This time of year, gyms and fitness clubs should be a beehive of activity. People putting in the work to get that beach-ready body, or fine-tune an already finished product sculpted through months of hard work.
Instead of the usual summer crowd, fitness establishments are an empty desolate wasteland of inactivity.
Even with the plannedpartial lifting of the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), in the coming weeks, it is uncertain whether gyms would be allowed to open and continue operations anytime soon.
The closure of gyms in the past weeks or so has resulted in the mad scramble to procure exercise equipment and accessories—with some people opting to build their own home gyms. Some exercise studios are renting out their equipment (such as stationary bikes) for clients to bring to their own homes and use these during scheduled online exercise classes.
Online sellers of dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells, fitness bands, benches, exercise machines and all sorts of fitness paraphernalia have proliferated to cater to hordes of fitness habitués opting to work out from home and build their home gym arsenal. Granting that gyms are allowed to open in the coming months, people may be hesitant to risk infection and opt to continue working out from the safety of their homes.
My heart does go out to gym owners and staff members who have lost employment and income opportunities due to this pandemic. Hopefully innovations can be made to work while the coronavirus threat persists. Think online personal fitness training/counseling, or putting in place an enticing system of group exercises classes (which some are already doing) to tide fitness establishments through this crisis.
While gyms are closed for now, my advice would be to invest in a pair of dumbbells, an exercise bench and mat to set our home workout plans into action. With this set up you can work out and hit all muscle groups. Squats, lunges, chest and shoulder presses, rows and bicep curls are exercises you can do with dumbbells. They are a perfect accessory too for doing High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) to get in some cardio. Signing up for online yoga, bodyweight training, and other exercises classes is also a good idea. This way, you manage some sort of limited social interaction with like-minded individuals, if you find it difficult to go at it alone.
Let’s continue staying fit at home using whatever it is we have to work with. Limited exercise is better than no exercise. We have to keep our immune systems healthy, and exercise is certainly one of the ways to do this.
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