Maybe because of everything that is happening in the world and in our country, you don’t even think about exercising. All the more so when the various measures that open and close restaurants, shops and gyms are constantly being tightened and loosened. Feelings of uncertainty and fear about the future weigh on almost all of us in some way.
And it’s completely natural. On the other hand, it is necessary to distinguish which thoughts we pay attention to. We will not directly influence the geopolitical situation in the world, the presidential election in the USA or the traditional “black chronicle” instead of television news, so why deal with it and deepen the ever-present stress? But what we can influence is the way in which we can successfully deal with this load of stressors. And one of the best helpers for improving physical and mental health is sport and exercise.
If all the benefits of sports and exercise were sold in the form of pills in a pharmacy, the queues would be endless and people would be arguing for a better place in the crowd. Just imagine: “Hello, I’d like something to improve mood, reduce anxiety, boost immunity, and build muscle. Yes, we have something just for you. Here I will offer you a monthly package of strength training and a half-yearly package of outdoor running. Do strength training once a day three times a week and jogging in nature once a day on the days you don’t do strength training.” And in a month everyone will come to the pharmacy to say thank you that they feel much better. You can read below what effect regular sports activity has on our physical and mental health. [1–12]
What can regular sports activity do?
- ↓ chronic stress, degree of perceived anxiety, symptoms of depression, health risks, body weight
- ↑ mood, cognitive function, sleep, immune system and body defenses, bone tissue density, muscle mass, flexibility and balance
It seems that there is hardly any area on which regular sports activity does not have a positive effect. However, the uncertain opening hours of gyms, fitness centers and government restrictions make it much more difficult for us to follow our hard-earned healthy habits. But you can also exercise at home! But that’s not quite right, is it? At home, you may be missing dumbbells, axes, discs, a squatting cage, a sparring partner, motivational music blaring throughout the gym, which makes you just finish the series, no matter what it costs, or the personal guidance of a trainer for a group lesson that you don’t even can’t breathe for a while Let’s show you how to keep exercising even at home and how to make exercise even fun. If you’re wondering what else exercise can do for you, read our article 10 Unexpected Benefits of Exercise That Will Improve Your Life.
5 steps to help you stay motivated to exercise and do sports at home
In the era of home offices, online teaching for students and the impossibility of socializing, you may find yourself in an even more intense life stereotype than before. Ideally, you should not leave your home, and you usually decide whether you will do the assigned tasks within the framework of flexible working hours before or after the next episode of “Emily in Paris.” Great admiration goes to the parents of school-aged children who now do not know what to do first. Whether to study with the children, to cook, to finish homework, to exercise or to deal with sibling teasing. [13] [14]
On the other hand, even the busiest person can find at least half an hour a day to exercise. Exercise and sports activity are one of the best nootropics to support brain function and an often forgotten method of biohacking, which is a powerful weapon against stress, a tool to improve health, fitness and body composition. Let’s get down to that exercise.
- Find your why
In order to successfully manage everything you want to achieve, you need a strong reason and know your own “WHY?”, why do you want to exercise? The stronger and more important your why is, the more likely you will be able to maintain your motivation to exercise in the long term. Unfortunately, motivation in itself is not omnipotent. When the “WHY” is too distant and general, there is a greater chance that you will choose “couching” in front of the TV instead of exercising in the evening after a heavy workload. This can happen in cases where your why is to stay fit, healthy or lose weight. You simply tell yourself that it’s not that bad after all, and you start working on yourself from Monday or when the constellation of stars is more favorable. [15]
Try to break your big and time-distant WHY into smaller and current whys that will help you achieve the WHY itself in the long run.
- Temporal remote big WHY: I want to lose weight
- Current sub-why: I need to clear my head after a hard day’s work
- Current partial why: I want to get rid of my anger
- Current partial why: I want to improve my mood
- Current sub-why: I want to relieve back pain from sitting all day
- Current sub-why: I want to be more focused and get tasks done faster
- Set close and realistic goals
This point is quite closely related to determining the big WHY. Let’s say you decide to lose 20 kg or gain 5 kg of muscle mass in six months, and with the determination of MMA fighters, you go full throttle for the first few days. Over time, however, motivation and the desire to achieve a big why decrease due to the fact that the weight varies by “only” 2 kg after a month, and you are therefore not satisfied with yourself. This is especially because your destination is too far away.
We humans are equipped with an internal reward system that motivates us to do activities that are important for our survival, such as the need to eat and drink, or that motivate us, “force” us to learn, or are associated with pleasant feelings. Studying for an exam or forcing yourself to practice is sometimes a punishment, but the good feeling after successfully completing a task and the motivation for the next job is worth it, isn’t it? This is due to our internal reward system in the form of the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine. We can compare it to a situation where you feel good after a satisfied feeling of hunger, a thirst for an exam or “bed games”. If your goal is 6 months away, there’s no dopamine reward coming in, and that’s the problem with why we don’t want to keep going. Simply put, dopamine gives us partial motivation and the desire to achieve other goals. [16] [17]
What to do with long-term goals? Break them down into smaller sub-goals…
It’s really as simple as it seems at first glance. You can probably already guess that it is mainly due to more frequent activation of the reward center, feelings of satisfaction from the continuous fulfillment of partial goals and dopamine reward. With this strategy, you tip the scales and dopamine starts working for you, not against you. [18]
| DAILY GOALS | WEEKLY GOALS | MONTHLY GOALS | QUARTERLY GOAL | HALF YEAR GOAL |
| Go for a walk, run or exercise | Lose 0.83 kg | Lose 3.3 kg | Lose 10 kg | Lose 20 kg |
| Exercise and eat enough energy and protein | Gain 0.21 kg of muscle mass | Gain 0.83 kg of muscle mass | Gain 2.5 kg of muscle mass | Gain 5 kg of muscle mass |
Sure, the weight can vary easily by +/- 3 kilograms every day, so it’s nice to monitor other parameters that will tell you more about your progress. You can easily add body circumferences such as waist circumference, hips, thighs and abdomen. If you check off each day in your diary or calendar, you are on the right track. You can expect a measurable physical change after about 2 weeks, take this into account.
Another method of setting goals is the SMART strategy, where each goal must be:
- Specific: 30 minutes of physical activity every day or practicing 3 exercises with 50 repetitions.
- Measurable: You can use a stopwatch, phone, or record the number of repetitions in a diary to measure time or repetitions.
- Achievable: Don’t want everything right away and start slowly. You will work up to greater performances over time.
- Relevant: The sporting activity must be beneficial to you and resonate with your why. Do what you enjoy. It’s not worth forcing yourself into something that’s trendy, but it’s not close to you.
- Time bounded (Time): Daily and weekly goals also work well for self-reflection. You know that you want to do 30 minutes of physical activity every day, which is 210 minutes per week.
You can even elegantly combine these two methods. Using your big WHY, you set a long-term goal, break it down into smaller sub-goals, and use the SMART method to plan how you will achieve it. [19] Do you work hard and the results are nowhere? If this problem bothers you, we will help you solve it in our article Why are you not seeing results from diet and hard work in the gym? We will advise you on how to succeed.
- Plan the training as an urgent meeting
Telling yourself that you’re going to spend half an hour exercising every day and hoping that it really works out by some miracle can seem about as certain in today’s world as betting on the Euro Jackpot and hoping you win. You yourself have probably already noticed that if you didn’t have a firm time frame, it probably didn’t work out. It’s nice to know each other at least a little.
- Are you more of an early bird , getting up is not a problem for you, and can you imagine a morning workout that, together with a cold post-workout shower, will energize you for the coming day?
- Or do you not like thinking about training in the morning and you prefer to train after work, when you can clear your head and relax mentally after a hard day?
Write a specific exercise time in your calendar that suits you and treat it as if it were an urgent meeting. Every day from 6:00 in the morning or from 17:30 in the afternoon you devote yourself to exercise and no train passes through it. To be sure, turn on the notification on your phone, which will prepare you for the upcoming event at least 15 minutes before training. And what is the best? This eliminates the room for excuses. In case you don’t know how to set up a home workout, read our article How to set up a quality training plan for home workouts?
- Celebrate small victories as if they were big
After all, a workout that you didn’t even want to do or that you somehow “slopped out” is better than one that didn’t happen at all. It’s not about being absolutely perfect and doing 100% every day. The bottom line is that every time you exercise at a pre-scheduled time, you are building a habit that will help you achieve your goals. That’s probably the most important thing that’s kind of hidden under the surface. So you can boldly switch from an “all or nothing” mindset to an “at least something rather than nothing” style setting. [18] [19]
With this, another very important thing comes to light. Be aware that almost nothing goes according to plan and have a backup plan. What will you do if you really only have a small amount of time during the day to exercise or miss an online group lesson? Keep backup 10-minute workouts on hand that are intense enough to work your entire body. Be prepared that you won’t feel like running every time and go for a brisk walk instead. When you have a backup plan up your sleeve, you avoid the sudden question: “What now?”
- Be creative
Often people say that they have absolutely no time for anything. However, a subsequent careful and honest analysis of the day spent with the help of self-reflection will show where the time is disappearing. Yes, it disappears into the depths of wasted time in the form of an hour browsing social networks, half an hour on messenger, another half hour playing a new trendy mobile game and two hours of evening watching a series, which again does not occupy us so much, but it is a habit. All in all, that’s 4 hours, from which you can easily cut at least half an hour for daily exercise. [20]
And to combine the pleasant with the useful, we have some tips for creative sports activities:
- In the era of fast internet networks and unlimited data, you don’t have to be chained to your laptop every time you have an online meeting. Try the “walking meeting” variation, when you go for a walk in nature and have the meeting in headphones and, if necessary, on the phone screen.
- Listen to your favorite podcast or audio book while you exercise or play sports . Although it is not exactly the ideal solution for maximum concentration on sports and enjoying the present moment, but if it suits you, why not use it.
- Change sports activities. If you exercise at home, include classic training with your own body weight, try HIIT training, make your exercise more interesting by using home exercise equipment (a full backpack will make squats, push-ups and biceps lifts more difficult), expand your home gym with new equipment or give a chance to something almost forgotten today skipping rope
- Try sports in augmented reality with the help of gaming consoles. If you are a fan of the cult sitcom The Big Bang Theory, you will surely remember several scenes where this group of “nerds” played various games such as tennis, bowling or boxing on the Nintendo Wii. Why not use your game console for a family competition in dancing, tennis, skateboarding or snowboarding. You might be surprised that even with such activities you can really get in shape.
- If it suits you, download a workout app to work out with.
- Speed up, slow down, speed up. Even so, you can revive your withered love for running, cycling or sport walking.
- Take advantage of online exercises , when you can train with a trainer. You can also try one of the training sessions on our YouTube channel .
- You can also work hard on yourself with the help of dance. You can read how to do it in the article Creative training: Exercises with your own weight inspired by dance