Health check

Hey population of WordPress, it’s been a while! As many others, I was (still am) struggling with finding a new routine in quarantine. I gotta say, the approach of the Netherlands was never too strict, although, at least in the first phase, everything was indeed closed to the public: restaurants, cafes, pubs, cinemas, no events, and so on; people could at least be outside for walks and outdoor sport, unlike Italy, where I am originally from, where you would need a certification that justified being outside. It was only allowed to be outside for primary needs: groceries, pharmacy, or walking your dog.

Things are slowly reopening, and as many others I have to get used to be around people again, after two months of nearly complete isolation, working from home.

The isolation led to a path of laziness and demotivation, difficult to identify once you’re living it. Only when I started going out again I realised how lazy I’ve been, how it felt like ‘living in a bubble’ where every single day is the same.

Clearly, it impacted my fitness routine. I was never a fan of working out at home, or at the park. I’m an old school gym rat, if you want, and although I am still to find my consistency, believe me when I say that there’ s nothing better to me than the smell of sweat and iron, the blood pumping in your muscles and the feeling of being completely destroyed the following day.

Today there’s thousands (if not millions) of home workout trainings out there. Youtube, online training, fitness apps. What’s the problem with that, you say? Let me list a few:

• Too much choice is overwhelming: internet created that terrible feeling called ‘information overload’. With too many information available, our brain struggles to process and structure the very same information we’re looking for, and we don’t know anymore what we were looking for in the first place.
• Programs are too standard: ‘one size fits all’ approach does not exist.
• Fragmentation: most of the time videos are a one-time workout, instead of a consistent fitness program. It’s tempting to just search a home workout on youtube: millions of results, probably. But how does that workout fit into a larger plan? What are you going to search next? In my case, I ended up trying a bunch of different workouts without a real structure, and felt overwhelmed by failure once again.
• Monitoring. Who’s going to monitor your results? Are you equipped to do so, with a measuring tape, scale and a stopwatch? Can you keep monthly track of variations in your waistline and weight?

And don’t let me mention the ‘army’ of fitness trainers out there, ready to prepare a custom program for you. There’s so many of them, how do I chose? Personal trainers are not cheap, so I understand you might want to be absolutely sure before picking one.

All this to say that IT’S OK. It’s ok to lose focus in such extraordinary circumstances. Been there, done that: I lost all the progress I’ve made in the last months, and back to square 1.

In the last week I tried with another approach. Instead of planning a 1.5 hour workout 3 times a week, which I always ended up missing for whatever reason, I am following a program with 5 short, 20-minutes workout a week. 20 minutes of high intensity, almost daily. It works wonders when you constantly fool yourself with ‘I don’t have the time’, or to overcome the feeling of defeat that I often have before starting a workout, thinking ahead on how hard it’s going to be. Only after 3 workouts a half cm around my waist was already gone. I’m going to follow through for the next three weeks, then, when I’ll be a more advanced level, I’ll have to step up my game.

Curious to see the results of this different approach!

And I am also curious about how you’re dealing with staying active during quarantine times. Tips? Tricks? Suggestions?