Can Home Workouts Build Muscle?

Home workouts have never been more popular than they are right now. Gym closures, lack of social events, and no obligation to put on pants have various effects on people. Some people have reacted to working from home by picking up running or biking and others by picking up video games and potato chips. It all depends on where you find your motivation to exercise; if your goal is to stay fit for your friend's next pool party, you may struggle to be more isolated.

I imagine the pandemic is an introvert’s dream, no more social pressures, and it is entirely appropriate to communicate exclusively via text and email. However, for every introvert reveling in social distance, there is likely an extrovert who needs you to give them a call or a hug.

Most people aren’t entirely extroverted or introverted; it is a spectrum. The average person likes to hang out with their friends but also need their alone time. Almost everyone struggles to motivate themselves to workout, and when it comes to working out from home, most people need help.

They need something to keep them accountable. Whether that is a rigorous workout program, an online training group, or Zoom personal training sessions, it helps to have something external to hold them accountable. Even just paying a couple of dollars a month for a workout subscription or app can help. It makes you feel a little bit more obligated to follow through with your workouts.

In this stay at home life, just doing anything active is a major victory. Staying fit and active is a real challenge when your world goes from a vibrant social scene to living like a hermit.

The first step is finding a home workout that you can do and that you enjoy. There are a lot of options available for workout plans and home workout equipment. It is up to you to find an exercise modality that works for you. There is no best exercise or diet. The best exercise or diet is the one that you enjoy and can see yourself doing indefinitely.

Pick what you like, and then build on it. Often, when starting with home workouts, people see instant results, but weeks of the same workouts will likely lead to plateaus.

You’ll start wondering, is this still working? Am I making progress with these workouts? Can home workouts build muscle?

The first thing to understand is how muscle is built. Muscle is created through a process called progressive overload. Progressive overload is the idea that you should make your workouts harder over time. So on Monday, if you do three sets of 10 push-ups easily with perfect form on Thursday, you could try to do three sets of 12 push-ups with perfect form. Or on Thursday, you could try to do those ten push-ups at a slower tempo, or try to do all three sets with five pounds on your back.

To gain muscle, you must constantly challenge your muscles through increased volume, tempo changes, resistance changes, or a decrease in rest time.

Can you accomplish this from the comfort of your home? Absolutely.

Is it as easy to gain muscle at home as it is at the gym? Absolutely not.

Working out from home has certain limitations, primarily space and equipment. You likely don’t have the room to push a sled 50 feet, and you probably don’t have the sled to push.

At the gym, it is so easy to make progress because if one week you are bench pressing 150lbs with good form, next week, you can give 155 a try. Although that doesn’t mean you need a gym to build muscle. There are plenty of yogis, calisthenics gurus, and gymnasts with envious physiques.

All you have to do is pick a handful of basic exercises and do them regularly. That routine can start with just push-ups, lunges, and squats. Or check out our workout library for tons of bodyweight-only ideas.

Once you know your movements and have started to perform them regularly, you’ll need to make them harder to continue to build muscle. These are the top four ways to make an exercise harder.

Always perform exercises with perfect form. If your form starts to slip, lower the resistance or take a break.

1. Increase Volume

Or how many reps you do. If last week was easy and you did three sets of ten squats this week, try doing three sets of fifteen squats. Increasing the volume is the most logical way of increasing difficulty but has the least longevity. Eventually, you’d be able to do three sets of 50 squats and get diminishing returns.

2. Increase Load

Or how much weight you use. If regular push-ups become easy, you can increase the load by putting your feet on a step. Or by putting a little weight on your back. Increasing load is the most efficient way to make an exercise harder. It is a great way to increase the difficulty of an exercise linearly.

3. Change Your Tempo

One of the quickest ways to make an exercise harder is to slow down the exercise, especially the eccentric portion of the movement(lowering phase). Take the push-up; for example, try lowering for four seconds on every repetition and coming at the same pace. This will feel very different, and if you could previously do ten push-ups in a set, you’ll likely only be able to do six with this tempo.

4. Decrease Rest Intervals

If a strength workout you enjoy has become too easy, another option for ramping it up is taking away some of the rest intervals. If you can run a mile, do 50 push-ups and 20 pull-ups in 25 minutes, try doing it next time in 23 minutes. Taking away two minutes of rest will feel like a significant challenge.

All four of the above strategies can work independently to help you build muscle from your home workouts. Although, if you use multiple of the strategies above, you’ll find you improve even faster!

Not sure where to start with your home workouts? No problem, I wrote a book to help you:

The Desk Job Survival Guide: Exercise and Nutrition For Those Who Sit All Day