When the first lockdown started in March, I was one of many who excitedly jumped on the exercise bandwagon. New home workout guides released by top fitness influencers soon dominated my Instagram feed, and after committing to one, my otherwise-empty days became structured around a workout. Surely, I thought, I would come out of lockdown as nothing less than an athlete.
I’ve always exercised and largely at least tried to follow a gym-guide when doing so, in the hope that I’d get some structure and the results I wanted. Dictating which day would be dedicated to which muscle group, these guides have always been similar, requiring that I promise an hour each Monday to workout my legs, each Tuesday for arms and abs, Thursday for cardio and Saturday for every body part in a gruelling HIIT workout. And every time, my commitment to each guide has followed a similar pattern: the first two weeks are a breeze, motivated by the thrill of achieving something similar to that dramatic before-and-after comparison pictured in the guide.
Regimented workouts made me feel anxious
I soon found that even during a lockdown, with very little else to do, I still couldn’t make it past five weeks of working out to a schedule – especially someone else’s. If I were training legs twice a week I didn’t really want to go for that big walk with my family at the weekend. If I hadn’t done my arm workout for that week, I would end up prioritising that over a workout I’d seen and really wanted to try. So I ended up skipping a few days here and there, and the Week Five workouts began tumbling over into Week Six. The guide became a burden, my routine had crumbled and I felt like I’d failed. I felt so guilty.
The pressure to exercise during lockdown has been a lot. We all know that it can improve our physical and mental health, but the idea that the pandemic is a chance to ‘glow up’ and come out looking like a different person is not what we need right now. This is where the shift happened for me – I moved away from wanting to replicate the body of the fitness influencer selling me the guide, thinking that I could get results if, and only if, I did exactly what was instructed, to wanting to simply enjoy exercise and move for my physical and mental health.
Learning to exercise intuitively
Now, I exercise how and when I want to. If I don’t fancy doing an intense leg workout as dictated by an app or guide, going on a walk or doing a quick ab workout makes me feel just as good. Breaking free from the idea that I have to exercise in a certain way to feel fitter, stronger and happier has been a revelation. I’ve found that mixing up workouts can help with staying motivated and beating workout boredom. But it can also help improve your brain health – exercise is essential for keeping your brain sharp and staving off memory loss anyway, but if you’re doing new exercises and learning new skills, this keeps your neurons firing more effectively too.
I’ve found exercise to be the best medicine for when my anxiety is threatening to take over – raising my heart rate with movement is better than with my racing thoughts. But some days, some weeks, and even some months, exercise is at the bottom of my to-do list. If you’re feeling guilty because you’re not spending all of your spare time working out, remember that rest is important, and these lockdowns can make us feel exhausted. Moving the body is great for us when we have a healthy relationship to exercise, but not having the energy or motivation to do so is fine.
We should be encouraging exercise as a way to handle the stress of the lockdown, not as a way to transform into a different person for when everything is ‘back to normal’. This is not to say that workout guides are bad – they can be great for getting you into a routine, introducing you to exercises you wouldn’t otherwise know and motivating you to get moving.
But workout guides are exactly what they say they are: a guide. They shouldn’t dictate your day or become something that shames you when you deviate from the plan. Exercise, when you can and when you feel up to it, in your own way and remember, if you can’t stick to a workout guide, that’s absolutely fine.