Because your health is important
It’s been just over a year since we first heard of the dreaded Covid-19, I’d wish it a happy birthday, but I don’t want to. This pesky little thing has meant you’ve spent much of 2020 completely redefining your fitness training, with gym closures and other lockdown restrictions leading us all towards the same burning question – how to keep fit at home.
As professional fitness photographers, we’ve seen the inside workings of the fitness industry for over 18 years, having also competed in pro fitness competitions with intensive fitness training regimes. So, we’ve put together some of our top pieces of fitness advice to help you keep fit at home and put your fitness first.
1. Keep a fitness journal and take fitness progress photos
You know the saying, ‘prepare to plan, plan to fail’. Whilst perhaps an overused phrase, it definitely holds truth. The first step of any fitness journey is to set out your plan in line with your fitness goals. It doesn’t matter what you stay fit for, whether it’s for your general health, your fitness transformation, your personal training, bodybuilding, a fitness competition, or, like many people right now, you are simply bored out of your mind. It pays to structure your fitness journey, trust me, this really is how to speed up fitness results.
Buy a journal or download a journalling app to get started, you may have even seen people create fitness journey instagram accounts. Either way, these are great ways to set your achievements in stone and help you consistently track and build on your progress.
Alongside your journal where you’ll plan home exercise routines, meal plans and track your moods, take body progress pictures. This is where your motivation will get serious, there’s nothing that will drive you more than seeing the visible changes your hard work has achieved. We recommend taking fitness progress photos every 2 weeks to maintain that motivation.
Download the full guide to taking fitness photos that impress
2. Home workout ideas
Your home fitness routine doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, keeping it simple makes it much easier to be consistent, which is how to make the biggest difference in your fitness journey. Here are some home workout ideas and tips that we have put together with personal trainer Joe Brown of Emphasize Physique Transformations.
A straightforward home workout tip that we’d recommend is to utilise what you have in your home. Many people think they need to invest in loads of shiny new home workout equipment to stay fit at home, but this isn’t the case, save your money! We recommend utilising what you have in your home means that essentially, any weight is a weight. Note from Joe: all your body requires is muscular tension at a controlled tempo throughout the reps! Keep it simple and think about the movements you’d do in the gym, safely recreate these movements with suitable items in your home. Just think outside the box and carefully consider the muscles you are trying to work on.
Joe recommends using your body against itself to create resistance, taking on the most challenging exercises you find and practise them over and over to build strength.
One investment we would recommend for home workouts is resistance bands. These are one of the most inexpensive yet effective ways to workout at home as they can be used in your home exercise routine in so many different ways and for so many muscle areas.
Our final home workout tip is to take advantage of negative reps. These are especially important when doing home exercises without gym equipment. This means focusing on the lowering phase of your lift, for example, taking time to lower your weight after lifting, keeping your arms from quickly dropping. By focusing on this lowering extension, you’ll generate your full range of motion from a completely new angle, creating the potential for new growth through increased weight load.
3. Take some home workout inspiration from Collette, Picture Perfect Photography’s Premium Fitness Photographer
4. Surround yourself with positive motivation
Don’t neglect the role of a positive mindset. Your home workout aspirations may be body orientated, but this can only be achieved with a determined and positive mindset. We love using Pinterest for fitness inspiration to find quotes and photos – Take a look at ours here.
We are also big fans of fearless motivation on Facebook. Don’t forget to share your progress with friends and family for that extra support and shared positivity, it can really help to explain to loved ones why this fitness goal is so important to you.
Interested in a fitness photoshoot?
It could be just the thing to set your home workout journey in motion. We’d love to help you achieve your fitness goals.
