Rugby Fitness at Home
Okay I admit, I may be a little late on this one, seeing as the UK was put in lockdown nearly 6 months ago… HOWEVER… it’s still an important topic that I think I can shed some light on. PLUS you never know when we might go into another lockdown!
The first question is, can you train at home? Analyse your goals, what you’re looking to do, and assess whether you in fact need to hit the gym. A lot of my clients are busy dad’s who just want to lose some weight, feel awesome and maybe play better rugby. Is the gym necessary for them? Absolutely not. You can get one hell of a workout using just your bodyweight. You just need the motivation and will to do it!
If you’re a semi pro player looking to improve your 1 rep max deadlift so you can get a professional contract – yes you need a gym, or at least access to some training equipment. But if your goal is “lose the belly”, you can accomplish that at home, and mainly in the kitchen!
Another thing to remember is that the gym is VERY time consuming. Let’s say you get home at 6pm from work (on a good day). Your journey time might be 15 mins each way, plus AT LEAST a 1 hour training session. So you’re not getting home until the earliest 7:30pm (that’s if talky Tim isn’t at the gym again). And depending on the age of your little ones, that’s not leaving too much time for play. HOWEVER if you had a 30-40 minute workout that you could do in the garden/garage/in your bedroom, that cuts out looooooads of time so you can focus on being dad.
I don’t understand when people say they don’t know what to do in a workout. Any muppet can YouTube “home workout” and you’ll get years’ worth of videos… literally years’ worth! Everyone has a phone, find a workout and just go ahead! (Yes I realise I might have just put myself out of business, but remember I sell coaching and not workout videos) In my opinion it’s just a question of motivation. I understand it’s hard to get motivated after a long work day. But it’s also hard to carry around that belly that’s affecting you so much. Just get off your ass and DO IT!
Now I don’t mean to hammer my program down your throat in this article, but that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Before lockdown I rarely assigned bodyweight plans, only to a few people who REALLY couldn’t hit the gym. But during lockdown as gyms were closed, I had to change my training model. I had 90% of guys using a home bodyweight plan. And for the guys that just wanted to lose weight and feel a bit better about themselves, it worked perfectly! 3 bodyweight workouts, 2 runs, a food plan and coaching from me – hey presto, job done (Again I may have just put myself out of business sharing my challenge formula, but that’s all it is… simple works!). This made even me believe in bodyweight training even more. And if I can make life easier for my clients by saving a gym membership PLUS hours of commuting to a gym every week, then everyone’s happy!
Anyway, I hope from reading this you realise what situation you’re in, and whether you really need a gym (probably not). If you’d like some ideas on home workouts, I’m totally happy to help you out, just drop me an email at regansrugby@gmail.com.
Please share the article around if it helped you out, remember the more hits I get, the more time I spend on them.
Stay strong,
Regan