From mindset to environment: home workout top tips from Team Hytro

Dan Norton’s quick tips:

1. Have a goal in mind to work towards. From there you can work back accordingly and create small checkpoints and rewards.
2. Prepare accordingly, be it your food pre or post-session, or the session itself – don’t leave these small details down to chance. This will help make you accountable for your actions, but it also stops time-wasting and procrastinating.
3. Be ok with failing, these things happen, refocus and learn from these mistakes. Tomorrow is a new day.
4. Try and stick to 10,000 steps a day, it means you have to be active, and hopefully encourages you to get outdoors.

3 steps to an optimised home workout from Ollie Marchon:

1. Choosing the right space in your house

Imagine you are going to the gym, what isn’t in your way? There aren’t piles of laundry you know need to get done, in the corner of your eye. There aren’t stacks of the work piled up next to you to sweat all over.

These are distractions. They have a massive effect on your mindset/attitude towards gearing yourself up for some hard work, mainly because they clutter your thoughts with the hard work you have to do outside the gym too…eliminate these distractions as best as possible.

Clear an area of any distractions, face away/ a wall should your house be open plan or better yet, find a room with a door that can be closed.

2. Bare essentials

Now that we have a space, it needs to feel like your training environment so here are a few things to consider:

The Lighting

Do you train in a brightly lit gym, or a low-lit lifting bunker with a thing mist of powdered chalk floating through the air? Get this right, this external factors can really help set the tone for your session ahead. Use lamps, open curtains, and even get some cheap coloured LED strips/bulbs. It will make all the difference.

Music

Get yourself some quality headphones or a speaker and smash a few tunes on!

Finishing touches

Quality gym mats – this will really tie the environment together and make your space ready for some productive training. We recommend something sturdy to protect those lovely hardwood/ tiled floors from you and you from them! They want to be thick, but not too spongey and big enough that you can lay flat on your back with your arms and legs spread.

3. Weights & equipment

Whilst it isn’t “ESSENTIAL” that you buy weights because you can get a more than decent workout using just your body weight… this will only serve you for so long, especially if you are used to training loaded movement patterns.

As a bare minimum, we recommend a Hex Dumbbell, a Cast Iron Kettlebell (traditional shape), a resistance band, a skipping rope and of course some Hytro BFR wearables.

The Hex Dumbbell – Perfect for its multifunctional properties, being that it has six flat edges which provide for a plethora of different grips/racking options. It can be used like a para-lette, providing a raised grip from the ground. These flat surfaces also mean the dumbbell won’t roll away from you when you put it down.

The Cast Iron Kettlebell – This is a very sturdy, multifunctional bit of kit and can be used for SO MANY different exercises. The physical qualities of the traditional shape provide for many similar functions to the Dumbbell and more, but also comfort, when moving around and potential impact points, the smooth round edges won’t nearly do as much damage as some of the dodgier variations out there!

The resistance band – Perfect on its own for certain exercise resistance or even assistance, can be used for stretching and can be used to increase the load on patterns affixed to your Dumbbell/Kettlebell.

The skipping rope – The most affordable piece of home conditioning equipment money can buy. You can get a real workout using just this!

And finally, Hytro BFR wearables. Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) Training is perfect for anyone to do at home with light or body weight. The beauty of BFR is that it’s designed to recruit all the muscle fibres, optimally using the muscle whilst only requiring a weight that is 20-30% of your 1 rep max, allowing you to have a quality workout with little to no weights!