Top 5 Ways to Make Powerful Fat Loss Home Workouts

In 25 years of coaching, I would say 99% of the people that came to me had the goal of losing fat. Even those that had their shoulders falling off or killer back pain wanted fat loss. So, it was always my goal to give them what they wanted as well as what they needed. The idea that we can’t make people stronger, move better, AND lose fat is just silly. Of course, it does require us to be smarter with our training and right now most home workouts are missing the smarter part.

My first gym I opened about 17 years ago was crazy to most people at the time!

I get that people are getting a bit stir crazy and don’t really know enough to make their home workouts progressive and moving down a good path. You see a lot of jumping around like crazy, lifting things that are REALLY dangerous, and no real method to most people’s madness. Just because you don’t have a lot of equipment doesn’t mean your home workouts have to turn to nonsense. That is what we have been trying to share the last several weeks with our blogs.

Now I focus just largely on these functional training tools that makes my gym smaller, but SO much smarter!

However, sometimes it is easier to focus on giving better solutions and that is why we are going to cover the top 5 ways to make your home workouts awesome and keep with many people’s goals of losing body fat.

Tip #1: Make Your Home Workouts Well Rounded

One of the ultimate down falls of just doing bodyweight is that it is hard to load patterns like hip hinging and upper body pulling. I love to use bodyweight training, but to do it exclusively in many home workouts usually leads to stagnation and unbalanced training. Remember, training at home can be really smart! What we want to start with is making sure our home workouts still follow the idea of building great movement patterns…

We’ve talked about these movement patterns individually like…

Squats HERE

Hip Hinges HERE

Upper Body Movements HERE

We could keep going, but hopefully you see the need for balance. So you can start you home workouts like…

Day 1:

-Plane of Motion Hip Hinge (lateral deadlifts for example)

-Push Drill (push-up, overhead presses, etc.)

-Squat Drill (front load, bear hug)

-Pulling Drill (Bent Row in stable environment like two legs)

-Rotation (rotational press outs, around the worlds, etc.)

-Locomotion (carries, dead bugs, bird dogs, side plank)

Day 2: 

-Hip Hinge Power (high pull, clean, snatch, etc.)

-Push Drill more static (push-up rows, bird dog rows, plank ups, etc.)

-Lunging (MAX lunges, up downs, shoulder to balance step, etc.)

-Pulling Drill from less stable (Rear step, lateral, rotation, etc.)

-Rotation (now focus on anti-rotation like lateral drags, bird dogs, pallof press outs, etc.)

-Locomotion (another type of carry/march, etc.)

You can do the same for a day 3 and 4 or just rotate these two for 2-4 weeks.

Tip #2: Slow Down Your Movements

Can explosive movements help you increase your metabolic response to exercise? Of course! However, most people miss a few key points…

-Research has shown that using different tempos throughout training creates a better response than just trying to use one alone (whether that is ALL slow or all fast).

-Explosive work requires a good base of strength and stability to do well. If you haven’t built that base before, you actually just increase your risk of injury and don’t learn how to generate power well.

-Power movements leave less room for technical error so working on better technique is ALWAYS going to lead to you getting MORE out of any exercise.

People tend to blast through a lot of our DVRT drills, but many are done best when done slowly (lateral drags, crawls, arc presses, etc.), they lose great opportunities to build strength in ranges of motion that most fly through (why 1 1/4 drills we have talked about are so good especially in squats), and even higher level power drills (like MAX lunges) can be done slowly first to really establish great proficiency.

DVRT Master, Cory Cripe and his special assistant coach break down some keys in building progressions into drills like MAX lunges. 

Tip #3: Use Complexes

I wrote a pretty extensive article about using complexes  HERE. The idea of combining different movements patterns opens up the door for a lot of great training and being really effective in increasing the fat loss demand of your home workouts. The other advantage is that when you are low on equipment, it is a great way to get more out of the equipment you have. Complexes can be advanced or foundational like physical therapist, Jessica Bento shows…

Once you understand the foundations, complexes can take on so many different forms to give us far more effective home workouts.

Tip #4: Work Different Planes Of Motion and Directions of Movement

You will almost NEVER hear about these concepts in most blogs or fitness magazines (well, I did just finish contributing an article for Men’s Health on these concepts so…). Why? Simply most people don’t know the planes of motion and those that do don’t really understand why they are important. You have to start with the fact that most of our every day motions like walking use all 3 planes of motion.

So? Understanding this helps us realize that certain muscles in our body are designed to do things to prevent unwanted movement so we can make complex actions seem simple. Many of the muscles on the lateral side of our body are a good example. They are designed largely to resist unwanted lateral movement that would cause issues in the knees, low backs, and even shoulders.

DVRT UK Master, Greg Perlaki, gives a few great examples of lateral strength training

Robin Paget shows some more great examples of using these concepts to enhance your home workouts. The reason that these ideas are so important is that they incorporate more muscles, they allow the muscles to learn to function as they are designed, they increase the metabolic response, give you more options for the equipment you have, and ultimately makes your training smarter!

Tip #5: Nutrition

I wouldn’t be honest with you if I didn’t say nutrition plays an obviously huge role in our ability to create fat loss, but just be healthy as well. Recently, I have greatly been impacted by nutritionist, Leslie Schilling, who looks at habits more than food. Since she does it WAY better, I recommend you check out her work HERE. We have also had some great interviews with Leslie HERE and that is why we invited her to speak at our mini summit this past October where she was a rock star!

These 5 tips can go a long ways in making your home workouts more effective and fun. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but it DOES have to be thoughtful! That is why we have 30% off everything at DVRT (except live events) with code “holiday2020” HERE including great programs like those that have Leslie’s great presentation HERE. We hope to be a reliable and strong resource for you to keep on your goals and having success during this tough time!