Crewe Fitness

Want to train your legs at home but unsure how to move past bodyweight squats and make progress? Try these out (and read the tips below)!

While I’ll always advocate for training in the gym, if possible, there absolutely are ways that you can continue to make progress with more limited weights/equipment:

🔺Prioritize unilateral (single leg) movements: swapping a single leg squat or lunge variation for a regular squat challenges your muscles more without requiring as much weight

🔺Choose a more challenging variation: exercises like reverse Nordics or sissy squats are very challenging bodyweight exercises you can build up to to continue to challenge your target muscles (in this case, quads).

🔺Increase time under tension: utilizing a slower tempo or adding a pulse, like in pulsing kickstand RDLs, challenges you with less weight required.

🔺Importantly, ensure you’re going within a couple reps of failure. You can gain muscle in a very wide rep range, but only if you’re pushing close to failure, especially on higher rep sets. So make sure you’re not stopping at 8 if you could eke out 15. It can be helpful to test yourself occasionally to keep you honest with yourself 😉.

Are you able to motivate yourself to train at home? I’ll do it begrudgingly if I don’t have time to make it to the gym but find it harder to power through. Hats off to everyone who crushes their home workouts consistently.

If you’re looking for a solid plan for home workouts, check out my app (go to app.crewefitness.com)!

Feeling pressured to lose your hard-earned upper body muscle is a scam, so let’s train arms! Just a reminder that you don’t get jacked by accident (also, being jacked is cool, just like having strong bones).

Here’s a home upper body workout I did last week in 20-30 min with both regressed and progressed versions of most exercises.

If I’m short on time, I typically try and pair exercises that work opposing muscle groups (APS – agonist-antagonist paired sets) and do both exercises back-to-back or with a very short rest between to cut down on rest time without sacrificing strength (e.g. bicep curls + triceps extensions).

Superset 1:
8-12 push-ups
8-12 single arm rows
Rest + repeat 2-3x
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6-10 Pike push-ups – 2-3x
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Superset 2:
10-12 Bicep curls
6-10 Bodyweight OH triceps extensions
10-15 leg lowers
Rest + repeat 2-3x
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Save if you want to try! If you’re looking for a full home or gym workout program, check out my app (link in my bio 😊)

I’ve shared some of these things on my stories but I thought, because I’ve gotten some questions and because things are feeling a little easier and I’m feeling more positive now, I’d share some of what has been going on in the past year+.

Life is still really hectic (as I’m sure it is for many of you) but it’s nice to be feeling a lot more hopeful and feel like I have a more clear direction.

Thanks for dealing with some inconsistency on here with the ebbs and flows of my life. Genuinely appreciate you guys.

You may not be training to be an athlete, but you probably want to keep the ability to jump, land, and produce force quickly as you get older.

Power tends to decline faster with age than strength, and maintaining it is one piece of staying capable, confident, and physically resilient. Plyometrics are one way to keep training that quality and can also contribute to denser bones as you age.

Here are some ideas of where to start 👆🏻

🎉 Quick reminder that my new app is launching tomorrow 👀. My newest program “Built to Move” incorporates these principles if you’re looking for a structured way to add these in (and of course get stronger :))

I’ve been coaching my gym members on this lately, so I thought I’d share with the larger class too.

If you’re someone who wants to target glutes with your Bulgarian split squats, give this a watch to see if you have this tendency too!

Attempting to get my s**t together: cardio edition

I have, at times in my fitness life, had what I consider to be very good cardiovascular fitness. I’d run 10 km before starting work at 7 am a few times a week and crush torturous conditioning workouts.

Oh how children have humbled me.

While I’ve found a flow with 2-3 weights workouts a week, I hadn’t done any formal cardio since having Nora. Health-wise, not ideal, but it really is hard fitting it in.

In my n=2 experience, around 2 years postpartum seems to bring about a mental shift around pushing myself and exercise and I felt ready to tackle this.

So if you’ve seen my post-run story updates, this is what I’ve been up to. I haven’t missed my weekly run yet and they’re starting to suck less, which feels nice.

I’ll keep you all updated and I’m rooting for you if you’re also in the trying to get your fitness s**t together phase 👊🏻

Do you train your abs directly?

I started as girl 2, then became girl 1, and now I’m firmly girl 3 🫣

I’ve actually started supersetting core exercises mid-way through my workouts so I stop skipping them, which does work well. Can’t say the same about biceps though ✌️

How to bail out of a squat.

If you’re someone who ever squats without safety bars, this is a very worthwhile thing to practice.

Shoutout to the poor woman from the squat video. You’re a queen and I hope you’re ok.