How to Ease Back Into Your Fitness Routine

Gyms are starting to open up, and you’re itching to get back in there.

You want to get back to the weights you were lifting before.

You want to hop back on your favorite piece of cardio equipment.

You want to take back your corner of the stretching section.

You want to reclaim your gym, your routine, your fitness, and your health.

I’m all for that, believe me. But we need to handle this blessing with responsibility. If we go into things recklessly, it could end up hurting us.

So, today I just wanted to write you a reminder. I don’t have much to say, other than “take it easy.”

TAKE IT EASY

Yes, muscle memory exists, but your body still takes a while to bounce back. So, you need to make sure you ease back into gym life.

There are a few ways you can ease back when you start lifting again.

The whole point is to reduce your overall intensity, to reduce how hard you push yourself.

You can do this by reducing the amount of weight you lift, sets you complete, or reps you complete.

A good rule of thumb is to reduce all of those by 30-50%. I’ll give you an example. My wife and I went to the gym today, and I know I wanted to go nuts and do everything I’ve been missing out on. Thankfully, I’ve learned my lesson after doing something like that.

When we got to the gym, we settled on a few exercises that we were itching to do since we weren’t able to do them at home with limited equipment. We did deadlifts, overhead press, weighted pull-ups, weighted-dips, and decline sit-ups.

That was it. We just settled on exercises we wanted to do and called it good.

From there, we started by cutting down our sets. Usually, we do 3-4 sets of every exercise, especially when we are following a plan that is designed to get us to a goal. Instead, we did 2 sets of every exercise, not including the warm-up sets.

After that, we reduced our reps. instead of performing 10 reps like we had been used to before the gyms closed, we did 5-8.

Then, we took the weight down. I normally do overhead presses with 135 pounds or more. I did 95.

And, all of that was a bit of a challenge. I knew I could keep going. I knew I could push myself harder. But I also knew that the reduced intensity we applied was still somewhat of a challenge.

So I’m thankful we took it easy. Because we took it easy, our bodies will bounce back, and our strength will return quickly. And yours will, too.

When I was young, and I took a break from the gym for a while, I went all out. I either got hurt or got so sore that I couldn’t workout the rest of the week.

The latter is likely to happen when you push yourself too hard.

You need to remember the long game. You need to remember that you’re working out so you can have a good looking bod AND have a high quality of life. You want a six-pack but you also know you want to move and feel better.

Don’t lose sight of that.

Don’t sacrifice a week or more of workouts for one animal hour in the gym.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got.

Much love.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam is a fitness professional, baseball fan, and cookie fanatic based in Fort Collins, Colorado. After hanging up the cleats, he found a strong interest in the human body and how it performs. Since then, Adam has been transforming lives through fitness in a fun and encouraging atmosphere. As an ACE CPT and Fitness Nutrition Specialist, he is constantly moved to help people improve in all walks of life.

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What to Do When Your Gym Closes For Coronavirus

Businesses are shutting down left and right.

People are buying toilet paper like never before.

Everyone seems to be having an absolute meltdown.

To make it worse, your gym just shut down until the storm passes.

What do you do now?

Coronavirus is disrupting the way we normally live our lives. In my eyes, that’s ok. We’re a little too busy worrying about being busy, anyway. We could use some down time.

But for those of us that like to be active and take care of our health, the thought of being cooped up in the house without a gym haven to retreat to is absolutely horrifying. We need to workout!

In this article we’ll discuss what you can do to remain active and maintain your progress in the midst of the Coronavirus.

TO DO ITEM #1: STAY ACTIVE

If you live a relatively sedentary life and you work from a desk, it will be relatively easy to maintain your current activity levels outside of your formal workouts. If you are a trainer, construction worker, or move a lot for whatever job you may have, keeping things the same while at home will be a challenge, but you can combat it.

The one thing that will be important during this time is keeping active. You can do this by focusing on your daily steps. Sure, your city or town may be temporarily shut down, but that doesn’t mean you are. Go outside, get steps in, and give your body some vitamin D. It will keep your calorie burn higher, and help your immune system thrive. You can even complete tasks around the house that have been neglected for weeks. Do your laundry, get rid of clutter, vacuum, reorganize the cabinets, etc. Doing household cores is an easy way to increase your steps and keep some activity in your life.

If you have a wearable (FitBit, Apple Watch, Garmin, etc.) and you know your average daily steps, aim to keep that average or increase it. It will be tempting to use the lockdown as a time to binge Netflix and be lazy.

Don’t.

Your body needs to be able to burn some calories, and you can make that happen by keeping your steps high.

TO DO ITEM #2: WORKOUT

For those of you that have a home gym, this step will be easy. For those that don’t, you need to take advantage of the value that a good set of bands will bring. If you don’t have bands, get them now. Order them off Amazon, or head to a local store if it’s still open. I recommend RubberBanditz.

Using bands will help you apply resistance to your workouts, in order to keep the progress you’ve worked so hard for in the gym. If you’ve been weight training up to this point (and you should be), using bands can help your body receive the muscle building and strength building effects that your body has been exposed to from traditional weights in the gym.

Bands won’t have the same exact resistance that the weights do, but if bands are something you’re not used to, you may even see more progress from your at-home band workouts.

Using a set of bands will require you to get creative. You may not be able to perform the same exercises and movements because you don’t have the same equipment available, and that’s ok. When my clients are away from a gym for an extended period of time, the band workouts I assign them help them change things up and continue to progress.

I generally recommend full body band workouts 3-5 times per week depending on what you have been used to doing in the gym. The goal with the band workout isn’t to kick your ass, or make you so sore you can’t walk the next day. No workout should have that intention. The idea behind the bands is to keep your muscle building and strength building signal active while you are away from the gym.

Below is an example workout that I recommend you do while you’re away from the gym:

Full Body Band Workout

• Intent: Feel the muscles work, build strength.

• Tempo: Slow and controlled. 3 seconds on the way up, 3 seconds on the way down of each rep.

• Sets: 3-4

• Reps: 8-12

• Rest Between Sets: 60-90 seconds

• Exercises

  • Band Bulgarian Split Squat

  • Band Push Up

  • Band Squat

  • Band Row

  • Superset

    • Band Bicep Curl

    • Band Tricep Extension

  • Band Sit-Up

Adjust the sets, reps, and intensity to emulate what you’ve been doing in the gym. It is important you get a good connection to your muscle as you feel them flex and squeeze during each rep. As mentioned, you can perform this workout based on what you’d be used to in the gym. If you usually train three times per week, do it three or four times per week.

TO DO ITEM #3: STRETCH AND WORK ON MOBILITY

Having extra time away from normal routines and commitments is an excellent time to practice and develop a new habit. It’s a great opportunity to do something that you normally wouldn’t.

Most people don’t spend enough time stretching and working on mobility during their normal routine, so now is the time to make it a habit before your days go back to normal.

Being more mobile will aid you in many aspects of your health. Increased mobility will help you prevent injury. It will help your daily tasks become far easier. It may alleviate chronic pain, and it can help improve your performance and overall results.

Being mobile is a fancy way of saying that someone has good control over their flexibility. Being flexible comes from lots and lots of stretching. Being more flexible can be a good thing, but if you don’t have control over those new found ranges of motion, you may find yourself injured. It’s important that you create strength and control as well.

In order to do that, a simple flex and squeeze of the muscles at the end of your stretches can help you establish a good connection as you become more limber. For example, while stretching your glute and hip in a 90/90 or pigeon position, you can press your front leg into the ground to develop a connection to your muscles in that bigger range of motion. Here is a video to help you visualize what I’m talking about.

Take the additional time you have to focus on what you normally wouldn’t focus on, that way it becomes a habit before you get back to the daily grind.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Keep up with your daily steps. Shoot to meet your average daily steps, or increase them by 1k. Staying active will keep you from gaining extra body fat and feeling sluggish/lazy.

2. Continue to train with a set of bands at home. Focus on your muscle connection and build strength so you can go back to the gym picking up right where you left off.

3. Work on the things you normally wouldn’t, like stretching and mobility work. Alleviate chronic pain and become more limber so your everyday life may be more enjoyable.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam is a fitness professional, baseball fan, and cookie fanatic based in Fort Collins, Colorado. After hanging up the cleats, he found a strong interest in the human body and how it performs. Since then, Adam has been transforming lives through fitness in a fun and encouraging atmosphere. As an ACE CPT and Fitness Nutrition Specialist, he is constantly moved to help people improve in all walks of life.

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