How to stay fit and healthy during the pandemic

Being fit and healthy in your everyday lives can really help during a pandemic. With the current COVID-19 pandemic still existing in the UK, having a healthy lifestyle can prevent disease.

Physically active individuals usually live longer than those who are inactive. Inactivity is an important risk factor similar to high blood pressure, smoking, or high cholesterol.

Benefits of being fit and healthy

Staying physically active can reap some real benefits such as:

• reducing stress and anxiety through physical activity will ensure the release of serotonin and endorphins which can help improve your mood
• regular activity can help support your immune system
• exercise and good nutrition will help with weight management
• physical activity reduces blood pressure
• your bone, muscles, balance, and flexibility can be improved through physical activity

During the pandemic, many people are complaining of weight gain and poor nutrition choices, especially during the home-schooling stage. Setting a goal and focusing on a particular area to improve can keep you motivated.

Improvement and focus during a pandemic

During this pandemic why don’t you focus on improving one of the following areas?

• Strength – this could be overall strength or specifically core strength which plays a key role in many movement patterns.
• Aerobic endurance – using your heart and lungs to get oxygen to your muscles and this would mainly focus on cardio exercise.
• Flexibility, Mobility, and Stability – these three areas are a favourite of mine. Many of my clients lack mobility and stability in their joints and have lost overall movement over the years. This is one of the areas I focus on improving with clients during my sessions.
• Balance – focus on improving your balance and being able to coordinate two moving body parts with control.

Now to improve some of these areas you may need equipment however that is not always accessible during a pandemic so you need to be creative. Bodyweight exercises can certainly help improve overall strength and also aerobic endurance. The UK government has allowed the public to get outdoors for exercise during the national lockdown so use this time to go power walking, running, or even cycling. Remove shoes at home to perform any mobility, stability, or balance exercises, your ankles, knees, and hips might thank you for it.

Another thing to remember is many of you are working from home at the moment so try to get up from your desk regularly and have a walk around. You could set a timer every hour to remind yourself to get up and perform 10-minutes of exercise or stretching during the day.

Setting daily and weekly goals to stay fit and healthy will mean that you will achieve them more easily giving you more motivation to continue into the future.

If you have any questions regarding the above or would like more advice on how to improve your physical activity and get fit and healthy then please get in touch.