!

Think deadlifts are easy? Wait till you give single-leg deadlifts a try! Holding a dumbbell in either hand (or with no weights), stand on one foot. Lean forward with your hips whilst extending your leg behind you and return back to the starting position. Although you might be wobbling at first, keep up with it!

Manipulate volume
Feel like your home workout is a little easy? Maybe you just need to increase the volume! You can do this by increasing the sets, reps, or even by taking shorter rest breaks between exercises. This will help increase the demand on your body and ramp up the intensity.

So let’s say you’ve been doing 3 sets of 12 pushups. You could increase this to 5 sets of 12 pushups. Or even do 3 sets of 18 pushups. The options are limitless!

Use a deficit
No, I’m not talking about a calorie deficit! A deficit in exercise involves any way that you can increase your range of motion in the lengthening phase of a movement – usually by standing on something like a step, weight plate, or since you’re at home – you can even stand on a book!

The increased range of motion means there will be more tension on your muscles which will help build strength and increase intensity. My fave exercise to use a deficit are lunges. Simply stand on something that will elevate your front foot, and perform a reverse lunge. The bigger range of motions will take your hips into a deeper flexion, which means you will really feel your glutes and quads fired up on your supporting leg!

Amp up the resistance
Don’t underestimate the power of resistance bands! Booty bands and long resistance bands can easily be added to many exercises. Using bands is an effective way to increase resistance and challenge your muscles in different ways. Resistance bands help to fire up your muscles and increase the intensity, especially when used in combination with weights!

You can use resistance bands when doing many exercises like squats, dumbbell romanian deadlifts, dumbbell good mornings, dumbbell hip thrusts, curtsey lunges and more!

The BEST part of LSF programs and challenges is that it is designed to get you results even if you’re training at home!

All of our programs and challenges have the ability to switch between GYM and HOME within the app, giving you complete flexibility. If you feel like you’re needing to amp up the intensity of your home workouts, be sure to give my top tips a try. You’ll be pushed to the next level!

Plenty of #LSFbabes have achieved incredible results from home training, like Joanna!

Not part of the LSF community? Join our global girl gang today!

Loz xx