Sooner or later (hopefully sooner rather than later) you will be allowed back into the gym and we can’t wait. Here are a few tips to consider as your dream about your first day back in your favorite fitness club starts to become more of a reality.
Start Now - For one reason or another, many of us haven’t been able to find a new routine and exercise regiment causing a low level of motivation. However, now is the time to start getting your body prepped for your return to your pre-quarantine gym routine . You do not need to wait for your gym to open to start exercising again, so stop using that as your bench mark of when you'll “get back into it”. If there is anything that this pandemic has shown us, is that there is a LOT you can do at home with no equipment and a ton of resources at your fingertips. Do anything but not everything. Even if it’s just walking and stretching. You will thank yourself once your gym does open and you're able to go back without a total shock factor to your body. In the way of habit forming and habit maintenance, if you begin carving out that “exercise time” now, you are much more likely to keep that habit alive once you are able to hit your gym/ studio again.
Mobility and Dynamic Warm-Up are King - If you haven't been super active over the last few weeks or even if you have been, chances are your movement patterns/ exercises are different than what you have done when you were able to go to the gym back in March. We can also assume from the feedback we’ve gotten that the work from home crowd and the unemployed crowd you have been overall sitting more--which makes sense when you've been ordered to not leave your house unless necessary. It’s important to recognize that with mobility, it’s use it or loose it. Our bodies are constantly adapting and trying to become more efficient and whatever it is we are doing and starts to “forget” what it no longer needs. When getting back into your routine we recommend spending at least the first 15 minutes doing a proper mobility/dynamic movement routine. This will help prep the joints and soft-tissue which may have not gotten a lot of attention over the last few weeks. Warming them up properly will help get you back to pre-quarantine movement patterns. Check out our full body CARS routine and other mobility movements on our Youtube Page.
Be Patient/Start Slow- The reality is that you may experience a loss of strength or stamina, maybe it’s 5% or even 20% of where you were pre-pandemic. Understand that picking up exactly where you left off is probably not possible and definitely not recommended. This. Is. OK. Fight the urge to go balls-to-the-wall as soon as you get back. You are much better off starting “too slow” than “too fast”. What will be most important is that you maintain consistency upon your return and employ some sort of progressive overload. You will be sore, if you are too sore, this will interrupt your ability to remain consistent because it will force you to take days off and more time to recover. Go lighter than what you might think, you will still experience a training effect without the extra stress on your body. If we look at this on a scale of 1-10 of intensity, 10 being max effort, start yourself at a 5 or 6. Assess how you feel the first week and slowly scale up as the weeks continue. The worst thing with starting too aggressively is the potential to get injured and then finding yourself having to take more time off. The good news is that most people gain their strength back faster than they think when using “progressive overload.” To put it simple, this just means increasing your weight (lbs) or rep ranges a little each week. This could be 5 to 10lbs increase on your squat, or a couple extra repetitions on your pull-ups each week.
Give yourself time to rebuild your consistency and momentum. With the right mindset and routine you can be back to your baseline strength and conditioning before you know it. Trust and love the process.