How To Make Home Workouts Harder (without adding weights!)

Feel like you’ve plateaued in your workouts? Learn how to use exercise progression in your workouts and make them harder! The ability to make your home workouts harder will keep you on track long-term to achieve results.

Working out at home can have a lot of benefits.

However, there are also a few drawbacks. And one of those is the inability to just keep adding more weight to your workouts.

If you're no longer seeing results but unsure of how to kickstart them, you need to learn how to use exercise progression!

As a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist, knowing how to progress my workouts is crucial.

Progressing your exercises is how you make home workouts harder. And adding weight to the bar isn’t the only way.

What Is Exercise Progression?

Each exercise has multiple variations to it as well as different ways to perform it.

Progressing an exercise means making it harder in some way.

And though the obvious ways are to somehow add more weight or volume, those aren’t the only ways.

How To Make Workouts Harder

So, what do you do with your home workouts when you’ve noticed a stall in your workouts? You progress them!

Below are 10 workout progressions to make your home workouts harder and push our body to see results.

You don’t need to implement all of them at once. Change 1-2 things every 4-5 weeks and keep the results coming!

By implementing these minor exercise progressions you’ll boost the intensity of your workouts which will, in turn, help your results.

Add More Weight

The most common of all progressions. Scaling up weight in dumbbells or adding weight to the bar is an easy way to push yourself further.

Paused Reps

Paused reps are an easy way to boost strength and range of motion. Along with that, they make exercise extra hard.

To use paused reps, you want to add a strategic pause (normally one to three seconds) on the “sticking point” of the exercise (learn more about how to use paused reps here).

So, for a squat, you’d add your pause at the bottom before you come up. For a row, you’d pause at the top of the row before releasing the weights (or band, etc).

Use A Tempo/Focus On Eccentric Training

Learning to control your repetitions is a great way to make a workout harder- especially when you work out at home!

Focus on controlling the eccentric part of an exercise (think the lowering part in a bicep curl, or bringing the weights back to your shoulders in an overhead press).

Instead of just quickly returning to the start position, try to control the lowering phase for three full seconds. Work against the natural urge to move quickly.

Use Unilateral Variations

One of the most common ways to progress an exercise is to start doing single-limb training.

Learn more about the best unilateral exercises.

These progressions require more strength, stability and help prevent injury. A few examples of using unilateral exercises are:

• Squats to single leg squats
• Overhead dumbbell press to a single arm press
• Push ups to one arm push ups

Add In A Plyometric

Plyometrics are a great way to train power and to boost intensity. However, you need to be strong in order to perform them (learn more about plyometric exercises).

If you feel like you’ve stagnated in your strength or workouts though, they’re great options.

Adding in jump squats, plyo push-ups, speed work are great ways to increase your heart rate!

Make It A Combo Move

Taking two exercises and making them into one move is a sure-fire way to make home workouts harder! You can learn more about combo moves here.

Think about it, instead of performing just a squat, add in a shoulder press at the top. The two exercises together are more challenging.

Some great combo exercise examples are:

• Squat to press
• Lunge with bicep curl
• Lunge with overhead press
• Plank with row
• Romanian deadlift to step back lunge
• Glute bridge with floor press

Increase Repetitions

An easy way to make your workouts harder is to bump up the repetitions!

Challenge yourself more towards failure by adding reps. If you could previously squat for eight repetitions, try twelve. For lower impact exercises (like glute bridges) work your way up to 20-30 reps.

Increasing your repetitions challenges your endurance and increases the intensity of your workouts.

Add More Sets

Another way to add more volume and challenge yourself is to increase the number of sets. If you could previously do a circuit for three rounds, try to do it for four the next week.

Make A Circuit

If your body is used to straight sets (performing all sets of an exercise before moving on to the next), making the exercises into a circuit (performing the exercises back to back) can be quite a challenge!

Add MoreTraining Days

This one again comes down to volume but it’s a great way to give a boost to your system. By upping the number of times you work out in a week you’re naturally increasing your volume which in turn (most of the time, except in the case of overtraining) breaks through plateaus.

Use Partial Reps

A great way to “burnout”! Partial reps make it so that the exercise is very focused and with little rest. Normally when using partial reps you’ll “feel the burn” which is one way that muscles grow.

Increasing Time Under Tension

This is a way to make home workouts harder than many people overlook. An average repetition takes under one second to perform.

By increasing the time to perform the repetition, you’re progressing how much time your muscles are stimulated.

Play around with time under tension with different tempos (curl the dumbbell for two seconds, pause for one second, lower it for three seconds). Make each and every second count.

Shorter Rest Times

Progress your workouts by eliminating the time between exercises and sets! A great way to challenge your endurance and push past your own threshold.

Scaling back on rest times not only gets your heart rate up but it forces you to work more and more through fatigue.

Use A Bigger Range Of Motion

If you strength train, when you increase your range of motion, you’ll most likely have to drop your load a bit. But it’s worth it.

Using a greater range of motion not only helps keep your joints healthy but is an amazing way to get very strong.

Add Tension

Adding tension is a bit different than adding weight because you can do both! Think of making an exercise harder by adding a mini loop around your knees in a dumbbell squat.

Or think of it in terms of isometric training: instead of going through a full range on your glute bridge, press up against a band (or dumbbell) and hold that top press for 15-20 seconds. You’re creating tension but not moving.

Play With Rep Schemes

Sometimes to make your workouts harder you need to start implementing different repetition schemes! Start looking into things like:

• Dropsets
• Supersets
• Pyramid or ladder training

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Frequently Asked Questions About Exercise Progressions

Adding weight to an exercise isn’t the only way to make your workouts harder. Use these exercise progressions to break through stagnant spots in your training programs, get strong and achieve your goals!