A: "Variety, intensity and accountability are key when designing an at-home training routine."

Dear Nina,

Hitting a plateau can happen more often than not when working out at home. Solo training can lack motivation – a routine sets in, and household obligations can easily come between you and your best workout. Variety, intensity and accountability are key when designing an at-home training routine. Here are four tried and true strategies for busting through a fitness plateau without leaving home:

Make Your Home a Fitness Playground

In every room of your home, create an opportunity to work out. Exercise doesn’t only have to happen in the 30 to 60 minutes you have set aside as workout time. Stand up and pace when you talk on the phone, lunge from room to room, or do 10 push-ups during every TV commercial. Create movement throughout your day, not only during the designated “workout” time.

Add Tabata Training

Tabata training is an interval training protocol that only lasts four minutes but creates huge EPOC – excess post oxygen consumption. This means that your body continues to burn calories well after the workout is over. The timing of Tabata offers negative rest to work bouts ¬– eight rounds working at high intensity for 20 seconds, and then 10 seconds of rest. Tabata training hardly takes any time at all, can easily be incorporated into your day, and offers huge benefits. Try it with jump squats, push-ups, or even treadmill sprints!

Train with a Buddy

A workout buddy will help you stay motivated and energized. You have accountability to this person and they to you. Make sure you share a common goal – running a 10K, climbing a mountain, anything that will take you further than you have been before and, more importantly, in a different direction.

Mix it Up! 

Doing the same exercise over and over creates boredom – in both mind and muscle. Incorporate something new and different into your workouts, and your body will wake up. Why not try the high-intensity circuit routine from the February 2012 issue of Oxygen? – Mindy