How will COVID Lockdown affect our summer body goals… Tony Enwezor breaks down the ways!
During this time, all regular gym-goers are struggling since all gyms are closed. People are worried now more than ever about how they are either going to continue to lose weight or make gains because for those that want to either maintain muscle or lose weight, they do not have the required equipment for a progressive resistance overload that stimulates muscle growth or a cardio machine that requires using a lot of energy to create a calorie deficit for fat loss; amazon, Argos and other online retail stores have completely sold out of Dumbbells and Kettlebells (I checked).
If you are one of the people that bought training pieces of equipment early before COVID 19, well done to you and if you didn’t, it’s not the end of the world. On our most recent Zone 247 Instagram live I touched on the subject about the lockdown and a lot of the question were based around how this lockdown will affect our “Summer Body Goals” so firstly let’s address the people that did not make in time to Argos or Amazon online to buy their training equipment before they sold out.
Now the topic of today is “How will COVID Lockdown affect our summer body goals?”. Now, this all depends on your summer body goal, so with that in mind, let’s start with the most common goal that we all know.
Weight Loss / Fat Loss
Weight loss / Fat loss is a demonstration of energy balance. In order to lose weight or burn fat, you need to be on a calorie deficit; the best way to do this is by either burning more calories than you take in or taking in fewer calories than you expend (eating less). Burning more calories with exercising than you take in is the best way to achieve that. Now, during during the lockdown, in some countries, you are allowed to go outside for one exercise a day whether that being running, walking or park workout (Correct me if I’m wrong). Now that alone might not even be enough to be on a calorie deficit, therefore, you would need to more activities that would require you to use more energy – HIIT Training (High-intensity interval training).
During this lockdown there are a lot of live free Instagram workouts happening and a lot of free workouts on our YouTube (Zone 247 on YouTube), every coach/trainer is doing home HIIT workouts so there is no reason why you shouldn’t be working out at home especially when you NOW have a lot of time on your hands. COVID 19 Lockdown shouldn’t have any effects on your goals if it’s to lose body fat because all need to do is burn more calories than you take in and make a better decision when it comes to your eating habit. Which we all know can be a challenge!
SHOP TONY’S WORKOUT GEAR
Building Muscle
The idea that you cannot build muscle doing just bodyweight training is a tough one, because there is only so much progression you can do especially if you are used to lifting heavyweights. I would focus on maintaining muscles until all of this is over but if you are someone that is still a beginner and not use to lifting a lot of heavyweight then again, it is not the end of the world. You can still work with it. If I asked you to do 10 push-ups, you can probably do it easily and then tell me this is pointless because you would rather do 10 bench presses with a barbell or dumbbell. But what if I told you to do 25 to 30 push 4 sets? It’s fair to say that you will probably feel like you’ve done 15 reps of Barbell bench press after doing 25 to 30 push up; no? Now if that gets too easy for you, let us get creative with progressive overload. Put something heavy in a backpack like a bag of rice – just make your bag heavy and try to perform 25 to 30 push-ups again. That would be like adding more weight to your barbell theoretically. Progressive overload can also be done with bodyweight exercise. You just have to be creative.
To summarise, how will COVID 19 Lockdown affect our summer body goals? It won’t. You just have to be more creative with your workout, work harder and make a better decision when it comes to your eating habits.
If you have any questions, need help or want to book one of our Zone 247 online course, come drop by our website and book your virtual training courses today!
