How can I add intensity to at-home lifting?

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Juarez0807
Juarez0807 Posts: 1 Member
in Goal: Gaining Weight and Body Building
Hello. I have been lifting since January of this year. I started off at 20lbs on my hip thrust. Now I'm at 85lbs. I have maxed out of the weights available to me. My budget won't allow me to purchase new plates at the moment. How can I keep increasing intensity to continue seeing progress? Thanks in advance:)

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  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 32,224 Member
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    There are some options in this post, from the Most Helpful Posts section of the Fitness and Exercise part of the MFP Community:

    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10877279/30-tips-to-increase-strength-training-intensity
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,874 Member
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    It depends on what you're defining as "progress". If progress to you only means pushing and pulling more weight, the only way to progress is to push and pull more weight. That said, IMO you eventually reach a point of diminishing returns in terms of general health, fitness, and functionality.

    The thread posted above is a good one and there are any number of ways to provide progressive overload and increase intensity and further challenge yourself without necessarily adding more weight. You can increase time under tension...ie instead of repping out your sets, be slower and more deliberate. You can increase reps and/or sets. Reduce rest periods between sets, etc.

    Depending on what you're doing, you can also have started with a basic movement and can increase the intensity and/or challenge by doing variations of that movement that may be more difficult or complex. You find this often with bodyweight exercises, but also, I do a lot of kettlebell work and there are a lot of variations of certain movements that increase the difficulty beyond the basic form of the movement. So for hipthrusts...maybe instead of using both legs, you can do single leg (IDK, I've never done a hipthrust before).
  • nossmf
    nossmf Posts: 9,135 Member
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    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    So for hipthrusts...maybe instead of using both legs, you can do single leg (IDK, I've never done a hipthrust before).

    Doing single leg thrusts is absolutely a possibility. And you really should try hip thrusts, @cwolfman13. My deadlift jumped 30# when I added hip thrusts to my routine.

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