5 Motivation Tips to Keep Exercising During Self-Isolation

Finding motivation to maintain your workout routine or even exercise at all when your bed is two metres away can be more challenging than we expect!  As we remain in lockdown with the coronavirus pandemic it is more important than ever to stay fit and healthy.  We are going to explore 5 tips to optimise your fitness motivation.

1. Welcome your brand new routine

Perhaps some of us are finding it’s extremely difficult to maintain our exercise and nutrition habits that we’d developed (or developing) pre-COVID.

One of the best ways to keep going with regular exercise is to build and stick to a new routine.

Think about it this way – if you’d always complained about not having time for exercise in your pre-COVID routine, you now have the opportunity to develop a brand new routine, one in which you can carve out space for exercise.

Former Olympic athlete Jessica Ennis-Hill reiterates this and suggests creating a ‘plan you can commit to’, by writing down your schedule for the day and ticking off as you complete it.

At Leap, we run 4-5 LIVE STREAM classes each day, meaning you can easily find a class to fit in with your new routine!  Check out our timetable.

2. Exercise with friends and family (virtually, of course)

Just because we are practicing safe social distancing doesn’t mean we should miss out on time with friends and family!

We encourage you to have members of your family or friends join your workout, and perhaps even challenge and compete with each other.

Excising with others keep you accountable, and a little competition makes it fun and giving you that extra little bit of motivation to get started.

3. Innovate to motivate

Sure, you may no longer have the dumbbells, gym machines or boxing gloves that were so accessible before COVID-19, but don’t let this hinder your fitness!

Find ways to implement everyday household items into your workout.  We recommend substituting weights with cans of food, laundry detergent, bags of fruit/vegetables (potatoes and oranges work fantastic) or, if you’re up for a challenge, your own children or pets work great too!

At Leap, instructors are getting increasingly creative with their classes, so you can still maximise your exercise with minimal equipment.  Check out our live stream Functional Training with a chair!

4. Use exercise to decompress

With everything happening around us, it’s essential that we take time out to reflect and unwind, to let go of all the tension and stress inside of us.

Exercise is an exceptionally effective way to manage stress.  It lowers the stress hormones in our body and stimulates the production of endorphins, which is a strong mood enhancer.  This explains why you always feel incredible after a workout.

5. Start small

Exercise doesn’t always have to be in blocks of 45 minutes or an hour at a time.  Break it up into a few 10-minute blocks each day, and squeeze them in whenever you can.

For example, are you waiting for lunch to heat up in the microwave?  Rather than reaching for the phone to pass the time, do some push-ups off the kitchen bench-top instead!  Or hold a plank, do some calf raises or squat pulses too.  Check out our 5-minute kitchen workout on Instagram.

Does this sound more manageable?