Now is Not The Time to Stop Working Out
This article is going to encourage you to train. If instead, you want to be validated in your desires to not work out right now, click here and read the other version of this article. Feel free to toggle between the two articles for advice as you see fit. There is no right answer right now.
We can’t deny that everything has changed. For most of us, our work situations and daily routines now involve significantly more time spent in our homes, but this doesn’t mean that exercise needs to cease. Now don’t get it twisted, this is not going to be an article full of motivational quotes, and I’m not going to tell you to blindly continue your program, because that would be denying the reality of the situation that we have found ourselves in. What I do want to highlight is the real benefits of exercise that you may have forgotten about as you got sucked into the strength and conditioning world. We’ve now been in this social distancing/lockdown/quarantine life for over a month and although I wrote most of these two articles at the beginning of all this, it really has sucked everything out of me to put this out there. I want to preface this by saying I’m not a motivational speaker or a doctor or a nurse or an essential worker. I’m an artist and an athlete and these thoughts are just the ones that have helped me so I hope they help you too.
Motivation is a Scam: Create New Routines
When this all started, I asked people in the Snatch Magazine Instagram stories how they felt about strength training right now. A majority of respondents said they do still feel like strength training matters to them, but are struggling with motivation to train given the circumstances. And to that, I say: don’t worry about it, because motivation is a scam. The reason you trained as much as you did wasn’t because you were an incredibly motivated person (although you might also be that) but rather it was because you had built a habit. Every training day, you changed into your training clothes, you drank your pre-workout, you drove to the gym listening to your hype playlist. Find what triggers you had leading up to your B.C. (Before COVID) Routine and see how you can adapt them to your home workouts. The key is to build a habit. How do you build a habit? You program yourself to do it, and you start before you’re ready, and that’s the tough love.
Adjust your goals and expectations
There is no blueprint for how to do Quarantine in 2020 ‘right’ in the strength world, because everyone has varying access to equipment, but there are some mental adjustments you can adopt to make it easier on yourself. Some ways to do that include managing your own expectations that you may have started the year with. You may have been aiming for a new PR total or to qualify for a big meet. First of all, take solace in the fact that everyone is in the same boat as you. You can adjust those goals to decide to focus on dialing in technique when you return to training to allow yourself to release the pressure of lifting heavy when you get back. Many of us lift to be strong, and yet right now lifting to be strong doesn’t really seem to serve a purpose. So instead, we have to pivot to exercising to be healthy. You can certainly work on things that will benefit your weightlifting once all this is over, but realistically it’s okay if your exercise lately looks more like walking around your block than it does pulling bumpers off lifting blocks. Check out some videos on YouTube and try ones that you maybe would have judged in the past and see how you hold up. It’s okay to have your ass kicked by your own bodyweight every once in a while.
You’re in the Tunnel
In competitive crew, sometimes two boats will be racing down the same river and their lanes will split through two different tunnels. During that time, neither boat can see one another, so each boat has to assume that their competitors are taking the opportunity to floor it, and ultimately decides: is it worth it to spend the extra energy through this bit for me to pass my competitors, or is my strategy to stay my pace and save it all for the end? Obviously, strength training is not a race, but athletes may find themselves ‘in the tunnel’ right now, choosing to decide based on equipment options what is the best decision for their training. Some athletes have full sets of bumper plates and platforms and racks and are making PRs. Good for them. Some athletes just have bands and sliders and a little corner on their carpet. If you’re one of the latter and you desperately still want to be competitive with those still training, your best bet right now starts with (1) being okay with losing some tread on the progress you may have been making and (2) doing the absolute best you can with what you have.
Work on Greasing the Groove
Exercise right now doesn’t have to look like what it did for you in 2019. In many cases it can’t. Move your body enough to satisfy your mental and phyiscal health requirement, but don’t worry about fitness. If you have a home gym, that’s tight and you should use it, but you don’t have to go into it thinking you’re going to be doing your same full volume. Greasing the groove includes working sub-maximal sets of anything throughout the day. This means dips off your desk chair or push ups before bed. They’re not to failure or fatigue, they’re just a few reps here and there to keep your body moving.
RELEASE YOURSELF FROM YOUR EXPECTATIONS
My final piece of advice is really easy: chill. Take this time to assess your priorities and loosen the reigns from the pressure you may be putting on yourself to still be the best athlete in the gym with the sickest abs and the loudest shoes. You can just be a person and you can just move in a way that feels good and doesn’t add to your current stress. Moving your body in some way might help make you feel better. If that’s the case, great! Move your body! It really is that simple for once! And doesn’t that feel great? All you have to do is just move. For some of us, the idea (or even the action) of moving our bodies feels like Sisyphus rolling the rock up the hill. If that’s you, control what you can and read our other article about why it’s okay for you to not work out right now.
