Tired of being cooped up indoors and having acquired an overeating habit, fitness fan Gayle devises her own garden workout…
A month has passed since I’ve stepped into the gym, thanks to the coronavirus outbreak.
Instead, I’ve been running and walking outdoors, and as revealed in last week’s column, I’ve started cycling again, albeit on a very rickety old bike.
I need to do all this to maintain a decent level of fitness, to feel good about myself, and to burn off the vast amount of calories I’ve been consuming as a result of my newly-acquired habit of overeating.
I’ve devoured huge quantities of biscuits, ice cream, crisps and cakes – and munched my way through half of an 850g bar of chocolate in the last week.
My trousers have become tighter and I can feel an extra chin forming. It’s bad news and I absolutely blame lockdown.
In a bid to spice things up and take my mind off food and the onset of a jiggling belly, I’ve been scouring the net for new and inspiring exercise regimes.
There’s no limit to what you can live stream online – yoga, pilates, dance classes, virtual personal training sessions – often for a fee – but I’ve decided to devise my own (and completely free) circuits-based workout.
I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with circuit training, a form of body conditioning using high intensity aerobics. It gets the heart pumping, boosts muscle growth, burns calories and blasts through fat.
Jogging my brain for ideas of which moves to include in my workout – burpees, squats, sit-ups, lunges, push-ups and so on sprang to mind – I jotted them down on a sheet of A4 paper and headed outside.
It was after 5pm before I got started, and the grass in the garden was a little damp, but with the help of an exercise mat (you can use an old towel if you’re desperate), I was able to perform my moves with relative ease.
My DIY regime saw me firing through three rounds of nine different exercises – push-ups, squats, lunges, burpees, tricep dips, sit-ups, crunches, plank jacks and jumping jacks – with each exercise being performed 10 times.
After the first round, I realised two things – I despise burpees and push-ups but I’m strangely fond of sit-ups and jumping jacks.
While 10 burpees and push-ups felt like hell, I was able to do a good 30 sit-ups and jumping jacks each round, and at least 25 of all the other moves.
The whole session took around 30 minutes, allowing for short breaks between sets.
I finished up feeling I’d worked quite hard and allowed myself to gorge on yet another biscuit as a treat. Heck, life is for living, right?
The following day, I struggled to walk and even sitting down was somewhat uncomfortable – evidence that my workout had worked wonders.
It was a few days before I dared enter my garden gym again, but when I did, I pushed things even harder, adding in a couple of hand weights (tinned foods are a good alternative) and increasing the number of repetitions.
My push-ups are still pretty woeful, but given the fact I was unable to do even three just a few weeks ago, I’m feeling quite proud of my progress.
The best thing about a garden gym? It’s outdoors. The air is fresh, the birds are tweeting and you get a true sense of spring being in the air.
Any downsides? The odd beastie might crawl over you, or the weather might be against you.
If it’s cold, wet, or midges attack, you can still do the workout indoors, so it’s a win-win situation!
With no personal trainer looking over your shoulder or offering words of encouragement, it’s up to you how hard you want to push yourself.
If you want a real challenge which sculpts your body and gets the blood pumping, then go for it. If you cheat and opt for an easy workout, then on your conscience be it!
There are, of course, many alternative circuits workouts. You could do each exercise for say 30 or 45 seconds, or even a minute, before moving to the next one with a minimum rest period – a bit like Metafit, a workout guaranteed to set your metabolism on fire!
For anyone who is reading this without a garden thinking: “It’s all very well Gayle banging on about having a garden, but what about me?”, I do appreciate how lucky I am.
Hopefully, there’s a handy green space close to home that you can use, or if not, you should be able to do a circuits workout anywhere outside, so long as you have some kind of exercise mat on which to perform the “floor” exercises.
Let’s just keep our fingers crossed that outdoors exercise isn’t the next thing to be banned by the government.
That means we all need to continue to follow the current lockdown rules for our well-being, so no sunbathing in public places, please!
