Can you get in good shape by exercising at home?

Can you get in good shape by exercising at home? The answer is very clear: as long as the method is right and you can persist, it is absolutely possible. Even for the vast majority of ordinary fitness enthusiasts who pursue "looking thin when dressing and having lines when undressing", training at home is much more cost-effective than going to the gym.

I myself am the most direct example: I was locked down at home for eight months due to the epidemic in 2020. I only had a pair of adjustable dumbbells with a total weight of 20kg, a balled yoga mat, and not even a serious bench press. When I was doing upper body exercises, I piled up a half-person-high hard-covered professional book, with an old blanket on top as a bench surface. When I pushed the weight for the first time, I didn’t place it firmly, and the stack of books shook and almost hit my foot. It’s funny now that I think about it. Based on this condition, I dropped my body fat from 22% to 15%, developed the middle seam of my chest muscles, and the loose muscles turned into tight lines. After the lockdown was lifted, I went to the gym to hang out with a friend. He squeezed my arm and said, "You are doing better at home than if I come here every day."

Of course, I also know that some people will disagree: “How can I build muscle without heavy weights at home? It’s all just flowery.” This is not wrong. If your goal is to compete in a fitness competition, have an arm circumference of 45+, or squat and deadlift more than 2 times your body weight, then it is indeed difficult to meet the conditions at home. After all, progressive overload is the golden rule for muscle growth. Without enough weight-bearing stimulation, muscle circumference will reach a certain level and it will bottleneck. But let’s just say that 90% of people say they want to “build a good figure”, but in fact, what they want is to wear T-shirts that can hold up the shoulder line, wear jeans without swimming rings on the waist, and wear suspenders in the summer so that the back of the arms does not become loose. This kind of goal is really not equivalent to pursuing a heavy weight of dozens of kilograms. Small equipment at home and even self-weight are completely sufficient.

Many people say that they have not changed at all after practicing at home for three months. When I asked about the specific situation, eight out of ten were either paddling or using the wrong method: halfway through the exercise, they ran to the refrigerator to get iced Coke. After the third set of squats, they collapsed on the sofa and watched short videos for half an hour. It was euphemistically called "rest."”； Otherwise, I would only do aerobics every day, not even touching a dumbbell, and reward myself with a cup of full-sugar milk tea and two portions of hand cakes after practice. It would be strange if it would be effective. I used to help my cousin adjust the plan. She had been dancing for three months in a row. She didn't lose weight, and her legs were getting thicker and thicker because of the wrong strength. Later, I asked her to add dumbbell hip thrusts and cup squats three times a week, and to replace the bubble milk tea in afternoon tea with sugar-free oolong tea every day. After two months, her waist circumference was reduced by 4cm, and her hip line was 2cm higher. Now everyone she meets says that working out at home is really delicious.

If you don’t even want to buy dumbbells, you can get good results just by practicing with your own weight. I have a friend who does street fitness. He never goes to the gym and spends an hour on the horizontal bar in the community every day. Now he can do standard push-ups. His latissimus dorsi is spread out like small wings. You can see the outline of an inverted triangle when wearing a white T-shirt. No one can say that he has a good figure. The key is that you have to make it more difficult for yourself. You can't just do 10 kneeling push-ups every day for half a year. Your muscles will have adapted long ago, and of course they won't grow. You can go from the kneeling position to standard push-ups, to wide stance, narrow stance, high fives, and decline, and gradually increase the difficulty, which can still meet the requirements of progressive overload and stimulate muscle growth.

Of course, home fitness is not a panacea, and I don’t advise everyone to practice at home. If you have absolutely zero foundation and can’t even figure out the standard movements, and you don’t even know if you are hunched over when doing deadlifts in front of the mirror, then it is best to find a few online private training classes to learn the movements first, otherwise you will lose more than the gain by practicing blindly. ； If you have very poor self-control and can't move at all when no one is watching, then the atmosphere of the gym may be more suitable for you. After all, you have spent money, so you are embarrassed to go and just take a shower and leave, right?

In fact, after practicing for so many years, I have figured out that where I practice is really not that important. If you apply for a 20,000-yuan annual pass and you can count the number of times you go there in a year on one hand, it’s all in vain. ； If you squeeze in 20 minutes at home every day, practice exercises seriously, and control your diet, you can still have a body that you are satisfied with in half a year. The threshold for a good figure is never whether you have a gym membership, but whether you have actually implemented your plan.