Training Day Gym Educational Article - Things you can do to stay in shape and keep Healthy during lockdown By Coach Chris

Things you can do to stay in shape and keep Healthy during lock down

Eat a high Protein diet - Proteins are the building blocks of tissue, and more specifically in this case, muscle tissue. Ensuring you have an abidance of protein available for uptake and utilisation around the body will help maximise preservation of lean body mass (muscle). Research shows that one can actually maintain all their muscle for up to 3 weeks without any resistance training just by consuming sufficient protein. The second benefit is that protein will be highly satiating, as it is the most satiating macro-nutrient it will keep you fuller for longer and therefore help you eat around your maintenance calories to reduce chances of body fat accumulating during this period. Especially for those who find themselves less active at this stage. 

A simple way to ensure you are eating enough is to eat protein with every meal (or at least most) and aim for minimum 1 palm serving size of animal protein (meat, fish,eggs) which are also highly bio available, meaning your body will be able to absorb and use a significant portion of this for physiological function. If you eat plant based, then aim for a little more than this and vary up our sources to obtain all of your essential proteins as well as compensate for the less bio availability of plant proteins. Some great sources include beans, chickpeas & lentils.

Aim for 10, 000 steps per day - A very underrated Modality of exercise. Walking is not only going to be great to expose you to sun (Vitamin D is important for immune function), the outdoors and nature which has positive effects on mental health and improves mood etc. but it's a great way to get some cardiovascular fitness in while also expending energy which will again, facilitate keeping your body fat levels in check, and may even serve to preserve more lean tissue than simply sitting on the couch all day

Home workouts can be more than effective - if you find yourself losing motivation thinking it isn't worth training at home because you don't have the ideal equipment, think again. What we train in the gym is based around principles, in the context of resistance/ strength training where the goal is increased strength and muscle size, primarily what this involves is producing force through repeated muscular contractions. There a generally 3 mechanisms we are concerned with here:

Mechanical tension: the maximum amount of force being produced

Metabolic stress (getting a pump or burn in your workout): where metabolites accumulate within the muscle 

Muscle damage (generally when you feel sore): micro tears in the muscle fibre caused by resistance training 

Knowing these three is important, because no where here does it say "Barbell, dumbbell, machine etc.", so whilst these pieces of equipment often give us a lot of versatility and loading capacity, and we all love them, everything you need to maintain and for many even build muscle is sitting right at home. Using things like loaded backpacks, water jugs, your body weight, resistance bands, furniture and a little creativity, you can effectively create very effective full body workouts targeting each muscle group with sufficient volume and tension to not only feel amazing after your training, but ensure you aren't losing your hard earned progress during the next few months.

So mechanical tension might not be your focus point, use this time to focus on other qualities of training such as increased time under tension, slower tempos, shorter rest periods, greater ranges of motion, less stable variations etc. and you'll find an exercise can get very difficult with little to no equipment. This will also make your rebound when gyms to reopen a hell of a lot quicker and smoother (i.e. you won't be in a wheelchair after your first leg day)

Optimise your sleep - everyone is always saying they wish they could get more sleep, but their schedule won't allow them. Well.. guess what many people's schedules just allowed them to do. Poor sleep negatively impacts several areas of your day. It can increase cravings and impair hunger signalling. It can increase stress levels which for many means eating poor quality food in large amounts. It can reduce energy levels and motivation throughout the day reducing your likelihood of wanting to be active. Not to mention that sleep is imperative when wanting to maximise your adaptations to training and performance and overall body composition (fat to muscle ratio). Aiming for 7-10 hours of quality sleep with minimal interruptions each night will do wonders for overall health.

This list could go on, but to not overdo the length of this article I'll leave it at these 4 which I identify as crucial components and immediately accessible to anyone and everyone. Keep your eyes peeled on the Training day instagram page and my personal page where we will be releasing several home training quick tip videos to help facilitate your training programs

For any questions or coaching enquiries feel free to contact me at chris@trainingdayhc.com.au or on instagram @chrisakri