Training with limited equipment

[Nate777]

Hi everyone,

Recently I came across Rip's guide to building a home gym and was inspired to do so.

I currently have very limited gear - barbell and pairs of 10 kg bumper plates, 5 kg and 2.5 kg plates. I also made the mistake of buying a cheap and mostly worthless bench and rack, which I'm now waiting to have replaced with real gear. I'm also buying more plates, including smaller plates to accommodate a steady rise in weight.

I'd like to know if there's anything I can do with what I have now to get me started before I have the resources to do the program effectively.


Some background: I've had a sedentary job and lifestyle all my life. I did linear progression for a short stint one summer 3 years ago, where I made great progress, having started with just the bar feeling heavy and peaking at OHP: 42kg, Bench: 58kg, Squat: 90kg, DL: 115kg. Right now it feels like I'm back at zero.

Any advice? All suggestions appreciated. Thanks.

[Hayden-William Courtland]

Having done some strength work in the past the weights you have won't enable you to do much. How much time do you need to kill before you have your full setup? In the meantime you could still LP each of the lifts until you run out of weights. You would then need to get creative. You could try adding reps to the lifts every few sessions (instead of weight) or make the lifts harder (adding decificts to the DL, doing paused squats, doing temp squats, etc.) and then add reps to those variations.

[danomite!]

Weighted dips are good way to keep your bench & press strength up until you can get the rest of your equipment. Your weight (bodyweight + added weight) @ reps should be roughly the same as your bench press.

[Nate777]

Thanks for the advice. It'll be 1-2 months before I'm fully set up. I'd considered adding reps or volume as a means of progressive overload, but was under the impression it was heresy around these parts lol. LP would be doable for my upper body lifts if I only had a jump smaller than 5 kg. A big priority of mine is to not plateau like I did before, so anything I can do now to prepare myself for that is what I'd really like to sink my training into.

[Hayden-William Courtland]

Thanks for the advice. It'll be 1-2 months before I'm fully set up. I'd considered adding reps or volume as a means of progressive overload, but was under the impression it was heresy around these parts lol. LP would be doable for my upper body lifts if I only had a jump smaller than 5 kg. A big priority of mine is to not plateau like I did before, so anything I can do now to prepare myself for that is what I'd really like to sink my training into.

Heresy is not doing the program as written when you are capable of doing so.

You should be able to get micro plates much more quickly than 1-2 months.