Before this crazy year started, staying fit at home was something that only stay at home parents and a tiny fraction of the workforce had to worry about. Now, hundreds of millions of us are having to face the challenge of keeping healthy with limited or no access to gyms, yoga studios and park-aerobics.
The biggest challenge is staying disciplined and motivated. Many people also struggle to come up with creative ideas for home exercise routines or think that not having a trainer to help them with form makes their efforts worthless. These are all totally understandable concerns. Luckily, they are also relatively easy to overcome. Here’s how:
Build a new routine
One of the hardest parts of staying fit at home is finding a good balance between work, family life, personal time and exercising. Before the arrival of Covid-19, many of us already had solid routines that worked for us. We’d head to work, exercising either before or after at our favorite location, be it a Zumba class or sports field. Now that you’re no longer leaving home to work and exercise spaces are largely closed, building a new routine is crucial to staying healthy.
To do this you’ll need to use effective time management skills and learn to separate the various aspects of your life again now that everything takes place at home. It’s a well known fact that most habits take around 60 days to form and break. You’ll need to remain conscious of your behavior during this period to stand any chance of successfully building a new routine. Place notes that remind you of your goals in areas you look at often. Try to plan with your partner or housemates so that each of you can have dedicated time for exercise or find time to workout together and help each other to stay motivated.
Create a dedicated home workout space
Another handy idea for staying fit at home is to create a dedicated space that you use only for exercise, meditation, etc. This is another way to separate this aspect of your life from everything else you do at home. You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on equipment and add an extension on to your house (that said, if you really want to take things to the next level, why not right?) The idea is simply to set aside some space that you try to use exclusively for the purpose of staying fit and healthy.
That said, money doesn’t grow on trees and space is obviously at a premium in many cities. If you’re sharing a small apartment with multiple other people, having a dedicated workout space may simply not be an option for you. In this case, the next best thing is to temporarily convert part of your space into a workout area each time you want to do some exercise. You can do this by pushing around some furniture, adding a few props or decorations and maybe changing the ambiance of the room by playing with the lighting or other features.
Work with an online fitness pro
Shared workout spaces may be closed, but the trainers, teachers, instructors and coaches that staffed them haven’t simply disappeared! Like the rest of us, they’ve taken their businesses online. If you’re the kind of person who prefers to have a professional guiding and motivating you, this option is for you. What you give up in terms of hands on interactions (yes, we know that you love that gorgeous instructor fixing your form with a gentle caress), you gain in terms of flexibility of scheduling and access to a wider range of experts than you would ever find in your local area.
If you’ve never been the personal trainer type, maybe now is a good time to reconsider. Losing access to your favorite workout space can be crushing, but having your own dedicated health and fitness pro certainly softens the blow and helps with staying fit at home. You’re also likely to be pleasantly surprised by what you find. The internet provides access to trainers from around the world and drives the kind of competition that can make prices more reasonable than they would be in brick-and-mortar establishments.
Staying fit at home with Heck Yeah
While we encourage you to do your own research, we’ve already done a lot of the hard work for you. On the Heck Yeah app, you’ll find health & fitness pros that specialize in all popular exercise activities and many of the more obscure ones as well. You’ll also notice that there are options for every budget and that you can check out each trainer’s video profile to get an idea of their personality and training style.
