If you’re self isolating and wondering how to stay fit, watch this video and I’ll tell you what you can do to stay in shape during this crazy time.
Hi, it’s Ivana.
Welcome to my channel.
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I’m an online fitness coach with over 20 years of coaching experience and I’m also a certified strength and conditioning specialist.
I help clients manage their lifestyles no matter what their circumstances.
And this is a pretty strange and scary one.
I’m going to tell you what it takes to stay fit while you’re self isolating at home so you can get through this challenge successfully and perhaps feel it better than ever.
My specialty is helping people get fit healthy and strong. So before I tell you how to keep food at home, we have to define what it means to be fit. Now, measuring fitness is different depending on who you are. So being fit as an Olympic athlete is different from just being a fit person generally overall.
So we’re going to use that second definition today, which I’m sure most of you will be happy about.
I’m going to use a major components of fitness to help you define how to keep fit at home while self isolating.
Stick around until the end because I’m going to tell you how to put it all together in one simple at home workout.
Muscular Strength
So the first one is muscular strength.
I’m a big proponent of weight training. I’ve been doing it pretty consistently since I was 15 years old. I used it throughout my years as a karate competitor and I’ve even been in over a dozen bodybuilding competition.
So I really believe in strength training.
We all have an idea of what it means to be strong, but I wouldn’t concern yourself with any sort of strength range or optimal rep range at this stage. It’s just important for you to keep stimulating the muscles for some sort of growth.
Ideally you’ll have some weights so you can load up and challenge those muscles, but a lot of body weight exercises are still very challenging for many people.
Think about a pushup, for instance.
That’s quite challenging for the upper body. Or walking lunges for the lower body.
So you can improve your strength with bodyweight workouts.
I’m going to be making more of them for you as well, including some abs videos. So I’ll hit that like button if you’d like to see more workout videos from me.
Muscular Endurance
The next way you want to keep fit at home is to improve your muscular endurance. Endurance refers to being able to do a muscular activity repeatedly, so you can still use your body weight exercises to do that. If you’re doing a way that allows you to do at least 12 reps and preferably more than you’re working on endurance.
So whether that’s your body weight or you’re using lighter weights and higher repetitions, then that’s improving your muscular endurance.
Cardiovascular Fitness
The next thing you need to do to keep fit at home is work on your cardiovascular fitness.
Now the important thing about cardio is that your heart doesn’t care what you’re doing.
So whether you’re doing a circuit weight training workout, which is my favorite way of keeping fit at home, whether you’re doing a dance party or you’re just jogging on the spot, the only thing that matters is that your heart is working hard and you’re getting blood circulating oxygen pumping through your body.
To keep fit at home, I’ve been doing dance parties with my five year old son.
I’ve been practicing some martial arts moves at home as well, and I’ve been doing body weight workouts.
Let me know in the comments what if anything you’ve been doing at home to improve your cardiovascular fitness.
Flexibility
Now here’s one that often gets overlooked when keeping fit at home: flexibility.
This is the range of motion around your joint, so keep in mind that there’s an optimal amount of flexibility at each joint so you don’t want your spine to be too flexible, for instance, because it can cause instability.
You also don’t need to do a full body stretch.
It’s actually best to stretch only the tight areas so that you can bring your body into balance.
For most people the neck is a terrible one. For me, the chest, the hip flexors and the hamstrings tend to be tight. So those are the muscle groups that you should focus on to improve your flexibility.
Sitting around too much unfortunately is also going to aggravate that tightness. So if you’re doing that more often, like a lot of us are, that’s going to be more tight.
If you want to stay fit at home, then you need to move around and do some stretching regularly.
I love using mobility exercises, which is more active flexibility. It’s going through motions and improving your flexibility that way.
Body Composition
And the last part of keeping fit at home during self isolation is body composition.
Now your body composition refers to what percentage of your body is fat and what amount is muscle, bone and water, what we refer to as your lean tissue or the lean mass. So of course your weight is important for most people, but your body composition is actually what percentage you are in fact.
This is a really key element of fitness and while exercise can help you burn some calories, it’s really your nutrition that’s going to make up the majority of your results in this area.
That’s something that you want to focus on.
To keep fit at home, you need to pay attention to what you’re eating as well. You’re managing your calorie intake, you’re getting enough protein and vegetables and fiber.
I’ve actually got a video about how to avoid gaining weight while self isolating. I want you to check that out as well.
Now how do we put this together?
You can improve all components of your fitness by doing some body weight training at home or a circuit weights workout.
If you do have access to weights, all you have to do is add a little bit of stretching at the end or you can use those mobility exercises I mentioned. Then you make sure you’re having the right food post-workout.
That’s pretty much a comprehensive plan for keeping fit at home.
I hope you’ve now got a plan for how to keep fit while self isolating.
Thanks for watching. Please like and share if you’ve learned something today and I look forward to seeing you again soon.
