Can you build muscles by exercising at home?

The answer is yes, but the premise is that you have to understand the logic of muscle growth. Don't believe in the one-sided conclusion that "you can't build muscles at home", and don't expect to just follow the short video for two minutes to develop lines comparable to those of fitness bloggers.

To be honest, I used to think that practicing at home was just a joke. Until the lockdown for more than two months in 2022, and I couldn't go out of the community, I relied on a pair of adjustable dumbbells that can be adjusted up to 20kg and a yoga mat worth tens of yuan. I suddenly increased my arm circumference from 32cm to 34.8cm. It used to be loose. The baggy cotton T-shirt, the shoulder line is finally able to stand up, and there is a friend who does street fitness next to me. He has never been to a gym, so he relies on the horizontal bar in the community and the elastic band at home. After more than a year of training, the inverted triangle outline of the latissimus dorsi is particularly obvious. When he bends over, the Christmas tree lines on his back can be seen.

Of course, I have also seen many people say that practicing at home is useless, but this is not intentional, most of them have stepped on two pitfalls. Or maybe I haven't touched the core of "progressive overload" at all. I met a netizen before who said that he had been practicing at home for more than half a year without any change. After careful questioning, I found out that he can't do 20 standard push-ups and 30 bodyweight squats every day. The weight, frequency, and difficulty of movements have never been increased. The muscles have long adapted to this intensity, and even the soreness on the second day after training is gone. How can there be motivation for growth? Either the goal itself does not meet the needs of ordinary enthusiasts. If you are aiming for the dimension of a professional bodybuilder with a season arm circumference of 45+ and a chest that can fit a cup, then it is really difficult to achieve it at home. You can't just put a barbell rack of several hundred kilograms and a set of fixed track equipment at home, right? But the muscle mass that ordinary enthusiasts want to have "a silhouette when undressed and a shoulder line when wearing clothes" can be fully satisfied at home.

In fact, to put it bluntly, muscle growth does not matter at all. As long as you can cause enough micro-tears in the muscle fibers through resistance training, and keep up with the daily protein supplement of 1.6-2.2g per kilogram of body weight, and more than 7 hours of sleep, it does not matter whether you are next to the squat rack in the gym or on the yoga mat in your living room, whether you should increase or not. Look at those street fitness masters who are out of the circle. Many of them rely on their own weight and simple small equipment to develop muscle lines that are more beautiful than many people who go to the gym all year round.

Of course, if you reach the later stage of training and your body weight and small dumbbells can no longer meet the needs of progressive weight-bearing, or you just love the atmosphere in the gym where everyone works hard together, then there is no problem in moving to the gym. The essence is to train in good condition, and there is no need to quarrel over whether "home or gym is more advanced". The method that can persist is the most suitable for you.