Being locked inside our houses for months is perhaps a perfect time to work on the more personal changes in life. Be it improving grades or eating healthy and getting in the best shape of our lives. Pre-Covid life was drastically different and enabled our excuses to come forth and prevent us from pushing ourselves. Now before you click away, fitness isn't about an exquisite 10% bodyfat with aesthetic six-pack abs and bulging biceps; but it is about taking the stairs instead of the elevator.
Now, I know that many of you out there are just splurging unnecessarily on your local gym and buying supplements thinking that overnight your mirror image would replicate your favourite actors'. Lockdown surely saved you from that but again also reduced that somewhat "workout" you had in the gym. Welcome to the world of Callisthenics. Callisthenics is the art of using your bodyweight as your iron. Your body is LITERALLY your temple. Some of you who are familiar with callisthenics shall be thinking of the Human Flag or a full Planche but that's not what I am talking about, albeit you'll be surprised to know that you too can reach there. I am talking about pushups, pull-ups, sit-ups and squats the OGs of fitness (apart from the deadlift and benchpress of course). These fundamental exercises workout your entire body and is a perfect way for you to spend that extra time of the day. Start slow and steady, 2 sets of 10 repetitions each of pushups, pull-ups and situps. Now for those of you who do not have a bar to hang from (just like me), you can start the superman exercise (which can somewhat substitute pull-ups).
Now onto the intermediate. Being an intermediate myself, I understand that body weight isn't enough for many of you. Now there are 2 solutions for that:
a) Weight Vest, a small but substantial investment
b) Time under Tension
Now I am an advocate for option b) Time under Tension. Muscle growth and repair takes place through a process of hypertrophy which is induced by muscle tear. Now our body doesn't know that number embedded on the side of the weight and responds to the tension applied on our muscles. So, in layman's terms, 100 pushups without break are nearly equivalent to 2 sets of flat bench press. Furthermore, 100 pushups will also increase your endurance. Keeping time under tension in mind, a brilliant way to train is HIIT or High-Intensity Interval Training. In this method, the rest period is kept very short or negligible in order to keep your heart rate consistently high. For example, 100 pushups can be divided into 10 sets wherein each set is 45-sec work, 15sec rest. Within these 45 seconds, you can choose any variation of a pushup, preferably the tougher variations (such as plyo pushups or archer pushups or even handstand pushups) at the beginning of those 10 mins (sets) since as you work your way to the end, fatigue will catch up. The key to battling this fatigue is to regulate your breathing, the faster you breathe, the more you'll gas yourself out; breath in through your nose (4 secs) and out through our mouth (2 secs).
Fitness in contrast to popular opinion is not just about how hard you workout but what feed yourself. Diet plays an extremely crucial role (70% for you nerds out there) in helping you reach your fitness goals. Yes of course you do NOT need to eat 7 meals of white rice, boiled chicken breast and broccoli, but you need to make a few cuts. Cut on the pizza slices, alcohol, burgers, I mean you know what's bad for you. It's time to use that knowledge.
Consistency is a major virtue which you shall acquire and implement through this journey. It is an absolute wastage if you eat a super-clean diet one day and keep consuming garbage for the rest of the days.
a) Use less oil
b) Start counting your calories. Do it for the first 2 months at least, so that you can get an idea. (Use apps like MyFitnessPal by Under Armour or HealthifyMe)
Keep in mind that the various proclaimed diets be it, Keto, Paleo, Vegan, Carnivore, all of them have their own benefits. But none is the road to success as long as you aren’t consistent with them. So try them out as you please and you shall find the one meant for you ;)
So all the best for reaching your fitness goals and hitting your new PRs! I promise you shall enjoy the realm of fitness.
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