As far as entertainment goes, I’m a big YouTube fitness guy, and one of the things I’ve noticed lately on both YouTube and Instagram is that a lot of fitness influencers are pushing these “at-home workouts from hell.” And here’s the thing: they look really good in the thumbnails and the clickbait headlines are yummy. But, I’m not so sure this is the best way of going about things if what you care most about is your physique, and I’m here to tell you why.
First, I want to be clear about what I mean when I (and these influencers) say workouts “from hell.” The general theme of all these workouts can be summed up a in a few bullet points:
Usually lots of reps (50 or more in most cases)
Lighter loads
Minimal focus on technique
Minimal focus on the mind-muscle connection (MMC)
Maximal focus on intensity and effort
Minimal rest times or long circuits of exercises strung together
Let’s get into it then.
Q: Why are these workouts probably not the best idea for people looking to improve their body composition?
1. Being needlessly hardcore isn’t the mechanism that drives improved body composition.
This immediately requires us to zoom out a bit. What does it even mean to improve your body composition? Well, let’s cut to the chase. As far as I’m concerned, most people want to lose body fat (not just weight) and build muscle to the extent that they look good naked and feel confident at the pool. I have yet to hear a client say, “I actually really just like fitness for fitness. I really don’t care that much about losing body fat or gaining a bit of muscle.” If that were true of you, you’d probably already be fairly committed to your fitness hobby of choice: jogging, boxing, swimming, CrossFit, etc. So from now on, let’s assume that your goal is primarily motivated by looking better and feeling more confident.
Unfortunately, well-intentioned people get this wrong all the time, and I can say this confidently because I did it for years. So, hear me when I say this: Neither losing body fat nor gaining muscle are achieved through being aimlessly hardcore. It’s not the “hardcore-ness” of your workout that communicates to your body, “Okay, start looking better.”
If you want to achieve that leaner, more muscular look, you really need to figure out how you can train to maximize muscle gain (or retention) while being in a caloric deficit. Simply put, these "workouts from hell” probably aren’t optimal for physique outcomes because they don’t load your muscles optimally for growth - and growth is what creates that look most of us are after.
Training intelligently is what drives body composition results - not being “hardcore” just for the sake of it.
2. Muscles have been shown to grow best when loaded near failure in the 5-30 rep ranges - not 100 or more like some of these trending at-home workouts prescribe.
Yesterday on Instagram I saw someone challenge their social media audience to do 200 air squats per day for an entire week. Again, there’s nothing wrong with doing air squats if you like them for general exercise or find them therapeutic. My intent is also not to say this person is “stupid" or “wrong" because they aren’t! Getting people off their butts and moving during a time like this is amazing and absolutely beneficial in it’s own way, I just don’t want our audience thinking that doing 200 air squats a day is a good way to develop stronger, muscular, and more aesthetically pleasing legs (for both men and women). It’s not. Getting “up and moving around” versus training to grow some respectable muscle are two very different things.
If you want to grow, the science consistently shows that growth happens when loading your muscles to the extent that you can perform between 5-30 reps as you approach muscle failure. For example, if you’re doing a dumbbell squat at home and you’re able to do 40 reps with 25 pounds, you’d probably be better off increasing the weight until those achievable reps fall below 30.
To zoom in even more, most of that work should probably be done in the 8-15 rep range. This means instead of doing 1400 air squats across the span of a week, you could just pick one or two days and perform 3-5 sets of a weighted squat in that 8-15 rep range.
It’s up to you, but the latter is much more likely to actually get you growing muscle and looking better naked while that first option is more of a fitness or endurance goal.
Choose what’s best for you, but be educated in that decision.
3. Despite the higher calorie burn, these workouts don’t account for sustainability or future progression, which frequently leads to burnout.
With their high rep counts and short, circuit-based rest times, these "workouts from hell” are really just training your endurance systems and maybe bumping your calorie burn for the day. And although burning extra calories through high intensity activity can absolutely be a piece of the fat loss puzzle, it can also be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Yes, I am actually making the point that burning a few extra calories might not be worth it in the grander scheme of things.
Think of it this way, if you burn an extra 500 calories doing a series of burpees, air squats, pushups, crunches, mountain climbers, and whatever else, do you really want to get in the habit of having your body rely on that sort of induced calorie burn to maintain your current rate of progress? You might - and I certainly don’t want to discount the fact that those people exist, I just personally don’t know too many people who genuinely enjoy that sort of training. Most people workout a certain way as a means to an end because they’ve been convinced it’s the best way to go about things. But, is it? In this case - probably not.
These workouts also probably aren’t sustainable. If you’re not already in phenomenal shape, doing something like 100 burpees followed by 100 pushups followed by 100 pullups followed by 100 crunches is going to absolutely dominate you. You will be sore for days - maybe even more than a week! So if you do that on Monday, what are you going to do on Tuesday? Well, I know exactly what you’ll be doing. You’ll be curled up in the fetal position with enough delayed onset muscle soreness to cripple an army.
And to that same point, these workouts don’t account for the future. Even if you could do that workout and live to see the light of next Monday, what happens then? Do you do it again? For the same amount of sets and reps? And again the following Monday? How do you progress? It’s a dead-end road.
For optimal muscle development, I’ve learned that you really need to be periodizing your approach, which means learning when to take it easy, when to ramp it up, and when to go hard in the paint.
Take this example of a leg day you could do instead of those 200 air squats per day.
DB Goblet Squats for 3 sets of 8-15
Bodyweight Bulgarian Split Squats for 2 sets of 10-20
DB Romanian Deadlifts for 2 sets of 8-15
Weighted Crunches for 2 sets to semi-failure
Most people could do that on Monday, feel a bit of soreness on Tuesday, and be fully recovered to train their legs again by Thursday. By next Monday, you could repeat that entire workout while adding a small bit of weight, adding a rep here or there, improving your technique, or even adding a set. That’s called progression. Progression provides overload, and overload produces results when your diet matches the goal.
So, here is the point in black and white…
“If your goal is to look better naked, consider training with heavier loads, eating plenty of protein within an overall caloric deficit, setting a step goal, and prioritizing your sleep and recovery.”
Hopefully that makes sense in simple enough terms.
Q: Are there any good reasons to be doing these workouts? Or are they just a bad idea in general?
It doesn’t have to be a non-negotiably bad idea.
Good reasons for doing these sort of workouts could be that you enjoy them or just prefer getting a bigger caloric burn in a short amount of time. Those are great reasons to do them, I just personally don’t relate to them because:
I don’t like high intensity training with lighter loads.
I prefer to achieve my calorie deficit primarily through diet and walking.
Another reason could be that you just really enjoy a good challenge for the sake of fitness. If that’s you, go for it!
But if that’s not you, take a step back, evaluate your long-term goal, and train/eat/sleep according to what the science says - not fitness mythology.
Thanks for reading, everyone! I sincerely hope you enjoyed the content and learned something.
If you feel like this blog brought you any value at all, consider sending it to a friend or family member!
And, if you're interested in working with me one-on-one, visit The Vegan Gym and apply for coaching. I’ve had nothing but success in guiding people toward their fat loss goals.
Cheers, everyone!
-Andrew