All the gyms are closed and you’re quarantined at home. Unless you’re one of those fortunate enough to have a fully-equipped gym in your garage, training in your normal base of operations is probably going to be impossible.
Most of us live in apartments with very little in the way of any training gear, the gym is where we train. The gym is the space where we get stuff done.
Given the current circumstances, accessing this valuable space is impossible for most.
So, you can’t train right?
Wrong.
I’m not here to talk to you about a quarantine training program, you’ll find plenty of those online and I encourage you to find something that works for you with what you’ve got.
I’m going to talk to you about mindset.
We often underestimate the importance of context. Context is the external environment that subconsciously influences our internal state. We’re heavily influenced by what’s around us without even realising it, a lot more that we’d like to admit.
Training comes relatively easy when you walk into the gym because the gym is a context conducive to a training mindset. You’re in the place where people go to train.
When you change into your gym clothes, you become a lifter.
You put yourself in the right context for the task at hand.
When you can’t put yourself in this context, the challenge becomes not just about executing a training program with the right equipment but also about maintaining a training mindset.
So how do we get into and maintain that mindset when we’re quarantined at home?
Nobody knows how long we’ll be in this current situation. It could be weeks, it could be months.
I say the best strategy is to behave as if you’re going to be stuck at home indefinitely.
Don’t think of this as an extended break from training. You have to keep training whatever way you can.
So how do you stay in the training mindset? Two things:
1. Consider training as something you are, not just something you do.
Make training part of your lifestyle, along with your nutrition, your job, your family and everything else. When you think of training in this way, you’ll always stay active because it’s part of who you are. When you think like this, being lazy isn’t even an option.
2. Maintain consistency and intensity
Ensure you block out some time in your day to train and stick to it religiously. There will always be something you can do with nothing, just make sure you force yourself to do what you need to do and maintain a high level of training intensity when you do it.
I know doing body weight squats in front of your TV isn’t ideal, but be resourceful and work with what you have.
Whatever you do, stay disciplined and never skip a workout. Skipping a single workout will make skipping the next one easier and it’s a slippery slope from there.
Now that we’re restricted to a single space—our home—we have to compartmentalize things mentally rather than physically.
It’s not easy but we’re not here for what’s easy… we’re at war against atrophy.
