Gyms Reopen #3

Gyms open in England tomorrow.

You may be excited, nervous, feeling not quite ready. Here’s a few things to remember:

1. Don’t expect to be where you were when you last hit the gym. For most of us you cannot replicate a gym workout at home and you’ll need to build back up your weights and what you can do.
2. Don’t go mad. Following on from point one, resist the temptation to go crazy and push so hard you end up injured / burnt out. Remember when you first started training and how DOMS / recovery felt? You need to ease back in!
3. You may have to be flexible. Maybe your gym has limited session times, reduced the amount of equipment to allow social distancing, requires booking. You might not be able to do everything you want, may have to switch out some exercises or equipment. Accept this might be the case, go with the flow and it’ll be less frustrating.
4. It doesn’t matter if you’ve put weight on. Covid Handles someone referred to them as the other day. Training over Lockdowns has been tough, Lockdowns in general have been stressful. If you put weight on it doesn’t matter.
5. Say hello to people. You know one of the things I love about gyms? They have people in them. Even training alone but surrounded by people can be motivating. A hello, a joke, a compliment from or to someone always make a training session nicer. Say hi to the staff, to the other regulars you’ve not seen in weeks, strangers.
6. Remember beer gardens open tomorrow too so after your training sessions maybe have a beer, because a) life is all about balance and b) what’s more British than sitting in a beer garden in the sun whilst it’s also snowing!