At the very least, we want you to emerge from the COVID-19 lockdown in the same condition you entered it, if not better!
To help you master this challenge during this daunting period in all our lives, it helps to break your lockdown approach to health and fitness into smaller, more manageable chunks.
Here are our top 5 tips to turn your lockdown lifestyle into one focused on health and fitness.
1. Monitor your fitness
Perform a regular fitness test. This will help you determine if your training is working to keep you on track and maintain your fitness and conditioning, or if your fitness levels are in fact improving.
Start each week with a one-minute push-up, squat and sit-up test by doing as many reps of each exercise as you can in 60 seconds. Note down and record the results of each test. If your training is working, you’ll be able to do more each time, which indicates progress!
Another indicator of improving (or dwindling) fitness is your resting heart rate.
The fitter you are, the lower your resting heart rate will be. Monitoring your heart rate on waking on a daily basis serves as a good indicator of your progress.
The ideal process is to take your heart rate every morning as soon as you wake up, record it and compare it over time. A rising resting heart rate could indicate that your fitness levels are dropping, which might suggest more intense training is required.
2. Have a plan
Aimlessly walking around the house thinking about what you should do is a real drag on motivation levels. Planning your lockdown exercise program properly will ensure you start each session with a clear goal in mind.
Proper planning will also ensure you can periodise your lockdown training properly to keep making progress, while also ensuring your workouts remain challenging, interesting and engaging.
3. Choose intensity over volume
While you might have more time on your hands now, the ideal training approach remains high-intensity interval training (HIIT).
If you have weights, use them, otherwise add other common household items to your repertoire. Otherwise simply bodyweight sessions with little or no rest between sets will work.
READ MORE: Lockdown Home Training Guide
Mix it up with metcons, Tabatas, complexes or circuits to help burn more calories per minute and achieve those results.
When it comes to planning your HIIT sessions, a total-body exercise routines gives you an opportunity to incorporate compound movements into a challenging, energetic workout.
TRY THIS: Full-Body Band Workout
Focus on movements like:
- Squats and squat jumps
- Push-ups
- Lunges
- Burpees
- Step-ups
These functional exercises help to strengthen core muscles and are also the most efficient as they burn more calories per session.
4. HIIT the cardio
The HIIT principle also applies to cardio training. Working through a wide heart rate range during a 15-minute skipping, sprint or aerobics session, for instance, will burn more fat and more calories than 30 minutes of walking around the garden because it uses more energy systems, increases your post-exercise metabolic rate, which prolongs the ‘after-burn’ effect, and places greater demands on your cardiovascular system.
It also promotes the releases of beneficial hormones due to the intensity, which can accelerate fat loss.
5. Clean up your diet
Are you struggling to keep your hands out of the cookie jar as you wait for lockdown to end? Rid yourself of those poor eating habits you picked up during lockdown by cleaning up your diet.
READ MORE: 10 Strategies To Ward Off Lockdown Weight Gain
The best approach to clean eating is avoiding temptations in the first place, so do yourself a favour and get rid of any sugar-laden treats and comfort foods.
Stock up on whole, natural foods during your next shopping trip to add more nutrient-dense ingredients to your diet. Focus on colour and variety, with loads of leafy greens for the antioxidant and immune support.
And make sure you prepare your meals using health and waistline-friendly cooking methods like grilling, boiling or steaming.
Author: Pedro van Gaalen
When he’s not writing about sport or health and fitness, Pedro is probably out training for his next marathon or ultra-marathon. He’s worked as a fitness professional and as a marketing and comms expert. He now combines his passions in his role as managing editor at Fitness magazine.
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