Quarantine Health Check
The time spent in quarantine has a lot of people reassessing where there time is allocated. For myself, I realized the first week of quarantine I spent an ungodly number of hours on my phone and watching T.V. Luckily, the weekly report of time I spent on my devices knocked me out of the cycle and I thought to try something else. This action of building this website is a huge part of that, but now what? Many of us out there have made very ambitious goals, from learning a new language, to cleaning out basements, from making space on their computers to training for a marathon, all while somehow trying to manage the barking from the new puppy that you’ve just rescued. But how far have we come in the past few weeks? Are we on the right track? Where do we go from here? I plan on writing about what the fit pro or the couch potato should be doing in the next few days to keep themselves on track in regards to fitness during this quarantine. (Sorry I can’t help with the barking dog)
Scheduling out your day can be an incredible way to start facilitating time management. Every day can seem like the same and the cycle will continue to repeat itself. One way to do that is to get a physical calendar and mark it down. A physical calendar can be put up anywhere, a refrigerator or a bedroom door/wall will work perfectly in most cases; and it’ll be an un-requested visual representation on WHEN you are. This can help you set weekly and daily goals, as well as have the sense of accomplishment knowing that you’ve successfully added more veggies to your meals for 5 out of 7 days. Crossing out each day with an “X” or coloring it in will help with that sense of accomplishment and allow you to take control of your life. Also it can’t hurt to use this calendar to plan out or log other parts of your day as well, scheduling workouts, grocery runs, or bedtimes/awake times can be very beneficial towards well being.
Goal setting is another crucial part of all of this as well. Maybe adding 50lbs to your deadlift might not be so realistic any more, but it’s time to outline what your goals were for the year, quarter, month again and see if their still in line with what you can do. One of the best rules of goal setting is to make it realistic, anything outside of that will likely end in failure. If taking a goal away might seem like to hard of a hit to the ego, try adding a goal instead. Nutrition goals, sleep goals, mobility goals can be a fantastic supplement to our fitness goal. In fact, it’s likely we wouldn’t reach our fitness goal in the first place if any of these components were out of whack. Create a way to measure/track your progress along with a time frame of when you want to accomplish it and you’ll be good to go!
The last tip for this would be to reflect. This will allow us to track our daily routine. How early are we going to bed? How late are we waking up? When do we shower? Why do we shower? All of these questions can allow us to see through the fog and realize that we’ve spent way too much time doing something that won’t get us to our goal. Use your phone/laptop/t.v. settings to help you manage how much time you spend on your devices. There are actually tons of ways that these companies have been stepping up to push back screen time. Even certain app settings will allow you to set timers to let you know when you’ve reached that amount of time on the app in one day. This can help you break the cycle and achieve some real results.
Hopefully these tips can help you reach your peak level of “Quarantine Fitness”. Take it one day at a time and remember that it’s okay to have a set back, it’s the long term habits that show. It’s one thing to break even during this quarantine, but remember winning is also on the table.