I think it goes without saying that the outbreak of COVID-19 or the Corona Virus has impacted all of us. I have had so many people emailing, messaging me, or commenting on our posts asking our advice on how to maintain their progress without gyms, and in some crazy cases without access to proper nutrition. And while I could create a list or a few suggestions, I believe that is too simple for such an elaborate issue. Instead, I want to highlight my own personal progress maintenance, and help relate to your own personal life.
On March 28th, 2020 I lost my full-time position as most of you have due to COVID-19. Funny enough I work for a pretty large chain gym, and they closed down all of their locations. I was out of work and at the same time lost my biggest hobby and outlet for positive energy. I left work that day disappointed, but saw so many people around me experiencing the same thing. Which inspired me to make the best out of our current situation and continue to make progress. But how do we go about doing that? Simply we take the principles discussed throughout CeeFit and adapt them to whatever resources we have available.
The first adaptation, and would I would consider to be the most important, was my nutrition. Without the gym, my capacity to work (or in other words weight lift) was severely decreased. The best way to counter act that was to bring down my overall calorie count. For those of you struggling with the same thing, I recommend cutting your carbohydrates anywhere from 25-50% depending on your program and attempting to maintain your intake of protein. This will dictate the amount of glycogen store and utilization in this time of less overall work.
Primary take away:
Reduce overall calories according to your own personal work capacity.
Consider taking anywhere from 25-50% of carbohydrates while maintaining protein.
The second part would be adjusting our training accordingly. For me, this new way of living and working out gave me an opportunity to focus on areas that I lacked when the gym was available. For each of my lifts I doubled reps and sets in order to facilitate the same amount of stress on the muscle, and incorporated bodyweight and weighted bands to substitute for weight lifting. If you do not have weights at home, my main recommendation would be finding various household objects to use as resistance. And have some fun with it! I’ve used everything from laundry detergent to flour so get creative with it!
Primary Take Away:
Increase reps and sets as you see fit in order to facilitate roughly the same level of stimulus on the muscle.
Utilize household objects to increase the resistance.
In conclusion, we are all going through a ridiculously hard time. I want CeeFit to be a sanctuary where everyone can come together and push through this pandemic. I plan on showing you guys more and more of how we can all come together to continue our progress. Feel free to reach out to me, and let’s get going!
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