Staying on track during the lockdown

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” – James Clear, author of Atomic Habits.

What we can’t control?

Gym’s closing.

What we can control?

Our Mindset.

This is probably going to be the biggest factor in overcoming any obstacles over the next month. We’ve been through two lockdowns already and with gyms set to close a third time, it’ll only be a struggle if we allow it to.

Instead of expending your precious energy in the gym, we can spend this time creating a bulletproof mindset to ensure that we can come back mentally stronger.

Some new hobbies that I would advise taking up include reading, meditation, and journaling.

Sleep Hygiene

If you can maintain a consistent time for going to sleep and waking up, it’s linked to a whole host of benefits. Your daily sleep routine habits influence your quality of rest, general day to day energy, and cognitive performance.

If you can maintain a consistent time for waking and going to bed, bonus points for including a pre-bed routine, better health outcomes are a result of just a little extra planning.

Look up circadian rhythms (fancy words for our bodies’ internal 24-hour clock) and you’ll get a better insight into why.

Food Quality and Calorie Intake

Your body needs calories for energy. But the overconsumption of calories relative to your respective activity levels will lead to weight/body fat gain.

So if you’ve never tracked your calorie intake before, it could be a good idea to start and that can give an insight into why you could be losing, maintaining, or gaining weight. Myfitnesspal is the app of choice, for any smartphone user.

Also, calories are not the only piece of the puzzle here. Yes, they are ultimately what it comes down to when we are looking to lose/gain weight, but you should also be making sure that you consume a variety of good wholesome nutrient-dense foods.

Having a broad spectrum of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes will lead to much better health outcomes, ensuring that we are not only fuelling our body. But ensuring that we are getting in a full panel of vitamins and minerals too, will be highly beneficial when looking to keep our immune system strong and our overall health in check.

Productivity

Yes, I know what your thinking. This is the perfect time to binge-watch one of the hundreds of different series on Netflix, or even browse social media for hours upon hours a day.

While this does sound enticing to some, it is not the most productive use of our time and will ultimately lead to our screen time going through the roof. Something that our minds will not enjoy.

So what can you do instead? 

You could be investing more time in yourself, which previously would have been something unthinkable. Maybe this can be upskilling for work and helping you chase a promotion, new job? Or this time can be used to take up new skills, hobbies, or interests that could have seemed alien to you before.

Our minds love a challenge and will only benefit from learning more. The worst-case scenario is that you end up not enjoying it and finding a different said hobby or skill to do with your time.

Something as simple as going for a walk with a friend or listening to a podcast/audiobook is a great way to make use of your time, learn something new, and increase your overall energy expenditure (bonus points for getting it in during daylight, away from your work, home environment).

Not every single second of our day has to be 100% productive, but instilling some good habits like these, can only be beneficial.

Activity levels

Some big advice I’d give would be to hit a daily step goal. While not everyone will have the benefit of getting outside for as much time as they’d like to. Setting yourself a daily step goal is a great way of keeping your general activity levels consistent.

Most smartphones, watches, and/or fitness trackers have built-in pedometers that measure your step count/activity levels for you without you even needing to do anything.

There are also apps you can download for this, simply search step-counter/pedometer in your app store and choose your preferred app of choice.

Remember what we said about going for a walk with a friend or listening to a podcast/audiobook? That’s one way of increasing activity levels.

If you still don’t have the time or miss training in the gym even though we cannot supply that for you, what we do have on sale soon is Bodyfirst adjustable dumbbells that range from 2-24kg or 5-40kg in 2kg increments.
These a great way to ensure that you can still have some form of progressive overload and can bring a small piece of the gym home, rather than having to use general household items.

Graham Keenan
Personal Trainer & Coach
(Instagram @grahamkeenan_)