To Quit Or Not To Quit?
This year has been one of the worst, for many of us, in a very long time. Not only has Covid-19 ravaged our communities, friends and families, but it has closed down our businesses, shut our shops and also our gyms.
When I originally wanted to write this article, Covid-19 was an unknown, a barely reported on, and remote, issue. Not even scratching the surface of the news cycle at the time. In spite of Brexit on the horizon, the world was a much more positive and open place. I had a light hearted endeavour to share my opinions with you, dear readers, on the emergence of working out from home, and asking do we really need to be using gyms at all?
The YouTube and Instagram workouts were really coming to the fore. The likes of Chris Heria, Frank Medrano and Joe Wicks (to name a few) were showing that an intensive workout can be done from within our own homes, with limited equipment. And as technology improves and develops, that training sessions can be done remotely too. These styles of workouts, that incorporate body weight and HIIT training have been around for a long time, but the fact that they were starting to become so widespread was making a huge impact on the fitness community and more people were gaining access to them much more easily. My opinion, at the time, was that these training methodologies and technology could easily take the place of working out at a gym, by changing a few different parameters, such as altering time under tension (TUT), range of motion (ROM) and varying progressions of fundamental exercises. Also with resistance bands, kettlebells, dumbbells or even household items we can replicate Progressive Overload.
Progressive Overload is a, if not the main, principal of muscular development. There are so many deep and interesting studies, by some of the industries leading lights on this, and I’ll cite them at the end for you to have a look at. I would encourage you to follow that rabbit hole of knowledge and see where you end up. The main premise of Progressive Overload is that in order for muscle to grow, strength to be gained or performance to increase, the body must adapt to tension that is above and beyond what it has previously experienced. This is easier to apply in a gym environment, given you have access to weights you can increase easily, either on machines, or by putting weight plates on a barbell, etc. But Progressive Overload can be achieved by adjusting rest time, altering tempo, adding more repetitions, increasing range of motion, and many other parameters besides, according to the workouts you are engaging in, this can be scalable.
The case I was going to make was that you can do this without the gym, given the home workout boom, and with practice, different points of resistance and gradual adjustment, you could replicate a gym environment. I was then going to talk about the psychological and emotional impacts of switching from a gym to home workouts, or if you were worried or nervous about signing up to a gym as a beginner, that you could take the option to start working out from home, and perhaps build the gym in to your routine, when you had gained some knowledge and confidence further down the line.
Then Covid-19 really kicked in, and all that changed. It also changed how I wanted to present this article.
It became less about offering a gym alternative and more about just offering a choice between the two options. I still want to go over how to make home workouts more efficient and more interesting, but this article just didn’t seem like the place for that anymore. I will be covering that soon. But feel free to hit me up for any more information. Instead I wanted to relay my personal experience, and then you as the reader can draw your own conclusions.
I quit my gym at the beginning of lockdown 1, and felt excited and justified in doing so. I was going to the gym at least 3 or 4 times a week, and ended up spending at least 2 hours there at a time. And my logic about switching to my home gym was that I would be doing almost all of the exercises I was doing already, as I had enough kit to work out from home, with the training methods I love. I would get to work out more often, as it was just walking in to the garden. Also it would allow me more time to focus on training my clients. It would be cheaper, as I saved on membership fees. Also it would save me the time of preparing and getting ready, and then leaving the gym. I wasn’t feeling comfortable either about sharing a small space with others given the spreading of Covid-19. Then I was going to present you with a case for making the switch too, suggesting equipment to purchase, the benefits it would provide psychologically as well as the money you would save. These factors are still relevant of course, but for me, the context has shifted.
Helping out a local gym is a great thing to do, if all the safety measures are in place, when they reopen. Gyms provide a public service we can all be thankful for, in looking to keep us all fit and healthy. They tend to have good facilities and a group community, whether for classes or just for a free weights area. The sense of community is definitely one of the things you notice is missing if you work out from home. The psychology for me, of going to the gym, was that it was like a Zen zone. A place where I cleared my head. All of the focus was on the next rep or the next exercise. That was my mindfulness. Working out from home now I find it easier to get distracted by work emails, client requests or anything else I happen to be working on. If you want to work on your strength and power using heavy free weights, then home workouts probably aren’t going to be up your street. But being in the gym and seeing someone else going for a similar thing right along with you, is a great experience and a helpful motivator. The same principal applies if you want to go to a class with someone in your bubble. Also with the facilities and equipment, you have everything there for you, and unless you’re a more advanced trainer with more background knowledge, it’s very easy to pick up and go. Also in more optimal gym conditions, and a separation from working out at home, focus and therefore results will probably be easier to attain.
My own personal opinion is that if you feel able and ready to train at home, free from distraction or if you want to follow along to workouts on YouTube or Instagram, and that works for you, that’s fantastic – do that. Expand your training horizons and plan to do something a bit different each day. But whereas before I would have dismissed the gym in Covid times, maybe I snapped to that too quickly. Covid-19 has shown how important a community can be, and how important exercise can be whatever form that takes. A gym environment can definitely provide those things for you, along with easy to access machines and equipment, classes, knowledgeable guidance and a journey to a place that makes you accountable for your own training protocols, which can be very important if you need an extra push.
However, and wherever we choose to exercise, let’s make sure we get stuck in! And most importantly, enjoy it! Training in any form, or getting started with training, is the best option whatever form that takes. Having been a freelancer for most of my adult life, thinking about getting started with a big project can bring with it a sense of paralysis. Do we have the right equipment? The perfect location? Etc, etc. And from this I’ve learned to just get going, doing something and getting something done, is far better than nothing at all. So keep on trucking and enjoying your fitness journey, as that’s what the journey should be – enjoyable!
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I hope this article will help you Raise Your Game.
Articles to look at on progressive overload
Periodization; Current Review and Suggested Implementation for Athletic Rehabilitation
Daniel S. Lorenz, Michael P. Reiman, and John C. Walker
Alaa Khushhal,Simon Nichols,Sean Carroll,Grant Abt,Lee Ingle
The Mechanisms Of Muscle Hypertrophy and Their Application To Resistance Training
Brad J. Schoenfeld
Progression of volume load and muscular adaptation during resistance exercise
Mark D. Peterson, Emidio Pistilli, G. Gregory Haff, Eric P. Hoffman and Paul M. Gordon
The Ten Rules Of Progressive Overload
Brett Contreras