alecgrodecki wrote: »

animatorswearbras wrote: »

Hi Alecgrodecki! Cheers for the advice so far, my husband's got a bunch of dumbells and barbells that haven't seen the light of day for a few years stored in the garage, is there any lifting exercises you'd recommend I could do at home that don't require a bench? I do HIIT circuit training once a week and we do every muscle group (thanks to a corporate fitness initiative at work) and feel I should be doing some more strength training halfway between. I've usually recovered from the DOMS about 3-4 days after I do that workout.

Thankyouuuuu! And sorry for being cheeky but you seem to know what you're on about.

Ooooohhhh, sooooooo many exercises you can do without a bench.

Legs:
Quads & booty - So the typical response you will hear with "how do I get strong legs?" is "do more squats." While squats do definitely have their merit, honestly, anything you can do on a single leg will actually develop the legs much more efficiently and yield better results. So with that, I would highly advise a lot of Lunges and Split Squats (if you have access to a chair or something you could prop a foot on, you basically set up a lunge but put your back foot, shoelaces down, on that chair). With Split Squats, it's going to work a lot of stabilization muscles, so it may be something that you may have to start out with just body weight until your balance has improved before you start adding weight with dumbells or putting weight onto a barbell and propping it on your back.
Hamstrings - With the front of the legs, it's also very important to work the back of the legs. For this, there are two exercises I can recommend here. First would be Straight Leg Deadlift. With this exercise, you use a barbell with LIGHT weights set up on it and essentially set up like a normal deadlift. But here, you're going to keep only a slight bend in the knee, and hinge over at the waist (keeping a neutral, natural spine curvature) until you feel a stretch in the hamstrings, then squeeze the hamstrings, glutes, and lower back to bring the weight back up. You can essentially think of this as almost a terrible form deadlift that almost everybody has heard about where you end up throwing your back out because you went for a 500lbs lift and used all back. Second, since you have a partner you can do what I call Body Weight Hamstring Curls. For these, whoever is going to do the lift gets on both their knees. Their partner is going to be behind them and hold their feet. From there, the lifter will squeeze with their hamstrings and try to slowly lower their body to the floor. Eventually the hamstrings will essentially give out and you'll fall to the floor, from there, you press just far enough off the floor until your hamstrings catch and pull you all the way back up.
Calves - Nothing too fancy here, just grab a couple dumbells and squeeze slowly up to your tip toes, then slowly release back down.

Chest:
Pushups - Self explanatory here
DB or Barbell Chest Press - Lie down on the floor and push your weights out. Would most likely require your partner to hand you the weights, but will practice perfect form and taking your arms down to a 90 degree angle to protect the shoulder. Make sure to NEVER lockout the elbows. This puts a lot of pressure on the joint and can end up damaging it.
Dumbell Cross Raises - Grip two fairly light dumbells by your sides. You will lift the weight, one at a time, across your body with your palm facing up, up to about shoulder height, squeezing the chest at the top.

Upper Back:
Bent Low Rows - With dumbells or a barbell, you hinge at the waist to roughly a 45 degree angle, keeping that neutral spine. From there, you're squeezing the shoulder blades together and pulling the elbows straight back, scrapping them across the ribs. You should feel yourself pulling with the middle of your back.
Bent High Rows - Same setup as the Low Rows, but for these, you let your elbows flair directly out to the sides, almost like a reverse chest press. This pull will feel higher in the back than the low rows.
Reverse Flys - Grab some light plates or light dumbells, hinge over just like with the rows, keep a slight bend in the elbows. From here, you're still squeezing the shoulder blades together, but your letting your arms come out to your sides (Pretend like you're a bird trying to fly away from this workout!).

Shoulders:
Upright rows - Grab a Barbell just outside the hips, or grab some dumbells and roll the forearms forward with your palms facing towards you. Squeeze with the traps (neck) and shoulders to bring the weight roughly up to the chest, keeping Elbows above the Wrists.
Lateral Raises - Grab dumbells, roll your shoulders back and down, and raise your arms out to the sides to make a "T" with your body.
Front Raises - Exact same idea with the Dumbell Cross Raises above, but don't lift the weight across the body, and keep the palms facing downwards.

Biceps:
All about dem Bicep curls. Close grip, wide grip, neutral grip, whatever will get more curls in. If you have some sort of decline plane you can prop your arm(s) on, you can do decline curls with a dumbell, or preacher curls with the barbell.

Triceps:
Overhead Tricep Press - Grab a plate, a reletively heavy dumbell, or two smaller dumbells and press them together behind the head with your elbows pointing straight up to the ceiling. From here, press that weight out above your head, then return and repeat.
Tricep Kickbacks - Hinge over, and if you want to prop yourself on a table or the back of a couch or something and do one arm at a time, you can go ahead and do that. Squeeze your arm up so that your upper arm is near parallel to the ground with the forearm hanging. From here, try to straighten that arm without letting that upper arm dip.