‘Enlightening Conversations’ - Personal Trainer
For many of us, isolation and staying home has put a halt onto our exercise routines. Not having access to gyms, pilates studios and our personal trainers will cause havoc to our fitness levels, mental health and our waist lines. But does it have to? I chatted to Brooke Griggs, owner of B.Style Fitness, about her top tips for maintaining an exercise regime during isolation.
What are your top tips for staying physically healthy during this period?
Find a new daily routine for your situation now, set time aside daily for exercise and movement. Have a plan, set your workouts in advance.
If you are struggling, start with 10 mins a day and build up.
Connect with others and your community. If you normally train with a friend or group you will be missing this social connection find a new way to connect. If you do group classes face time your training buddy and train live via video. Have a group chat with your walking buddies, post daily updates and stay connected with those that fill your cup (get creative with this).
Get creative and have fun with your training. In a time of increased stress find joy in your daily movement.
Break up your working day, every hour get up and move (5 laps up the stairs or hall way, stretch for 2 mins)
What are your favourite at home exercises to do?
Mobility, now is a great time to focus on your tight and stiff areas, spend some extra time on your mobility each day. No equipment required.
Tempo reps or pause reps, whatever exercise it is try slowing down your reps and focus on your form, or pausing reps at the middle and bottom of a movement, this will create intensity without increasing reps. a great way to change up your training.
Squats, one of my favourite exercises and it’s something we do 100x per day, particularly without realising, it’s great functional training. Some of the many variations include tempo squats, pause reps, sumo squats, curtsy squats, single leg squats, frog squats, slit squats, raised split squats, squat jumps, squat and reach, squat press... and the list goes on.
Now that sport lessons are all cancelled for kids, do you have any tips for keeping our kids interested in moving and staying fit?
Keep their training relevant to the sports they are doing (or will eventually go back to), use their favourite training drills, get them to write a session as if there were the coach.
Set a challenge/goal around a skill they are working on mastering, there are some fantastic coaches in a variety of sports sharing how to videos.
Train with them and have fun.
For those of us who don’t have a home gym set-up, do you have any tips for using items around the house?
NO GYM NO WORRIES! Quite a few of my clients have zero equipment at home, which has force me to be adaptive which has also been great fun.
Some of the equipment we have adapted and used include dining chairs and coffee tables for things like step up, incline and decline push ups, dips and elevated lunges.
Shopping bags filled using one or two bags filled evenly for rows, squats, lunges, bicep curls, press.
Filled water bottles to replace light dumbbells.
One of my client’s husbands has used cement in bucket to make her a kettle bell, so resourceful.
Do you have any advice for how to maintain motivation during a time like this?
Write down your daily non-negotiable’s. What are two small things you need to do today and each day to achieve you health and fitness goal. Keep it simple and keep moving towards where you want to be.
Thanks for your tips Brooke!