[image]
[title]There’s a good chance you’ve spent a portion of the last 12 months (or more) in lockdown, or at the very least, without consistent access to a gym or proper training equipment.
With life beginning to open back up and hoards of people flocking back to the gym, physiotherapists and chiropractors alike are licking their lips at the thought of so many tight, broken and busted bodies that have gone a little too hard, a little too soon.
Whether you’re trying to get back into a fitness routine post lockdown or you haven’t been able to train for an extended period for another reason, the following tips will help keep the doctor (and physio) away!
Listen to your body and understand stress versus tolerance
If you’ve not been training or lifting weights for a while, your relative tolerance level to weight lifting-related stress is going to be low – likely much lower than it was the last time you were training consistently. With this in mind, it probably isn’t wise to jump straight back into the routine you were following previously right away.
The body can ultimately handle a lot of stress, provided you take the time to build up your tolerance to that stress. When it comes to getting back into the gym after a lengthy lay-off, start slowly and build from there. Consider choosing only a handful of exercises for each session, and limiting those exercises to 2 relatively challenging sets to begin with. You can always add more with time.
Leave your ego at the door
You’ve heard this before, no doubt, but seriously, this is an important one. If you’ve been out of the gym or away from your usual training arena, you’re not going to be the same version of yourself that was crushing it every session. Don’t expect to be able to lift, run, jump or move with the same loads, times, speeds or heights you did previously. There’s no shame in working your way back up to where you were last time you were training consistenytly. It's far better to take it slow than potentially injure yourself because your ego is telling you to go hard or go home.
Keep things sustainable
Pledging to take on a demanding, time-consuming fitness regime is a really fast way to sabotage your chances before you've even begun. Think about what you can comfortably commit to in regards to your existing weekly commitments. Can you see yourself still training 3, 4 or 5 times a week in three months' time or even a year from now? If not, scale things back and make sure you’re building great habits before dialling up your overall workload.
Motivation is often sky-high whenever starting something new. However, if you can’t continue to commit to your routine in the long term, you risk burning out or losing interest entirely.
Variety is the spice of life – but not so much at the gym
Exercises are skills, and the more you perform any skill, the better you’ll be at executing it. The body takes time to adapt to new exercises before it can begin to get stronger at performing them. If you’re always changing the exercises you do, you’re more likely to experience greater levels of muscular soreness after you train (which may keep you out of the gym or affect your willpower to train again) and it will be much more difficult to track or make any progress.
As tempting as it might be to run your favourite influencer’s daily workouts that change every time you enter the gym, you’d do better to build your tolerance levels slowly by sticking with and getting better at a select number of exercises week after week.
Success in the gym is about recovering out of it
If you haven’t lifted weights or trained in a while, you’re probably going to be pretty sore the first few times you get back into it. You don’t need to spend hours stretching after you train, but thinking about eating a reasonable amount of protein each day (anywhere from 0.8-1g of protein per pound of body weight is a good start), getting 6-8 hours of sleep per night and staying well hydrated should mean you can maximise your recovery and minimise the soreness you experience.
Training when sore isn’t a sin, but it may affect your strength or training performance in the short term, so it makes sense to warm into things a little more slowly than usual and ensure you’re really ready to go before pushing things if you’re a bit creaky from your last session. Slow and steady may not always win the race, but it will keep you in the gym and on the training routine far longer.
Nick Cheadle is one of Sydney's top fitness coaches and founder of Paragon Strength and Fitness in Artarmon. To find out more about Nick Cheadle's online 2022 coaching programs, head here.