Lockdown 2020/21 is a real bitch for gym rats like me.
Instead of banging and clanging in the weights room, I’m banging my head off a brick wall wondering how on Earth school teachers don’t punch more people in the face.
Today I’m going to show you exactly how I’ve been staying in shape during lockdown (it’s way easier than you think), and I want to address this e-mail from Stephanie, which presents some serious issues:
“Hey Russ, lockdown isn’t going well for me and I’m after a bit of advice.
It feels like all of the fitness pages I follow are saying they’re training harder than ever, with no distractions, but I’ve found my motivation has hit zero since my gym was closed down.
And also, lots of my social media friends have been posting memes like the one which says “If you don’t come out of this with a new skill or business, you never lacked time, you lacked discipline!” and I honestly have never felt so snowed under with my kids, I don’t know how these others are doing it. I feel like I’m not good enough. Is it just me who’s finding lockdown really hard?”
– Stephanie
Russ Says: “Fuck Social Media!”
It’s important to remember that we’re going through a pandemic.
This is serious stuff, which your kids are going to ask you about in the future, as will your grandchildren in decades to come.
Now, I guarantee they won’t ask whether you were able to maintain your abs during this time, so I don’t think it’s worth piling pressure on yourself for being unable to train as hard as you usually would!
I mean, shit, you’re still alive!
Most of this bullshit pressure comes by way of uneducated social media “fitness influencers” (a.k.a. someone who wants to be a PT but doesn’t have any qualifications and has never actually trained anyone). These orange personality vacuums seem to be putting out the message that “You should be training even harder now, bro, because you don’t have any distractions!”
What utter nonsense!
Honestly, I’ve been a fitness professional for over 20 years now and I’ll happily admit that the first three months of lockdown were the most unproductive of my life. I got barely any work done, going to the shops felt like an expedition, and my kids seemed to be every-fucking-where!
On top of this, if you’re a gym lover like me then you’ll be dealing with the frustration of trying to workout at home; which sucks.
Trust me, it’s difficult to get motivated to push through an intense HIIT workout when there’s a big pile of washing looking right back at you and the theme song to Peppa Pig has been burned into your fucking brain!
If that’s how things are going in your home, you’re not alone.
Russ Says: “Listen To Jon Bon Jovi!”
Not content with being the only man in history to have three great hairstyles, Jon Bon Jovi dropped this absolute banger of advice as the world struggled with lockdown
“When you can’t do what you do, just do what you can.”
– Jon Bon Jovi
He hit the nail on the head there, didn’t he?
Stop stressing, stop beating yourself up, stop worrying about losing all of your hard earned gym results, and just embrace this weird fucking time we’re currently living in.
Trust me, it’ll come to an end soon – and when it does the gym will still be there for you!
So for now it’s just a case of doing whatever you can to stay healthy and reap the benefits of exercise. I don’t care how simple it is, or how different it feels to your normal workout program, just fucking do it – and then when this fuck-tacular shitnado of ass ends you can blast the gym like never before!
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 and it 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!
Earlier this year I created a program entirely in this framework called “Home Workout Hero”. I’d love to say I had the great foresight to see the pandemic on the horizon, but no, this program is just something which I had been meaning to do for a while. Anyway, you can find it on your RussHowePTI.com “members area” page if you’d like to give it a whirl.
Also, I fixed one of those annoying memes:
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
More First rate advice from yourself Russ! Stay safe bud!