New Found Fitness Addiction

Covid-19... An unintended consequence; fitness for all! That’s right, maybe the only positive take away from the virus that’s seen the UK locked down for over 100 days is that it’s seen droves of previously sedentary people find a love for fitness and keeping themselves active. 

Due to the lockdown rules, the most widely undertaken forms of exercise over the past 5 months have been running and cycling. 

The uptake in running and cycling during the lockdown period has been equally due to the governments allowance/advice to exercise outside once a day and large amounts of people being furloughed/working from home during lockdown whom used exercise as a way of passing the time or getting out of the house.

I think regularly doing any form of exercise is absolutely fantastic and there are lots of people that now have their lives back to some level of normal but are still regularly exercising, something they previously wouldn’t have dreamt of doing. However, a lot of these new found fitness lovers are now experiencing issues such as injuries and slowing progress, which is super frustrating especially when you don’t know how to overcome these barriers.

Let’s start with injuries. The human race generally have a very all or nothing approach in life and this is no different when exercising. People go from one extreme to another, having never exercised regularly in their lives, people think they can suddenly start running everyday and the first few runs feel great but after about 7 days their shins are killing them, their knees hurt, their hips are tight, the wheels come off. I see this time and time again.

The biggest mistake ‘newbies’ make when starting training, regardless of which activity they undertake, is that they think training is done the second they get home from the run/ride. The training is only 50% of the job as a ‘newbie’. The other 50% is made up of recovery, which is split equally between nutrition and stretching in the most basic form.

You may be new to your activity but we live in the age of information, all you have to do is Google or YouTube ‘running/cycling recovery’ or ‘running/cycling nutrition’ etc and you’ll be given the information for free. 

People tell me all the time of how they’re frustrated by their injuries that have come through exercise but as soon as I ask if they’ve been stretching, foam rolling, eating right the answer is generally no and the sympathy vanishes.

There are a small few that get the diet and recovery sussed out but get frustrated with their slowing progress after the first month or so. ‘Newbie gains’ are common in any activity but the body’s rate of change naturally slows after initial rapid progress regardless of the activity, just cast your mind back to your first week of a calorie restricted diet, week 1 you’ll probably lose 5 pounds, week 2 you’ll probably lose 2 pounds, week 3 you might not lose anything BUT YOU HAVE TO STICK WITH IT.

Exercising isn’t about how much you weigh or how fast you can run/pedal but how good it makes you feel. Chances are you aren’t going to win Olympic Gold but you can certainly feel like you’re a champion making positive changes in life that if you persist with long enough will become a habit envied by others.