Lifting Weights Alone Safely

Lifting Weights Alone Safely

03/02/2024
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Work hard, but be safe when working out on your own.

Working out is a great way to help get your overall health to a good place. However, finding time to work out as a parent is often difficult. Trying to carve out more than 30 minutes of time can often be difficult. Getting to a gym is unlikely an option in scenarios like this unless you can include it as part of your work day routine. Many parents end up working out at home and alone because of this.

Working out alone certainly has its benefits - you are not waiting on other people for equipment, you are able to listen to what you’d like on your headphones without interruptions (perhaps an audiobook), and you are able to workout whenever is convenient for you. This really allows the most flexibility in terms of being able to get your workout in.

Of course, there are plenty of downsides to working out alone as well. If you’re not at a gym, one of the biggest downsides is going to be the lack of equipment or at least variety of equipment. If you’re working out at home, we highly recommend working on building out your home gym with equipment, but you’re still going to be limited compared to a full commercial gym.

The other big downside to working out alone is that you no longer have other people close by who can help you out of a sticky situation. If you’re lifting weights, or doing some other intense movement that has the possibility of injury, you’re on your own to get out of that situation. Your child probably won’t be lifting a hundred plus pounds off of you if you get stuck. You need to be careful in terms of how you’re working out.

The primary way to avoid getting into a situation that can lead to further injury is to lower the amount of weight that you’re lifting. If it’s not lifting, then modify the routine as necessary to keep yourself out of a situation that you can’t get out of. Just because you’re lifting less weight though, doesn’t mean that you have to have a worse workout or that you can’t get stronger. There’s nothing that says you have to have the most weight possible on a bar in order to get stronger.

The best strategy to continue to get stronger while using less weight is to add pauses, and slow your lifts down. As an example of this with a bench press movement, here are the ways you can modify the lift to make it just as hard (if not harder) while not using as much weight: first, slow down your movement as you lower the bar. Don’t drop the weight as fast as you can to your chest. Instead, slowly lower the weight. Second, pause at chest level (don’t rest it on your chest, just hold it there) for at least a second before pushing the weight back up. 

If you’ve never used this method of lifting before, make sure to cut your weight way down because you’re going to get to failure much faster with a much lower weight. This same strategy can be used on any lift that you perform. Squats are a great way to really feel that burn in the legs - you’ll often feel that good pain the next day when you train using this method and you may be surprised how little weight you really need to get a good workout in.

Working out alone doesn’t have to be dangerous, and it doesn’t have to mean that you can’t get stronger. Change how you lift in order to build muscle while being safe by slowing down your lifts.

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