Training at home: what you can achieve

With dumbbells or just your body weight: how to progress and where the limits are.

You can gain strength and muscle at home. What changes compared with the gym isn't the principles, but how you make exercises harder when you can't add plates.

With a pair of dumbbells

Adjustable dumbbells cover almost everything: goblet squats and lunges for legs, Romanian deadlifts for the posterior chain, presses and rows for the upper body, and curls, raises and extensions for arms and shoulders. The limit comes with legs, where you'll soon need more weight than you have.

With no equipment

Body weight trains pushing well (push-ups and their variations), legs (squats, lunges, glute bridges) and the core. Pulling is the hard part: without a pull-up bar, the best option is the inverted row under a very sturdy table or a low bar.

How to progress without adding weight

• More reps: once you hit the target, raise it by two reps.
• Slower: lower in three or four seconds and pause at the bottom.
• Harder variations: feet-elevated push-ups, Bulgarian split squats, single-leg bridges.
• Less rest, only when none of the above is possible any more.

Where the limits are

For maximum strength in the legs and back, heavy loads are hard to replace. If that's your goal, in the medium term you'll need a barbell or a gym. To get fit, build muscle as a beginner or keep what you have, home is enough.

AppGym's plan for home

When you create your plan you can choose to train at home with dumbbells or with no equipment. The app only uses exercises you can do with what you have and, with no equipment, makes every day a full-body day, because there aren't enough pulling exercises to fill a day of their own.