Lockdown 2020 (and now 2021) is a real bitch for gym lovers like me.

Instead of banging and clanging in the weights room, I find myself pacing around the living room pondering how teachers don’t punch more teens square in the face.

Anyway, I’ve noticed that a lot of people’s fitness routines have kinda gone to shit as a result of this situation, so in this post I’m going to show you exactly what I’ve been doing to stay in shape throughout lockdown (spoiler: it’s much easier than people expect!), and I will also address the email which I recently received from e-mail subscriber Steph, because it presents us with some serious issues:

“Hey Russ, lockdown isn’t going well for me.

The fitness pages I follow all seem to be say “you should be training even harder because there are no distractions now!”, but I’ve never found it more difficult! My movitvation has hit an all-time low since my local gym closed becaus it was my time which I reserved just for me every day, and losing it has hit me hard.

On top of this, my social media feed is full of people sharing that fucking meme; “If you don’t come out of lockdown with a new skill or a new business then you never lacked time, you lacked discipline!” I feel like a failure, because I’m snowed under at home with my kids all day long, and I do not know how others are doing all of this extra stuff because I feel exhausted by the time I get the little ones to bed at night.

It makes me feel like I’m not good enough. It’s getting me down. I know I can always rely on you to be blunt and pull no punches, so I want your advice on this one.. am I on my own in finding lockdown so hard?”

– Steph (UK)

Russ Says: “Fuck Social Media!”

It’s important to remember that we’re going through a pandemic.

This is serious stuff.

It’s the type of thing you’ll tell your grandkids about in years to come, and hey, when they’re sat on your knee listening to your stories about this atomic shit-storm of a time, I can fucking guarantee they won’t ask whether you hung onto your abs!

So stop beating yourself up about not being able to train as hard as you want to.

Most of this bullshit pressure is being generated by uneducated social media “influencers” (a.k.a. someone who wants to be a coach but has no qualifications and has never actually trained anybody in the real world).

These orange-faced personality vacuums are regularly sending out a message of “You should be training even harder now, bro, because there’s no distractions!”

What utter nonsense!

I’ve been a fitness professional for more than 23 years and I’ll happily admit that the first three months of lockdown were the most unproductive of my career.

I got barely any work done.

A trip to the shops felt like an expedition.

And yes, my three kids seemed to be every-fucking-where!

On top of that, I was also dealing with the eternal suck of switching from gym-based workouts to home workouts. Trust me, they’re not the same. You might be able to psyche yourself up for a huge deadlift whilst the Rocky IV soundtrack is blasting at 1000 decibels in the gym, but it takes a different kind of drive to psyche yourself up for another set of burpees while Peppa Pig resonates through your skull and a huge pile of washing stares you down from across the room.

So no, you’re not alone!

Russ Says: “Listen To Jon Bon Jovi!”

Check out this corker of a line:

“When you can’t do what you do, you do what you can.”

– Jon Bon Jovi

Yep, as well as being the only man in history to have had three great hairstyles, Jon Bon Jovi is now handing out life-changing advice to help us cope with the absolute clusterfuck that is “lockdown”.

And he hit the nail on the head, didn’t he?

Stop stressing.

Stop beating yourself up.

Stop worrying about whether you’re gonna lose all of those results you worked so hard for in the gym.

For this fucktacular shitnado of ass will eventually reach a conclusion, and when that time comes we can go smash the gym like never before.

But for now?

Just focus on embracing this weird as fuck era we’re stumbling through.

That means doing whatever you can to be healthy and unlock the benefits of exercise. I don’t care how simple it is, or how much of a step down it may be from your usual workout program, just make it work.

Here’s My Own Lockdown Fitness Program

I took things right back to basics.

My diet plan was as simple as staying within my total calorie budget (no thoughts about tracking macros), and my workout program was a circuit workout which I did 3-4 times per week inthe back garden.

Oh, and I also did plenty of walking.

The kids and I downloaded Pokemon GO to our phones, which turned out to be a great idea.

We spent hours trying to catch those annoying little fuckers, and it became a useful fitness-related hobby for our family at a time when there was very little else to do.

Here’s the “Simple Circuits” structure:

• Set a timer on your phone for 30-minutes.
• Warm up for the first 5-minutes.
• Select any 4 exercises (just make sure they hit several different muscles, e.g. don’t pick four abs exercises).
• Perform x15 reps of each exercise, then x14 reps of each, then x13 reps, and so on until the time runs out.

Bosh!

I created a program in this framework earlier this year.

It’s called “Home Workout Hero”.

I’d love to say I had the foresight to see the pandemic on the horizon, but no, I was caught off-guard like all of you.

Instead, this program is just something which I had been working on for a while as a means to provide website members with a way of shredding fat at home, and it just so happens that it became one of the most used programs I’ve ever made during lockdown.

I’ve left it on the site, and you can find it in your members area.

Finally, I fixed that annoying meme for you:

Further Reading:

If you enjoyed this blog, then you’ll probably also like reading these.

>> Why I Ditched “Clean Eating”
>> The No-Nonsense 2-Month Photoshoot Diet
>> Russ Holiday Training Guide