Due to the pandemic, it has become hard to do strength training traditionally due to the fear of getting sick. Hundreds of people visit public gyms a day, which puts you at risk. Luckily, there are still workouts and exercises that you can do at home to continue or start your strength training. These five strength training exercises are beneficial if you were in a traditional gym, making them excellent at-home workouts.

1. Squats

Squats are a great exercise for the entire lower body. Bodyweight squats can help strengthen your calves, hamstrings, glutes, and quads. This type of exercise can be a great way to introduce yourself to weight training, or it can be a great way to increase your muscular endurance as an experienced lifter.

If you are a beginning lifter, you should work on perfecting your form when doing this movement. You should be making sure that you are getting a full range of motion on your squats and that you are keeping your core tight.

If you are an experienced lifter, you may want to use this exercise to increase your mobility and aerobic capacity. Sets with high reps should allow you to increase your legs’ endurance, which can allow you to lift heavier weights when you get back in the gym.

2. Push-ups

A push-up is a conventional exercise that can help increase your upper body strength. A push-up targets your chest, shoulders, and triceps. Also, your core and back are slightly targeted by this movement too.

Beginning lifters may find doing a traditional push-up difficult, which is fine. If that is the case, you can modify the push-up to make it easier. You can adjust the push-up by placing your knees on the ground. This will make allow you to push up less of your body weight.

Experienced lifters can try to do high reps to increase their muscular endurance. Also, you can change the angle that you perform the push-up to target different parts of your chest. You can perform decline and incline push-ups to target your upper and lower chest. Also, you can play around with your hand placement to try and target more of the triceps if you would like to.

3. Planks

Planks are a great core exercise. When performing this exercise at home, you should time yourself and see how long you can hold a proper plank. You will find that the more you do them, the longer you will be able to hold a plank.

If you get good at planks, then you can place additional weight on your back to make it harder on your core. You can also perform one-sided planks to try and concentrate on one side of your core.

4. Pull-ups

Pull-ups are another great upper body exercise. The pull-up targets your back and biceps. If you have an elevated bar that can support your body weight, you can perform pull-ups at home.

If you are a beginner lifter, you should focus on performing a basic pull-up by pulling yourself up until your chin is above the bar. If you are an experienced lifter, you can mess around with different grips to target the biceps more or widen your grip to target the lats more.

5. Lunges

Lunges are another lower body exercise that focuses more on hamstring strength. If you are a beginner, you will want to perform bodyweight lunges. However, if you are an experienced lifter, you will want to add some weight. You can add weight to this exercise by holding things in your hand. You can use household items as weight, or you can use kettlebells if you have them.

If you have kettlebells available, you can also find some great online kettlebell training programs. These programs will integrate plenty of lower body and upper body movements using these weights, which will help you increase different areas of strength.

Conclusion

These five exercises can easily be done in the comfort of your own home, and they will help you increase your strength. If these exercises become too easy after an extended period, you can make them more challenging by adding weights. You may not have traditional weights, but you can add resistance by using household items as weights. Ultimately, these exercises will help you maintain, or build, your strength until you feel comfortable entering the gym setting again.