Three Ways To Ensure Your At-Home Workout Is On Point

Whether your at-home workout regimen is out of necessity (can’t make it to the gym for whatever reason) or choice (it’s what you want to do), there are a few key tips to ensuring that your at-home workouts are just as intense and effective as the workouts you get in a gym or studio.

Here are THREE (3) ways to get the most out of your home workout routine:

1. Get Motivated

For most things in life, showing up in the hardest part – and working out is no different. When you’re at home, it can be very challenging to get up off the couch, move away from your work, kids, or your latest Netflix binge series, and put on your workout gear and get moving. Therefore, you need to find your ownmotivationand use it to get you going.

While keeping an eye on your fitness goals may work from time-to-time, most of us have long-term fitness goals, but they may not be enough to get us moving in the moment. Therefore, short-term goals or focusing on a single improvement or workout might be enough to get you moving.

For example, maybe you are running on your home treadmill and working on speed intervals. Yesterday you ran quarter mile sprints and tracked your time for each push. So for today, try the same workout and focus on getting those quarter mile times down by 2-5 seconds. This immediate focus on incremental improvements can be incredibly motivating and be what you need to get going.

2. Get Metrics

Trying to measure your progress without using real numbers is like throwing basketballs at a hoop in the dark – you might make a basket once in a while, but you really have no idea if you’re getting any closer each time.

So start tracking metrics for your workouts. Complete a workout and track it. Those numbers will give you a baseline for your performance and allow you to set attainable goals and improvement benchmarks over time.

For at-home workouts like boxing, use tools such as punch trackers, which will let you track the number of punches you throw (and throw correctly), how hard you are punching, and how continuously you are getting your punches in. Figuring out your baseline numbers and working to improve them can definitely motivate you to get your workout in and continue to challenge yourself.

Overall, if you are not aware of how you are performing and are only tracking your workouts by perceived exertion, you could be missing optimal opportunities to push your limits.

3. Get Moving

The final factor is deciding to do it and making it happen. If you give yourself a choice and one of the options is to not workout, then you’re making it easy to decide to forego a good sweat. So instead, decide that working out is what you are going to do and not working out isn’t an option.

Give yourself an option to get moving for 15, 30 or 45 minutes and find a workout program that offers workouts for each time increment. Grab your workout app or put on your favorite workout video and commit to giving yourself 15 minutes to workout with a check-in at each interval. If you feel good 15 minutes in, then go for 30. And if at 30 minutes you are still feeling it, go for the full 45.

Ultimately, it is up to you to get your at-home workout in. But by finding the motivation you need and integrating a way to measure your movement and progress, you can ensure that the time you take away from your couch, kids, or Netflix binges is completely worth it.