It can be hard to motivate yourself now that gyms are shut and their reopening seems like a distant dream. But there are a few ways you can use your furniture and household items to keep pushing yourself.
So cast your eyes around you flat and get working out.
Chairs
You can use chairs for a number of exercises. Firstly, Bulgarian split squats. Stand with your back to the chair about a metre away, lift up your back leg and place it on the seat. You will find yourself in a lunge position, with your back leg raised.
Slowly bend your front, weight-baring leg, until the back knee almost touches the ground and then straighten the front leg. Bulgarian split squats are a great way to even out dispensaries between your legs, which can lead to injury. They help balance and improve strength in your glutes far more than a normal lunge or squat.
Secondly, you can vary your press-ups by using a chair. If you put both your feet on a chair while in the press-up position, so that your body is raised, it will work your core more than a normal press-up. The strain moves up your pecs and into your shoulders. So, this is a great exercise to improve your upper body strength.
Thirdly, you can do triceps dips on chairs. Sit on the ground in front of the chair, with your back to the seat. Put your hands behind you and place them on the edge of the chair and push yourself up, so your weight is on your palms and your heels.
Water bottles
Water is a great way to still do weight training as 1 litre of water weighs 1 kilogram, so you can exactly measure your load. Get a bunch of water bottles and put them in a rucksack.
This way, you can do squats with weight, weighted press-ups, lunges, Bulgarian split squats and more, all with the added resistance. Increasing the weight, and dropping the reps will improve your out and out strength, as opposed to muscular endurance or cardiovascular fitness.
Steps
If you have steps in your house, or a stairwell, you can use them for a number of things. Single leg step-ups are a good way to build endurance and balance.
If you add weights via a water bottle filled rucksack, you will increase the strength in your glutes, hamstring and quads.
If the steps are big enough, try a two-legged jump squat onto the ledge to increase power.
Tinned food and rice
With worries of the coronavirus-induced Apocalypse, many people have stocked their cupboards with months worth of non-perishable foods. If you are stocked up with tinned food and rice, you have a cupboard full of weights.
Packing a rucksack with either is good because it is very scalable. Add one tin at a time until you feel the correct weight for your workout. Then you can work on your strength and power.
Rice can come in big, rigid bags, making them perfect to lift above your head without risk of it sagging or the weight shifting. So, as well as putting them in a rucksack, you can haul rice bags around in your arms to improve upper body strength and trunk stability.
