This Post originally was posted at Spurlingfitness.com

Working out from home has started to become a regular thing among the active community, whether you choose to work out from home out of convenience or because of the ever-changing environment. 

If you are thinking about working out from home, or already are, but are struggling with the consistency or challenging yourself with your workouts, these four tips will help you. 

1.Choosing A Space

The most important thing to get right when working out from home is where you will do your workouts. If you don’t get this part right, you will never get started. 

Popular places to set up your workout space are garages, basements, guest rooms, or an extra room not regularly used by the family. 

Once you have your space picked out, run through this quick checklist:

• Does the space feel cramped?
• Can I lie down?
• Are the floors able to take some jumping or heavy traffic?
• Is the temperature comfortable?
• Can I play music?

These are just a few questions to ask. The big two to get right are the feeling of crampedness. When we feel we don’t have the space to move around, we won’t exercise. The temperature is also significant. If you have room in your garage, but it is 32 degrees out and has no heat, workouts will not happen. 

2.When To Workout? 

Before we talk about equipment, there is one more logistical hurdle we must jump, and that is when can you workout with the fewest distractions? 

You know your schedule best, try and think of two to three times a week where you are not as busy or have fewer distractions. Workout times could be before the family gets up, late morning when the house is empty of people, or at night. 

Remember, all you need for a time window is 20 to 30 focused minutes to get a good workout; if you can get more than that, great. 

Please don’t make the mistake of trying to fit workouts when you can – instead schedule them at a specific time on specific days and communicate with the people most likely to interrupt you that these times are important.

3.What You Need For Equipment

Now to the toy section, what equipment is essential to getting a great home workout? 

The Basics:

• One Dumbbell or Kettlebell that you can Row 10x and feel challenged by
• One Dumbbell or Kettlebell that you can Squat 10x and feel challenged by
• One of each a Yellow Super Band and an Orange Super Band

The Ideal:

• Everything from list one
• TRX Straps
• Stability Ball
• Bonus: Rower or Airdyne Bike

4.Accountability and Programing 

You have space, and you have time and equipment, now what do you do? 

What are you going to do for a program, and who will keep you accountable for doing that program when no one is around keeping you honest?

Programing and accountability go hand in hand. The program allows you to show up and workout without thinking about one more thing you have to do, making you more likely to show up in the first place.

Accountability is there for when you don’t feel like showing up; someone is there help you get back up when showing up becomes hard.

At Spurling Fitness, we have a simple solution. Let us take care of your home workout programming, and we will be checking in and reaching out along the way to keep you motivated and accountable to you and your health.

Bonus: Making Exercises Challenging Without Adding More Weight 

Here are a few practical tips to help you progress when your weights become too easy. 

1. Increase the reps and or the sets. Example: You have been doing 3×10, now progress by doing 3×15 or 4×10 or 4×15.
2. Increase the speed of the exercise. Example: instead of 3×10, do 3×30 seconds and try and get as many reps as possible in that time.
3. Decrease the speed of the exercise. Example: instead of doing a squat at regular speed, think of doing it at a tempo of 2 seconds down and 2 seconds to get back up.
4. Take away stability: Example is you have been doing a squat, switch to a lunge or a single-leg squat.
5. Move the weight away from your center of gravity: Example, you have been doing a goblet squat. To make it harder, do a racked squat or an offset squat.

Your Fitness Sherpa,