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Training Troubleshooting: Get Ripped with Less Equipment

Go long on muscle- and strength-building results even when you're short on equipment with these tips.

Training Troubleshooting: Get Ripped with Less Equipment

Through my "Training Troubleshooting" article series, I've told you how to get in great workouts when you're short on time and short on training days during the week.

So how about short on equipment? That's an issue for many people, and I have the solution...

The Problem: You Don’t Have All the Necessary Equipment for a Given Workout

Let’s say your situation is that you’re not able to get to a fully equipped gym to do your workout yet you're following a program that calls for all types of equipment; in other words, you’re training with limited equipment either at home or on the road at a hotel fitness center. From my experiences, “limited equipment” usually means no barbells, machines, cable stations or power racks – just light dumbbells and maybe an adjustable bench.

Of course, sometimes you have exactly zero equipment, but let’s assume you have at least some weights at your disposal – albeit light ones, like dumbbells up to 30-50 pounds. Don’t worry, I’ll address no equipment in a subsequent article.

The Solution: Find Substitutes and More Challenging Variations

There are a couple key issues here: (1) You don’t have all the equipment that a given workout calls for, and (2) you don’t have heavy enough weights to do sets to failure (or at least close to it) in the prescribed rep ranges.

For the first issue, you’re just going to have to do different versions of the listed exercises. If dumbbells are all you have, you’ll need to do dumbbell variations of the movements. In this case, just do the best you can and don’t worry about the exercises not being exactly the same as those listed.

Here are some examples…

Substitution for barbell bench press (chest): dumbbell bench press, reverse-grip dumbbell bench press, even push-ups. If incline barbell bench press is called for, do the dumbbell version on an incline bench. If you don’t have an incline bench, do push-ups with your feet elevated.

Substitution for barbell bent-over rows and lat pulldowns (back):

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