Aura Leisure Centres & gyms across the country remain closed under Level 5 restrictions. With that being said, now is not the time to take the foot off the gas. In fact, there hasn’t been a better time to improve your fitness and conditioning as many of us may have substantial spare time on our hands.

You have a choice. When looking at the month of December and beyond, how do you want to position yourself going into a new year?

Of course, we are once again relying on Home Workouts to keep us working towards our individual fitness goals. So here’s my 10 Home Workout Tips To Maximise Results:

1. Create a spacious & bright workout area – the environment you train in will play a key role in motivating you to exercise.

2.  Make a weekly plan & schedule sessions in your diary – If you have a plan in place you are more likely to stick to it in comparison to adopting a spontaneous approach to working out.

3. Cover all muscle groups at least once in your weekly plan – Upper body, lower body, abs routines are a great way of covering the whole body. Platforms such as YouTube & Instagram

4. Incorporate compound exercises! – these recruit several muscle groups at once, so you’ll get stronger and burn more calories in comparison to isolation exercises.

5. Similarily, remember the simple movement patterns are very effective! – Squats, Lunges, press ups will always be amazing exercises that are easy to perform.

6. Get creative with your workouts! – Try variations of the above exercises e.g shuffle squats or decline press ups

7. Add weight to your exercises – Dumbells, Bottled watter, filled school bags, tins of food etc.

8. Lower tempo of movement patterns to increase tension – the more tension the muscle is under the more muscles are recruited to perform the exercise. The more muscles that are recruited leads to greater stimulus & growth.

9. Workout with a friend or family member – some healthy competition didn’t hurt anyone! You will also have someone doing the workouts with you which will only motivate you both more!

10. Play your favourite music to get you in the mood for training – Put yourself in the zone for working out. Create an energetic and vibrant atmosphere!