Building an Exercise Routine That Sticks
Living through a pandemic and quarantining at home does not mean your fitness and wellbeing goals need to be put on the back-burner. A recent surge in technology-fuelled initiatives to focus on heath and exercise at home has made “getting in shape” much more accessible.
I’ve previously posted on how to use data to drive self care, as well as general wellness tips during a pandemic. In this post I’d like to double-click into building a solid exercise routine that can help drive a foster of wellbeing in your life.
Make It Consistent, But Be Kind To Yourself
As with any routine, consistency will be key if you’d like to adapt more of an active lifestyle. I’m a big fan of trying to determine an activity window each day that you can fill with various exercises. For me, this is early in the morning between 5:45-7:00am. For others it might be during their lunch break, in the evening, whatever works for you! While having an active lifestyle encourages moving your body throughout the day, a dedicated window to get more rigorous activity in will assist in reaching your goals.
Consistency is important; I like to workout daily when I can. However be kind to yourself if you need to miss a day because, you know… life happens!
Bring Variety to Keep it Fresh
Don’t burn yourself out heading to the gym and doing bicep curls each day. Your muscles and body need time to adapt and rebuild. I appreciate having 5-6 activities that I can rotate through as part of my exercise regime and do them based on how I’m feeling each day or what the weather is like (such is life living in the Pacific Northwest). For example:
I generally have two weight-lifting routines: legs + core and upper body + back. I try to space 2-3 days between each session (no repeats with the same muscle groups).
Every 3-4 days I try to have have a full cardio workout, rotating between riding my bike, a 5km run, yoga or shooting some hoops on a nearby basketball court.
I find that for my exercise routines, I can go a month or so until I have a need to rotate new exercises. When my workouts are feeling stale I usually fire up a few Youtube videos for inspiration. I’ve really enjoyed some of the POPSUGAR Fitness videos as well as HASfit for new ideas.
Utilize Technology
There’s no shortage of hardware and software that can help you manage your exercise regimen. Picking yourself up a good fitness tracker is key to ensuring you have the data you need to track progress tune your workouts as needed. I’m partial to the Apple Watch but there are many other wearables out there.
I’ve previously advocated for the Strong app on iOS as a good way to track your weight lifting progress and reach your goals, and Strava is excellent for tracking your runs or rides and to engage with a larger community. Both apps also have Apple Watch support so you do not need to have your phone with you as you get exercise!
Lastly, if you are working at home then investing in a good screen set-up to follow along with YouTube workouts is beneficial. Picking up an AppleTV and using AirPlay has been a great setup for our home gym and to get that “fitness class feeling” in a safe manner.
Hopefully these tips will help you reach your exercise goals!