By now we’re sure you’re well into the swing of your home workout routine, with online classes and makeshift gym equipment becoming the new norm once again.
Mustering up the energy to workout during lockdown is no mean feat and every workout should be celebrated as a small win. But without the accountability of your gym buddy or your Personal Trainer on hand to correct your form, it’s possible that a few bad habits could have begun to creep in, when sweating it out solo at home.
When it comes to your fitness and mental wellbeing, fitting any movement into your day is better than nothing at all. But if you’re looking to make real progress while we’re locked down at home, we've put together our top home workout tips to help you avoid some common mistakes…
Skipping a warm up
Without the use of your favourite Village Gym kit, your home workouts might not be as intense as when you’re able to hit the gym floor, meaning it’s tempting to skip that all important warm up. Before any time of training, always include a 3-5 minute mobility session and 1-2 minutes to get the heart rate up. Dedicating a few extra minutes to limbering up will help to prevent injury by loosening your joints, and improving blood flow to your muscles, making your muscles less likely to rip, tear, or twist in a harmful way during your workout.
Repeating the same routine
If you’re a creature of habit, when you’ve found an online class you love or a full body HIIT routine that really gets your heart pumping, you might not see the need to change things up. While it’s important to devise a realistic home workout routine that you’ll stick to, including a variety of different types of exercise is the best way to optimize your results. For example if you’re a keen runner, including some strength training and yoga stretches into your routine will improve your power, mobility and overall running performance. A good mix of cardio and strength based home workouts is the best way to ensure you’re getting plenty of variety.
Neglecting body parts
Similarly, when devising your own workout plan at home, it’s easy to keep training the body parts you enjoy the most and skip the parts that fill you with dread. Overtraining one specific muscle group and neglecting others can lead to muscle fatigue and injury in the long-term. The glutes are commonly overlooked when training, meaning other muscles have to work harder and joints absorb extra wear and tear which often results in lower back pain. It’s important to try and divide your training to include all parts of the body to avoid injury and muscle fatigue.
Overdoing HIIT
High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) such as Les Mills GRIT is arguably the perfect home workout, as it requires minimal kit and a quick 30 minute session can be fit into even the busiest of schedules. It’s scientifically backed principles mean you’ll carry on burning calories well after your last set of exercises and the great rush of endorphins you feel post HIIT workout can become well and truly addictive! However, the trouble with only doing high intensity exercise, alongside juggling a busy life, is that the body is over-stimulated and over-adrenalized without having time to recover. Overdoing HIIT workouts can also increase the body's cortisol levels, a stress hormone which overtime can be detrimental to your digestive system. Alongside HIIT workouts why not include some more low impact classes such as Pilates or Barre which will help to improve your strength and mobility without constantly pushing your body to the limit.
Not sticking to a plan
With all other routines gone out the window, it’s tempting to just go with the flow when it comes to your fitness routine. Without a plan you’re more likely to come up with excuses to skip workouts, lose focus and before you know it you’ve fallen off the fitness wagon and it seems impossible to get back on. To keep on track, plan your workouts ahead of time and schedule them into your calendar or plan out your week on paper, and stick it up on a wall somewhere visible. If you’re struggling with accountability, book yourself into some Village Live classes or organise to workout over Zoom with a friend. This will help you set a time and stick to it, on those days when you’d rather be curled up on the sofa watching box sets.
Download the app to try Village Live.
Not pushing yourself
By now, you may have become pretty comfortable with your home workout routine. This may however mean you’re not pushing yourself hard enough and if you have specific fitness goals in mind, your results may begin to plateau. A Myzone belt is the perfect way to boost your motivation by giving you accurate, real time feedback of your effort level. It monitors heart rate, calories and time exercising that convert into Myzone Effort Points (MEPs), with a focus on rewarding effort rather than fitness.
Village members can take their home workouts to the next level with £60 off the Myzone belt. Get yours here.
Skipping rest days
With not much else other than Netflix to keep us entertained during lockdown, exercise is a great way to fill your time, but failing to include rest days in your fitness routine can do you more harm than good. Giving your body time to heal is key to making progress. Without rest and recovery the muscles don’t don’t have time to repair, which eventually leads to injury through poor form and lack of stability in joints due to muscle tightness. If you rely on keeping active for your mental health, a brisk walk on a rest day should do the trick.
Finally, when working out at home it’s important to celebrate the small wins. Without a gym floor packed with high-tech kit at your disposal, it’s much harder to achieve the same goals you would expect to.
If you haven’t already, download the Village Gym app for tonnes of live and On Demand classes, and fun challenges to keep you motivated at home!
