5 Realistic Fitness Goals for the Next 12 Months
Staying focused on your fitness goals poses a bigger than usual challenge, While fitness facilities, many parks and recreation league games are shut down, it’s still important to keep moving, even if you can’t participate in your favorite activities..
How you keep moving requires some rethinking in light of the stay-at-home orders, For example, if you can’t play pickup sports for a few hours a week, substitute three to five one-hour workouts on a weekly basis, experts suggests.
While staying at home is stressful, it can also provide an opening. The time you have at home is a tremendous opportunity to improve your fitness. You are no longer burdened by a long commute (to work). Even if you are working from home, the stay-at-home order is probably freeing up a significant amount of time for you. How you choose to use that time is up to you.
Here are five realistic fitness goals for the next 12 months:
1. Create a new workout routine.
Since you can’t go to a gym, yoga studio or park, your first goal should be to create a new at-home workout regimen. There are a number of online resources you can use to develop a new workout regime. If in normal life going to a yoga studio is part of your routine, and your yoga studio is closed, that doesn’t mean you have to stop your practice. Many yoga instructors are teaching the same courses online.
In addition, many personal trainers are making workout routines available online. There are also a number of exercise apps available. Once you’ve developed a shelter-in-place workout routine, write it down. You’re more likely to follow a regimen if it’s written down.
2. Be creative when it comes to exercise equipment.
Unless you have a home gym or high-end exercise bike, you won’t have much, if any, workout equipment available while you’re sheltering in place. With a little ingenuity, you can work around that.
For example, if doing strength training is part of your regimen, you can substitute an empty 2-gallon milk jug for free weight. Fill up the jugs with water or rice and beans and conduct strength training with your makeshift weights.
3. Improve your core.
You don’t need a lot of room to do exercises that strengthen your core. There are limitless exercises in all planes of motion that can be done with no equipment or with items you have in your home. For example, planks, crunches and bridges can be modified with twisting motions, or they can be done on your side or with countless other variations that strengthen your entire body while staying in a tight space.
These are the planes of motion expert refers:
- Transverse plane: Cuts the body into top and bottom halves.
- Sagittal plane: Cuts the body into left and right halves. This involves forward and backward movements.
- Frontal plane: Divides the body into front and back halves. This features side-to-side movements.
There are plenty of core-strengthening exercises available online.
4. Manage your weight.
Some highly motivated people may be able to achieve weight-loss goals they set before the pandemic struck. But during the coronavirus crisis, managing your weight is a more realistic goal.
You’re moving a lot less and may be eating some comfort food. It may be unrealistic to think you’ll start or continue to lose weight.
5. Get more and better sleep.
Whether your goal is to lose body fat, build muscle or maintain your weight, getting a good night’s sleep is important. Bad sleep makes it harder to shed body fat, and also leaves you less mentally sharp.
Without the need to get up early to prepare for a commute to work, you can create better sleeping habits. Stay away from devices that emit LED light at least an hour before bedtime.
That means you should refrain from using these devices before bedtime:
- Laptops.
- Tablets.
- Cell phones.