In-home fitness tips and free workouts

In-home fitness tips

If you’re trying to stay in shape while at home due to COVID10 and Coronavirus shutdowns, try these in-home tips!

With all but essential businesses shut down due to COVID19 and Coronavirus, many of us are searching for ways to stay in shape while the gyms are closed. If you’ve been stressing about losing your gains or adding a few unwanted pounds, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Give these in-home fitness tips a go!

1. Cardio is key!

No matter what your goal is (losing body fat or gaining muscle mass), keeping up with your cardiovascular exercise is paramount to success. For losing body fat, the reasons are fairly self explanatory. However, for gaining muscle mass cardio exercises is important because your body becomes more efficient at transporting those much needed nutrients through your bloodstream. Yup, all that protein and all those BCAAs you’ve been guzzling get transported to your muscle cells much more efficiently when your cardiovascular system is operating at peak performance.

Also, for losing body fat AND gaining muscle mass, fasted morning cardio is the absolute best option for the fastest results. This means that if you do your cardio first thing in the morning before ingesting any calories, sugars, etc. (basically just having some water), you will get the best results. Think of it this way, you’ve been fasting for 6-8 hours while you sleep and your body is mostly deprived of any sugars, carbohydrates or other energy sources. It’s now forced to use your long-term energy source, AKA: body fat, to fuel your cardiovascular exercise.

The result is rapid body fat loss and a super efficient cardiovascular system.

So let’s talk about your options for cardio exercise without access to the gym:

High Intensity Interval Training

This is also known as HIIT training and is extremely efficient as it’s typically a short, intense burst of exercise that actually increases your fat burning for the next 24 hours. Yes! This is proven by science 🙂 It’s actually fairly simple to do to.

Basically, all you have to do is find an exercise where you can exert the equivalent energy of a walk/jog for a short interval (like 30 seconds), followed by an exercise where you would exert the equivalent energy of a sprint for that same time frame. So, something like walking/jogging for 30 seconds and then sprinting for 30 seconds. You then rotate between the two intervals for the entire duration of your cardio session.

We always suggest working up to 20-minutes of cardio.

Options for HIIT training would include things like:

  • Walking or jogging / sprinting
  • Side lunges in place / burpees
  • Bicycle kicks / pushups
  • Any other combination of low intensity and then high intensity you can think of

Steady State Cardio

Steady state cardio is always a good option as well. This is just a matter of getting your heart rate into your fat burning zone and then holding it there for a set duration. Steady state cardio does take longer intervals to see results, which is why HIIT is sometimes more attractive to those with a busy lifestyle. Given that most states are on lock-down right now and many people may be on a hiatus from work, steady state may be a great option.

Examples of steady state cardio:

  • Walking or jogging
  • Bicycle or recumbent bicycle
  • Swimming

High Intensity Burst Training

This type of training is basically an all out sprint for a set period of time and is typically something that a more advanced athlete would do consistently. For those of us that aren’t “advanced athletes” you can still see phenomenal results from HIBT exercises but we recommend working up to the full duration slowly. In this type of training, your hear-rate will be elevated close to your max rate for a longer period of time.

Below is a free 15-minute HITB training session with founder, Gabe Tuft. It also includes a 15 minute foam rolling session with instruction (more workout videos further down in this post):

 2. Nutrition is the second key

Just because we’re on lock down doesn’t mean that we should just toss our diet to the wind and eat whatever we want because we feel bad about the situation or because we feel that it won’t matter now that the gyms are all closed.

In fact, the exact opposite is true. Now that there’s more time than ever on our hands, we should be taking this time to master our nutrition and do our meal prep!

The big question everyone is asking is what do I eat? The answer to that is actually fairly simple. If you want to keep your hard-earned gains or simply want to avoid gaining body fat, then you need to eat for your goals. Many people confuse what they believe is, “eating healthy” with eating for their goals. More on that below.

First though, the video below is a Facebook live that Gabe Tuft did where he discusses nutrition and actually does a live question and answer session pertaining to in-home fitness and nutrition while on lock down due to COVID19 and the Coronavirus. It’s packed with advice on how to eat properly, what to eat and when to eat it!

To eat for your goals you have to have your nutrition calculated for your personal body and your personal goals. Now typically, that would cost someone upwards of $300 to have a licensed nutritionist or dietitian do that. Lucky for everyone reading this that we have a Master Licensed Sports Nutritionist on staff and it won’t actually cost you a penny.

Co-founder, Priscilla Tuft has dedicated her time and efforts into creating the nutrition aspect of each one of our in-gym programs. This nutrition is custom per-person and can be used EVEN if you’re doing in-home workouts right now. The algorithms she created take into account all of the questions you’d be ask in a normal nutrition consultation and then provides you with your macros per meal (grams of protein, carbs, and fats) that you need to eat.

It’s really that simple! Here’s what it looks like:

There’s even a video on nutrition for each program in the “Pre-season” section that explains all of the details of the nutrition plan, including what to eat and when to eat it.

Right now, you can access all of this TOTALLY FREE for 14 days by signing up for the free trial of our All Access Pass. It’s risk-free and if you’re not satisfied, you can cancel your trial at any time without being charged.

How’s that for just giving away free information?

Body Spartan All Access

Access to EVERY Body Spartan Program! 14-DAY FREE TRIAL
  • Get full access to our all of our amazing programs
  • Full, custom calculated nutrition
  • 10 & 12 week programs
  • Instructional videos
  • Full workouts
  • Triphase, polymorphic, and contest prep style training
  • Body composition tracker
$19.00 / month with a 14-day free trial

3. Workouts: the final puzzle piece

If you’re limited at home and totally without weights, then we’ve got an amazing solution for you. Gabe Tuft, founder of Body Spartan, was in the same situation when the gyms started closing. All of the online stores were sold out of resistance bands and price gouging for weight sets had already started.

He quickly innovated a way to add resistance at home that anyone can do. By placing 8-oz water bottles inside plastic grocery bags, he was able to begin resistance training again. While this was not a lot of weight compared to what dumbbells offer, by incorporating the science of time under tension and blood flow maximization, Gabe was able to put together two weeks of workouts that will leave you with a killer pump!

These workouts are in our Spartan Army section of the All Access Pass, which you can get a 14-day free trial to access them right now!

Here’s a few example workouts for your to take and run with. The first one below, is one of the workouts Gabe did before he was able to order resistance bands, using just plastic grocery bags with 8-oz water bottles for an amazing pump!

If you are one of the lucky ones and happen to have resistance bands at home, Gabe switched to resistance band training two weeks into starting our in-home daily workouts.

We’ve included one of the resistance band chest workouts and one of the arm workouts below for you to follow along with for FREE!

 

If you like these in-home workouts, we’re doing them DAILY!

Right now, and for the remainder of the nation-wide lock down due to COVID19 and Coronavirus, Gabe will be doing daily, in-home workouts with resistance bands. You can follow along and ensure that you stay in shape AND gain muscle mass by grabbing your 14-day free trial of our All Access Pass below. These workouts are in our Spartan Army section every day.

You also get full access to every in-gym program, custom nutrition, every eBook, and every audio-book we have! What’s more, is you get a link to our private Facebook group with thousands of active and encouraging members ready to help you succeed.

So don’t wait! Start your risk-free trial right now and see how much progress you can make!

Body Spartan All Access

Access to EVERY Body Spartan Program! 14-DAY FREE TRIAL
  • Get full access to our all of our amazing programs
  • Full, custom calculated nutrition
  • 10 & 12 week programs
  • Instructional videos
  • Full workouts
  • Triphase, polymorphic, and contest prep style training
  • Body composition tracker
$19.00 / month with a 14-day free trial
All access pass

Body Spartan All Access

Access to EVERY Body Spartan Program! 14-DAY FREE TRIAL
  • Get full access to our all of our amazing programs
  • Full, custom calculated nutrition
  • 10 & 12 week programs
  • Instructional videos
  • Full workouts
  • Triphase, polymorphic, and contest prep style training
  • Body composition tracker
$19.00 / month with a 14-day free trial