The time has finally come for many of us. Gyms are opening all over the country. Whether they stay open for good is anybody’s guess. A lot of it will likely depend on where you are as some states are getting their biggest Covid-19 spikes. We can only hope that they stay open for those of us that don’t have much home weight training equipment. Whatever the case, if you decide to go back to the gym you need to have some things on mind.
Be Safe
If you are one of the many going back to gyms to weight train, you need to practice safety. You should’ve already been wiping down equipment you were just using. However, it holds even more true now. It may be a good idea to wipe equipment down before you use it to stay safe. You don’t know when somebody was last on it. You also don’t know if they got any droplets from coughing on it either.
No matter how many signs you see to social distance, it doesn’t seem to happen in the gym. In the week and half I’ve been back to the gym, I can confidently say that people just aren’t staying more than 6 feet apart. You can do your best to stay in your own little bubble when you can.
Take It Easy When Going Back to Lifting Heavy
If you kept up with working out while you couldn’t go the gym, more power to you! However, if you’re like me, you didn’t have very heavy weight to train with at home. Mind you, great workouts can be had without much weight. It just takes higher reps and high intensity techniques to really it done.
I found that I maintained my strength for the most part after not being able to train heavy for 3 months. My first workout was for chest (of course), and I started light but realized I could still bench and incline the same as I could before. However, I was doing weighted pushups at home and I believe they helped me maintain my strength. While that workout caused soreness, it wasn’t overwhelming.
My back workout is what really killed me when going back to the gym. When I trained at home I was using cables to do pulldowns with. Without a place to do pull-ups, this is what I was stuck with. I could use my previous weights on lat pulldowns for my upper back. Not being able to go heavy for such a long time while training lats caused a ton of soreness when I went back to heavy weights.
After the soreness I experienced in my upper back, I decided to do less sets per workout. It’s best to take it easy with how many sets of each exercise you do. Either use a little less weight, or don’t push it with sets and exercises.
Be Prepared
There’s always a chance that gyms close again in some areas of the country. Because of this, now may be the time to set up a home gym as more equipment becomes available. You can just start be getting the basics you need for a great workout before getting more equipment you’d like to have. If you order online, it might take longer than it used to get your workout equipment. Hopefully, gyms that have opened stay that way, but it’s best to be prepared just in case.