Due to the corona crisis, all gyms are closed in The Netherlands for at least four weeks. A necessary interference that needed to be done to make sure we all stay safe(r). My take on this situation is that we, as athletes, should not be discouraged. The closed gym is an obstacle put in your way. The real question is: how are you going to deal with it? There are plenty of ways to improvise. Of course, if you have any symptoms and if you feel ill. I hope you get better soon, and for all the others: stay healthy!

Social Media

A lot of Instagram/YouTube fitness channels are starting to post home workouts. A Dutch fitness account owned by ‘Richard Duchon’  is posting home workouts regularly now. Make sure to check him out! Another noteworthy fitness account is from Jeff Nippard. He recently uploaded a YouTube video about home workouts, backed up by scientific finds. There are, of course, plenty of other accounts as well!

As an example, Richard Duchon has a home chest workout that only requires a kitchen pan to do the exercise!

An example of Jeff Nippard’s workout video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MRNjTr6xrE

Bodyweight workouts

Richard Duchon is an example of an account that gives examples of simple workouts where you do not need to have any special equipment. Mostly bodyweight exercises where you can do them with the use of your couch or a table.

Workouts with weights

Some fitness accounts post some improvised workouts that you can do when you put some weights/books in a bag, for example. If you are lucky enough to have enough weights around you in the house, you can even improvise with that to make sure you can do a full-body workout. ‘Jeffskamalo’ on Instagram is an excellent example of these workouts.

Cardio

Since the gyms will not be closed forever, you might also limit your weighted training and focus more on cardio for the time being. Maybe you want to spice things up a little, and now there are no more excuses to skip cardio! Just try to improvise. Push yourself in doing new things! Maybe you like them even more than your current/old gym routine.

As you can see, there are plenty of things to do still. I hope you found some inspiration here and/or on the Instagram accounts I mentioned here or any other account! The media is hyping up home workouts a lot now, of course, since that seems to be the only thing all fitness people can do at the very moment.

Stay healthy,

Fred