No heavy weights at home? No problem. You can still proceeds muscle, strength and endurance plane without heavy resistance or hefty dumbbells like you’d normally use in the gym.

We spoke with Cody Braun, CSCS, well-nigh light weight workouts for major results during your at-home workouts.

Can I Get Stronger With Light Weights?

You sure can!

“A person can wilt stronger with lighter weights if they work at a higher rep range,” says Braun, who recommends 12 to 20 or increasingly repetitions per exercise.

This type of lifting — using lighter weights for a longer period of time — works to build muscular endurance. Lifting with light dumbbells/weights and upper reps won’t necessarily add a lot of mass or raw strength, but you will proceeds that endurance as well as functional strength, or strength for everyday activities.

“The increasingly you do this muscular endurance-type training,” says Braun, “the increasingly you’ll be worldly-wise to perform functional activities for longer periods.”

How Do You Work Out With Light Weights?

When working with lighter weights, think less well-nigh towers a ton of new muscle mass and increasingly well-nigh towers that endurance and keeping true and efficient form. Here are a few pointers.

1. Lift lighter weights to fatigue

Just like you might do with heavier weights, make sure that you are doing an exercise to fatigue. That might midpoint choosing a weight that becomes very nonflexible near the end of your reps. If that is still too easy with whatever light set of weights you have (even homemade weights), alimony going until your muscles wilt truly tired.

2. Add in new moves

Performing new movement patterns will indulge you to proceeds some strength neurologically, Braun says. So as your soul and smart-ass learn how to do the proper form for a new movement, you’ll be worldly-wise to slowly add increasingly weight as you wilt increasingly capable. Try new moves in live classes or opt for a whole new routine, like XB Pilates or Xtend Barre.

3. Focus on form

Even with tried-and-true exercises you’ve washed-up a million times, slow lanugo and focus on form. Push deeper, like in a proper squat, for example.

“Don’t just rush through the movement pattern, but focus on depth and having proper form with all parts of the exercise,” says Braun. “When you have proper form and aren’t sloshing through the movement, you are making your muscles work versus the resistance. If you are rushing through it, you are really just using momentum at that point.”

4. Change up your tempo

For any strength training or resistance exercise, mix up the tempo at which you perform the exercise. In a resistance exercise, when you elongate the eccentric phase (the phase when you are lengthening the muscle, like bringing the weight when lanugo from a dumbbell curl), you create microscopic damage to your muscles a little bit increasingly plane with lighter weights.

“You’ll get increasingly muscular damage, which will indulge you to get a little bit increasingly out of the exercise,” Braun says.

For example, if you are doing a chest press with lighter weights and are aiming for 12 to 20 reps, lengthen the time from when your stovepipe are fully extended to bringing the weights when lanugo to your chest. Press when up at a regular tempo. The longer that eccentric phase takes, the increasingly time under tension you are creating, which is a proven method for stimulating muscular growth.

5. Combine exercises

To fatigue plane quicker, perform multiple compound exercises that hit increasingly than one muscle group. For example, try a dumbbell biceps curl to an overhead press or add in some overhead presses with squats as well.

The increasingly muscles you are engaging, the increasingly calories you’ll burn. This tideway can moreover shorten your workouts as you engage increasingly muscle groups per exercise.

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