A comprehensive guide to maximise your performance and reduce the likelihood of injury upon returning to training in the gym
With gyms across the UK being shut for the last 3 months due to COVID-19, and a recent relaxing of the lockdown rules, everyone is starting to count down the days until the imminent re-opening of gyms across the UK. Although we’ve all had to endure the same abstinence from the gym, everyone’s lockdown approaches to exercise and how much they’ve prioritised their own health and wellbeing has been very different from person to person. Odds are, that unless you have your own home gym, you’ve had to adapt and change the way you train due to life in lockdown. This is why your return to gym-based training should be structured and pre-planned to accommodate your current fitness levels.
Some people have chosen to completely go off the rails and have stopped training all together over the last 3 months. Whereas others have adapted and continued to train in whatever way they could manage. People have taken up the ‘run 5k challenge’, turned to bodyweight training, home HIIT workouts or online personal training over Zoom, like many of my clients.
If your pre-lockdown training routine was comprised of heavy compound lifts or Olympic lifts and you haven’t had access to a gym, then chances are you’ve lost a lot of conditioning for these skills over this period, regardless of whether you’ve been training or not. This means that jumping back into your old training routine pre gym closure could be a one-way ticket to disappointment. Whether it’s stalled progress down the line, burnout or, worse case, an injury. This is why I’ve written a comprehensive guide to offer some useful tips on returning to gym training safely and in a way that will guarantee continued progression.
In this article I will be covering the following topics:
: How best to return to gym-based training after being fully inactive over lockdown
: How best to return to gym-based strength training after training for endurance over lockdown
: How best to return to the big compound lifts and Olympic lifts in the gym
: How best to maximise your nutrition when returning to gym-based training
: My personal approach to training over lockdown
How best to return to gym-based training after being fully inactive over lockdown
“It would be a smart idea to start building your fitness levels back up before returning to the gym.”
First off, let’s start with the people who’ve been inactive and haven’t trained since lockdown started. There could be many reasons for this. Some people rely on going to classes at the gym to get their weekly exercise and have no real understanding of how to train effectively by themselves. Others that rely heavily on resistance machines or free weights might have just been unlucky and not able to purchase any training equipment at the start of lockdown due to the huge demand. The subsequent loss of momentum might have then left them sitting idly by waiting to start back at it once the gyms re-open. And let’s be honest, you might be reading this and be one of the many people who don’t have the exercise bug and as soon as a reasonable excuse of the gyms shutting became available, you decided to swap your classes at the gym for glasses of wine at home. No matter what the reasoning was, it’s now the time to put a solid plan together to return back to exercising regularly for the host of health benefits regular exercise provides.
It would be a smart idea to start building your fitness levels back up before returning to the gym. Going for a long walk each day, doing some body weight exercises and stretching at home would be a great starting point. This way the first day back in the gym’s not going to seem like climbing mount Everest.
Once the gyms re-open, it would be smart to continue to prioritise building your cardiovascular endurance back up, while simultaneously working on your flexibility and mobility, which has likely stiffened up after 3 months of being stuck at home and moving less daily than ever before.
Building your cardio up doesn’t necessarily have to mean hitting the treadmill or exercise bike for hours on end, but instead can be achieved through resistance training with a focus on endurance. Keeping the reps high in every set and short rests between sets will help not only build up your cardiovascular fitness, but also your muscular endurance. High repetition opposing muscle supersets are a great way to get blood flow to your joints, ligaments and tendons (which naturally have a poor blood supply, due to their position in the body) helping to strengthen them and reduce the risk of a later injury once you’ve built your strength back and start to lift heavier weights or do more challenging explosive exercise, such as box jump squats. Side note, a superset is where 2 exercises are done back to back. An example of an opposing muscle group superset would be: bar pull ups combined with an overhead dumbbell press.
Correct exercise selection is another key thing to address if you have any old nagging injuries, poor posture or restricted/painful daily movements. Choosing to use weighted whole-body exercise, such as a squat and press, will give you the most bang for your buck when it comes to burning calories, losing fat and building athleticism. But don’t neglect training your stabilizing muscles, such as your rotator cuff muscles, which support your shoulder girdle (these are one of the most commonly injured parts on the body from resistance training). Other key areas to focus on, which for most people will be their weak link is their postural muscles. These can be strengthened with exercises such as cable face-pulls. It’s also wise to strengthen your core muscles to help protect your spine and improve your overall performance when exercising. Want powerful legs? Don’t neglect re-building your glutes, as they are the powerhouse of the hips and usually become weakened from sitting on them all day instead of engaging them with regular running, jumping, squatting, lunging, deadlifting, etc.
How best to return to gym-based strength training after training for endurance over lockdown
Now hopefully you haven’t been inactive this whole time and have continued to train in whatever way you could. For most of us without a home gym or use of gymnastics rings, this would have probably come in the form of endurance training, whether it was jogging, bike riding or high repetition body weight training, for example: squats, press ups and pull ups, to name a few.
On the positive side, this has likely helped you work on some of your weaknesses if you used to regularly neglect cardio (something I’ve personally been too guilty of from time to time). Another potential positive is that you’ve given your joints a rest from all of that heavy barbell lifting that you might have been regularly doing at the gym. Also, if you’ve been doing some form of home resistance training with bands or bodyweight, then you’ve likely not lost too much muscle over this period. But before you dive back into deadlifting your personal best on the first day back in the gym, let’s think about the risks and benefits a move like that carries. In short, it carries all of the risk and little of the benefit and I will explain why in the next section.
If you’ve been focusing on purely running, bike rides, long walks or flexibily/mobilty training, then it’s wise to follow some of the steps outlined in the section above. Although you’ve been exercising regularly with these modalities, your body would have lost strength related to resistance training and therefore needs to be eased back into things. However, if your training has been resistance-based home workouts with bands and bodyweight, then the transition back to training in the gym will be a smoother one. The focus will be less on building a base and more on the skill acquisition and finesse of technique for the big compound lifts or Olympic lifts.
How best to return to the big compound lifts and Olympic lifts in the gym
“These compound lifts are skills, and require efficient movement patterns. Therefore, greasing the groove of these movements with more frequency throughout the week, will get you back lifting at you pre lockdown weights way quicker than any other option”
Your strength on the big compound lifts such as bench press, overhead press, barbell squats and deadlifts will return faster if you focus on achieving a higher training frequency and aim to get multiple sessions in per week, rather than trying to max out and go heavy / to failure right from the start. The latter approach will lead to excessive D.O.M.S (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) and this excessive soreness will stop you from getting in the same weekly volume of these lifts.
These compound lifts are skills, and require efficient movement patterns. Therefore, shaking off the rust of not training these skills and greasing the groove of these movements with more frequency throughout the week, will get you back lifting at you pre lockdown weights way quicker than any other option. If you’ve been training over lockdown with some form of resistance training, be it bands, bodyweight or a kettlebell, you hopefully shouldn’t have lost too much muscle mass, but you’ll probably be a bit rusty with these movement patterns.
For you to lift max effort weights will require you to fire up your muscles in a perfect sequence. Avoid the ego lifting, work on your co-ordination with lighter weights, then gradually increase them and you’ll be smashing your old pre lockdown PB’s in no time. This is the smart way to train. Jumping right back into lifting the weights you were lifting pre-lockdown 3 months ago is a quick way to get sidelined with an injury. And can you think of anything more frustrating than getting injured right out of the gates and having to wait even longer before you can lift again? You’ve waited long enough, so make sure you start things up the smart way.
Further ways you can help reduce your likelihood of injury upon returning to heavy lifting or using free weights in the gym, is to focus on a proper warm up before your sessions, with some muscle/fascial release work, using a foam roller or lacrosse ball, combined with some mobility drills and dynamic stretches (see my Instagram page for some ideas, click the Instagram logo at the bottom of this page).
Another good strategy to use down the line would be to focus on addressing any muscular imbalances or mobility restrictions which could potentially compromise your movements and ability to hold correct positions safely. If you train any of the Olympics lifts then re-drilling the movements with a PVC pipe would be wise to help get your movements silky smooth before you load them up again. Another way to address this and reduce chance of injury, is by regularly changing your exercise selection every 6-8 weeks with a new program. This will help break past any plateaus and also allow you to load your joints in a different way to avoid over-use injuries. This was a favourite practice of Charles Poliquin, the world-famous Olympic strength coach.
How best to maximise your nutrition when returning to gym-based training
First things first, it depends what your goals are. This is a very large topic that could comprise it’s own article. I have written a 30 page complete guide document on fat loss, which I give to new clients when I start working with them. But I will give an overview of some of the key points to focus on whether you are aiming for fat loss or muscle building.
If lockdown has meant poor food habits have crept in, such as excessive alcohol or regular takeaways, and your goal for returning to the gym is like most, to lose some body fat, then the main pillars of fat loss to focus on are: Sustained caloric deficit, progressive resistance training, consuming sufficient protein to maintain muscle mass (aim to consume 1 gram - 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of your body weight) and optimising daily sleep and stress levels. As far as a sustained caloric deficit goes, I would suggest returning to training with a slight calorie deficit of no greater than 250-500 calories under your daily maintenance calories. Your daily maintenance calories can be calculated online very easily and for free.
On the other side of the coin, If you are happy with your current body fat percentage and are looking to gain more muscle mass or focus on increasing your strength, then I would suggest aiming to be eating at your maintenance level daily calories or slightly above it to allow you to be in a surplus. Your choice here depends on whether you are aiming for a lean bulk or a regular bulk. A lean bulk will build muscle slower, but if done right will allow you to not increase your fat levels as you gain muscle. Whereas a regular bulk will mean that you’re eating in a surplus compared to the amount of calories that your body needs daily to maintain homeostasis. This will allow greater potential for muscle building and quicker strength gains, but if left unchecked and done for too long or excessively, can lead to extra body fat gain, requiring a later cutting (calorie restriction) protocol if your goals are more aesthetics based. Just like with the fat loss advice, make sure to be focusing on progressive resistance training, consuming sufficient protein (aim to consume 1 gram - 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of your body weight) and optimising daily sleep and stress levels.
If you want to avoid overtraining and supplement your training goals, whether they are fat loss or muscle gain, then prioritise getting enough quality sleep every night, especially on training days. Studies are showing that sleep is almost as important as nutrition and more important than exercise for healthy weight management and muscle building. This is when your body repairs itself, builds muscle and consolidates memories. A lack of sleep makes you crave more sugary foods and more calories the next day and also makes you more insulin resistant, so those extra calories you eat are more likely to be stored as fat. For more information, please read my article on how to improve your sleep quality, link below:
For people who are anxious about returning to training in the gym due to COVID-19 and would like some tips on how to strengthen your immune system, then please see my article on that exact topic. Link below:
http://www.catalystcompletefitness.co.uk/post/how-to-strengthen-your-immune-system-during-quarantine
My personal approach to training over lockdown
So, you might be wondering what my personal approach to training has been without my regular access to a gym. Being a personal trainer and avid lover of anything fitness, I’ve been trying to get some form of exercise in everyday, just as I would pre-lockdown. Exercise has so many benefits, that if it came in pill form, everyone would be taking it. Yet “33% of the UK population doesn’t regularly exercise” according to figures from the British Heart Foundation.
Before lockdown, 80% of my weekly exercise was done in the gym. Since lockdown, I’ve been regularly shadow boxing for my cardiovascular fitness, resistance training using gymnastics rings for the upper body and plyometric training for legs day. I have tutorial videos for a wide variety of exercises on my Instagram page and some soon to follow on YouTube. So, if you’re interested in seeing more, then check them out, like and follow, it helps me a lot and hopefully the videos can help you too.
We’ll all be back to training in our much-missed gyms again soon and this whole pandemic will be a distant memory. If you would like any help or further advice on training or nutrition, then please get in touch, I’d love to help. Follow the link below to get in touch.
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