Reentry of My Strength | All About Routine
An emotional encounter of my muscles and the gym. Keep your tissues ready.
Till now we all have seen the hard side of the pandemic. If a couple of years ago we would have said, that one day all the airlines, industries, shops, offices, everything would be closed on the entire planet, we would have made us look foolish. Most of us had spent a lot of time in our homes, away from our usual routine of going to the office, doing business, visiting gyms, etc. It is really scary that during the pandemic people have lost a lot on their health.
So like many fitness enthusiasts, even I continued to spend an hour exercising daily from the comfort of my home. Just for the record, I have experienced two lockdowns in my entire life, hope this should be it.
In terms of fitness probably for almost 8 months, I was not able to visit my second home(i.e. Gym). I am the guy who use to have at least an hour-long gym session almost 7 days a week, which comprises active rest days. So here I want to share the experience, the deja vu, and learnings about intensity to which my muscle responded after revisiting the gym after a decent gap of 8 months. Surely it will have good keys takeaway for all people who are procrastinating to start a fitness routine.
Table of content
· The Ultimate Reentry
· Strength Regain
· Nutrition
· Steps Counting
· Final ThoughtsThe Ultimate Reentry
During the lockdown, I developed a habit of covering at least 10000 steps a day which I am continuing to date. Moreover revisiting my gym was all fern and petals, I met with my old friends, you all know them well, the world-famous dumbbells and barbells. Soon after that, the deja vu started, as soon as I climbed on the treadmill, stationary cycle. It felt like they are all melting those extra calories that I gained during the lockdown period.
One concept that has been widely ignored is that consistency is equally important as the intensity. We don’t have to follow the crazy workout cardio routine only for few days to lose the extra calories and live life rubbishly the other days.
If you are skeptical about what a single workout can do for you then keep adding them on daily basis, it provides the compound interest that can definitely help in burning those extra calories. This will also help in bringing us into a calorie deficit state. We all know for the fact that the real magic occurs in the calories deficit state.
Quick Tip: The Maintenance calories are the calories which your body requires to perform regularly activities, moreover we need to be in calorie deficit state to loose fat, that means burning more calories than your body require to function.
Strength Regain
At first, when I restarted the gym, for a couple of days, even the 10 kg dumbbell appeared to be 30 kg. Muscle memory started showing the result, since I was training for good 5 years, it didn’t take me more than a week to regain back my normal strength. So never underestimate the power of a good routine, this will help you for sure.
But to my surprise, my muscle was growing at a tremendous pace. So I realised that my body was asking for the rest which I personally didn’t realise. Earlier, I used to have a good one and a half hour of good intensity training, my body was responding by recovering in a timely manner. So I didn’t felt the need of taking even a week rest. To be frank, I was so much in love with training that would not have taken it.
If you haven’t hit the gym once or you are irregular in following any fitness routine, there is good news for you, so with every rep, your body will respond tremendously. The fat loss/muscle-building goal will be achieved much faster compared to someone who is lifting for quite some time.
Another concept to understand is the progressive overload that helps in training the muscle with a newer intensity. I felt the magic happening with the gradual increase in the weight I am lifting. My body responded in a much newer way and started showing signs of muscle growth as compared to earlier.
Quick Tip: Progressive overload is gradual increase of the weights that you are lifting. Lets suppose you perform a chest press with 50 Kg weight for 10 repetition, now increase the weight to 52 Kg and try to get the same 10 Repetition. Try compromising on the repetition with the weight.
Nutrition
Although, I maintained a proper diet even during the lockdown but became more serious about the protein intake. After seeing my body responding in such a unique manner in the gym. This gave me the motivation to revisit my diet and make some changes in it, as my body became used to the older regime.
Portion control is something that we tend to ignore. eating anything healthy but in large quantity is equally damaging. Our body is totally unaware of the product we are consuming. If we eat, a pizza burger or a healthy bowl of pulses all our body care about is macronutrients (i.e. Protein, Carbohydrates, and Fats)and micronutrients(Mineral and nutrients).
Well after that big gap I became more serious about counting my macronutrient, especially protein. Even I started using some of the apps like HealthifyMe, Fitpal and also ordered a food weighing scale. The Excitement of restarting everything after a long break makes me do it with the different enthusiasm that was speaking for itself.
Quick Tips: For a regular person who is not doing much of the exercise should take at least 1 g protein
/kg of their body weight
For those who are doing very high intensity workout(i.e. 7 Days/week) can increase that number 2g per body weight.
Rest of us can calculate based upon our physical activity.
Steps Counting
It was never before that I took walking this seriously, I used to walk here and there but it was not related to following any specific routine. Post lockdown the experience was entirely different, it became my habit of covering at least 10,000 steps in an entire day.
In the evening, me along with my smartphone and headphone, developed a routine of listening to some good informative content and have a stall that helped me in easily covering 5000 steps and rest mission was accomplished after my dinner.
Also while researching, talking to your buddies, or taking any call, try moving instead of sitting as it will help you easily cover those steps goal for the day. In addition, I don’t want to spend that extra money on random smartwatches, so I installed Google fit app on my Android phone that helps me counting my steps.
Final Thoughts
So from my story, you must have got an idea about my routine after the lockdown. If I want to conclude everything in nutshell then I will say, with the proper routine, rest, and diet you can achieve your fitness goals, which can help you live a healthy and prosperous life.
The key points that you should be taken from the article would be, portion eating, nutrition, and progressive overloading with the weights. The technique is equally important as the routine. Even if one does the exercise with the wrong technique, then it would only result in harming the muscles. Try educating yourself with proper routines and exercises that can be beneficial for your overall fitness.
That’s all folks, this article was about specifically sharing my experience of revisiting the gym after a decent gap of 8 months which might be usual for many but totally unusual for me since I don’t believe missing gym sessions for even a single day unless something critical comes.
