Staying in shape at home during lockdown + VIDEO

Do you know the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? A pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity, while an optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty. And so, in this period of confinement, the context is a real boon for the most creative athletes. Like the opportunity to work differently to maintain your body, with the goal of being even stronger when activities resume!

Text and photos: Jean-François TATARD

With good equipment, you can do quality workouts at home.

In this period of confinement, it’s normal that you immediately fear losing fitness and gaining weight. But for most of you, you haven’t wasted any time. You quickly figured out how to equip yourselves and where to find connected riding options. At the same time, it’s also an opportunity to work on neglected areas throughout the rest of the year. Or to improve weak points, which can be seen as areas for improvement for the rest of the season.

A new range of exercises

To stay in shape during this period of confinement, for the best-equipped, there’s the indoor trainer, treadmill, or rowing machine. These are luxury fallback solutions, and above all, they also help to avoid going stir-crazy and clear your head. But the range of exercises inviting you to get moving doesn’t stop there, as the web and social networks are exploding with tutorials showcasing Sport At Home! However, it’s important to be careful and choose them wisely.

=> SEE ALSO: What type of indoor trainer to choose?

Caution is advised

Since the beginning of the confinement, social networks have been overflowing with coaches, often improvised in 24 hours. They provide exercises to do in the living room, in the garage, or on the balcony. A series of crunches filmed on an iPhone, and 2 minutes later it’s posted on Instagram! Pros are also trying to adapt. Many send exercises to their members. When we talk about opportunism, have you ever received as many promotional emails as you do now? Specialized apps are flooding email inboxes. Even sports stars offer us to follow them with advice not necessarily adapted to everyone. In this period of confinement, the home sports business is booming. Do you remember the day after the president’s announcement, all those people who suddenly discovered a passion for running? “Oh, but yes, Decathlon is closed! Never mind, we’ll roll up our jeans, put on our Stan Smiths, and go run along the quays…” These behaviors are not without risks. All these movements, if done incorrectly, can quickly lead to injury.

Some exercises require excellent technical mastery, which must be worked on before seeking intensity in effort.

Adapt your exercises

Don’t improvise exercises you’ve never done before. During this period of confinement, there will be no one to check if you’re doing them correctly. No one either to treat the consequences and traumas of poor posture. Injury is never far away. Poorly done abs or unbalanced exercises and you quickly end up with lower back pain or pubalgia. So adapt your efforts. Be progressive. Don’t go beyond the pain on new exercises. And also keep in mind that this period can last a long time. So, you shouldn’t give it your all in the first few days; think long-term.

No excessive intensity

Adapt your efforts to your level of practice. For new confinement athletes, prioritize what you know how to do! The things you master, and slowly and progressively learn the things you are discovering. Don’t venture into squats if you’ve never done them. First, learn the movement by doing the exercise without weight. Also, don’t do abdominal exercises without doing lower back exercises afterward, which will have the benefit of balancing.

This period is conducive to working on weaknesses.

Balance

Do not unbalance the structure. The keyword in the new activities you will perform during these next few weeks is precisely balance. When you work on one side, you must balance on the other. Abs = lower back, quads = hamstrings, arms = legs. And it’s the same with the balance of strength and flexibility. To build muscle more effectively, you need to correct imbalances and diversify your strength training sessions. It is important to perform an exercise correctly before working on brute strength. If you’ve never heard of the Calisthenics method, now is the time to look into it. It recommends doing sets of a maximum of 5 repetitions, focusing only on the cleanliness of the movement before moving on to variations by working on strength.

Better safe than sorry

During this period, we advise you to prioritize developing agility, balance, and flexibility more than strength. This helps correct muscular imbalances. And above all, the risk of injury is less than with weight training. It is therefore beneficial for cyclists and triathletes unfamiliar with gyms and for those returning after an injury. It engages a greater number of muscles than weight training, and targets muscles that are not heavily worked by our endurance sports.

Emeric Choisy, sports educator and French Master champion in 2018, shows us some examples of exercises perfectly adapted to maintaining physical condition during confinement.