When Gym’s were forced to close their doors temporarily to slow down the spread of the Coronavirus, home gym equipment sales skyrocketed in a matter of days..
The thought of being isolated in our own homes for 3-6 months without being able to work on our health & fitness terrified us all.
While many ‘panicked buyed’ their way to home gym setups and sought out to download free-at-home workouts, we fear these home gym’s could become the new version of cheap swide-card commercial gyms.
Where many sign-up on a special while feeling ‘motivated’, but it’s not long before their gym membership see’s limited use - the same could happen to many home-gym setups if the lockdown period goes on for longer (which is likely to happen).
At-home and Online training may have it’s limitations in the long-term, especially if training on your own, it’ll be understandable to start lacking motivation once winter hits and the original hype of training at home wears off.
To help you stay fit, healthy and mentally strong during the lockdown period, we have our Top #3 tips for staying motivated when training at home in isolation:
Have Strong Goals
Stay Accountable
Maintain a Structured Routine
Continue reading below:
Goal-Setting 101
Having clear goals and a strong WHY are essential for long-term motivation. In our experience as body composition coaches, most people who ‘lack motivation’ also lack:
Clarity (What their health & fitness goals are)
Certainty (How to achieve their goals)
Conviction (Why their goal is important to them)
Feeling lost in their training routine, bouncing from diet plan to diet plan and changing their mind on their fitness goals each week is a sure fire way to lose motivation when training from home.
Start by determining a broad goal - nothing too specific yet just start with figuring out what direction you want to head in (i.e. Fat-Loss, Muscle-Gain, Strength, Mental Health etc)
Once have the ‘GPS dialled in’ so to speak and know the general direction you are travelling, then you can get specific and make these goals SMART (Specific and Measurable) i.e. Fat-Loss = -6kg of fat-loss in 90-days
The most powerful part of the goal-setting process is figuring out why this goal is important to you. That purpose is what is going to push you to train and eat healthy and bad days when you just want to binge on netflix and order Uber eats (been there, done that!).
I.e. A new Dad may be driven to become a healthier and fitter role-model for his son/daughter - so every time they “CBF” training at-home, they will look to their new-born for motivation and get it done.
Once your goals and WHY are in check, you can form a clear plan of attack and take action on your fitness goals with confidence.
Stay Accountable
It’s rare for any of us to truly be able to hold ourselves accountable to our fitness goals - especially when training from home. When training from home on your own and not under the watchful eye of a Coach or training partner, it’s easy to skip training, stop a few reps short or sneak in a few treats here and there right?
But staying Accountable to your goals is what will constantly motivate you to train from home during isolation.
You are 42% more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down (see our first pointer on goals) and 70% more likely if you have someone to report to.
While training from home, you can find accountability partners in your own house-hold or within virtual communities online. Having an Online Coach with access to a Community of other like-minded at-home gym junkies will help you stay accountable and motivated during this time of social isolation.
We also recommend tracking as much fitness data as possible while on lockdown. Using training diaries to record the number of sessions you hit each week and log your food in an app like My Fitness Pal. Even your sleep and daily steps can be logged for adherence - These types of logs are great for personal accountability so you can track your weekly actions and become aware of any potential areas to improve.
Structure & Routine
Lastly, maintaining some ‘normality’ in your new-found lockdown routine will be a huge help to staying motivated with your training.
A lot of people lose motivation when they feel they have lost control of their routine which leads to them not being able to build the habits they need to achieve their goals. Our daily habits and routine make us who we are and if we lose those - we risk losing our identity!
So while on lockdown and training from home, we recommend sticking to your regular schedule as best as possible.
Each day we recommended:
Going to sleep and wake up at the same time maintain a healthy sleeping pattern
Schedule your training sessions to prevent the risk of missing sessions
Maintaining a regular eating schedule to limit snacking or skipping meals
By scheduling healthy habits like this into our routine, we’ll eventually be able to complete these tasks on auto-pilot which not only increases our chance of achieving our fitness goals from home - but sustaining them as well.
Training and working from home can throw us all of our regular routines. But if we treat it as if it’s our normal routine and maintain as much structure as possible, our motivation will stay high through these uncertain times.
If you are feeling isolated, stuck for workout ideas and miss the added accountability and community vibes of training in a facility like PPS - Enquire about our Virtual 6-Week At-Home Challenge.
We’ll help you with clear goal-setting, increased accountability and developing healthy habits while training from home with the support of our online community.
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