Staying fit during the Coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak

Staying fit during Novel Coronavirus COVID-19

With the Novel Coronavirus pandemic closing most gyms nationwide, this begs the question, “How do I stay fit without access to my gym?”

We’ve got the answer.

While most people might look at gyms closing as a hopeless end to their pre-summer fitness regimen, we’ve got plenty of ways to keep you on track with minimal losses in your gains. In fact, if you do this correctly, you can even come out with a more shredded physique than originally planned.

So here’s our top tips for staying fit during the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic.

1.  Stick to your nutrition plan

Honestly, we couldn’t begin to stress this one enough, which is why we put it first. During the Coronavirus outbreak when all the gyms are closing, the typical notion is to give up your fitness program and also to eat whatever is available. Most people don’t recognize that nutrition is literally 80% of the game when it comes to a fitness program and that you can actually see incredible results JUST by following a nutrition plan that’s customized for you and your goals.

Given the fact that resistance training will most likely be limited to body weight exercises and any creative solutions you find at home for weight, now is the time to jump onto a cutting or shred diet. If you’re already on one, don’t deviate from it! However, if you want to get on one, we highly recommend one of two options for shred/cutting diets that you can easily follow while the Coronavirus runs its course:

Keto Diet

What to eat during the coronavirus outbreak

You’ve heard of it in the news, social media, and pretty much everywhere over the last year and it’s gotten the “fad diet” tag but it’s simply not a fad diet. We’ve been using the keto diet for over 20 years, long before the internet was around. In fact, we used it to win numerous bodybuilding and fitness competitions in the early 2000’s, as well as using it with several of our clients to help them become IFBB pros.

Fun fact, Body Spartan was THE FIRST to bring the keto diet to the internet back in 2013.

All that aside, the keto diet is relatively easy to follow. All you need to do is eat proteins and high quality fats, while cutting out your carbohydrates. The part where people get confused and fail, is when they try to alter the keto diet based on the numerous “variations” that have arisen.

Our original version of the keto diet is highly anabolic and  has helped over 60,000 people achieve their goal physique. Here’s the basics:

Protein sources:

  • Eggs
  • Any meats (especially high fat content meats like marbleized steaks, 80% ground beef, pork, bacon, sausage)
  • Whey protein
  • Vegan/vegetarian protein powders

Fat sources (not a complete list):

  • Fats from meats
  • Fats from eggs and the yolks
  • Olive oil
  • Coconut oil
  • Nuts
  • Nut butters (Nutzo is one of our favorites)
  • Cheese (any kind)
  • Salad dressings that are ultra low carb
  • Avocados
  • Chia seeds
  • Other seeds (pumpkin, sunflower, etc.)

But what about carbohydrates? Most people don’t recognize that most of what they consider “healthy foods” have hidden carbohydrates. One of the biggest killers of the keto diet is fruits. Apples, bananas, the works – they all have fructose which kicks you right out of ketosis.

Intermittent Fasting Diet

The other nutrition plan that we recommend during the Novel Coronavirus pandemic is an intermittent fasting diet. Our version of this includes a low fat, high protein, moderate carbohydrate nutrition plan. So basically, once you have your nutritional amounts figured out, you can pretty much eat anything you want as long as you minimize the fats. The trick here is to eat during an 8-hour window every day, and then fast for the next 16 hours. This is a 16/8 intermittent fasting plan.

Many people will try to fit all their meals into one or two sittings, or even try to devour as much food as possible in a single sitting. While your body will uptake nutrients exponentially better when you break your fast, we’ve found that this type of binge eating doesn’t get results.

We recommend eating between 4-6 times a day DURING your feeding window of 8 hours. That 8-hour window should be the same every day.

Also, make sure you do your cardio while fasted and any workouts with resistance should happen during your feeding window, after your first meal.

Custom calculating your macros

Now the second half of making this work is to ensure that you know your macros for YOUR BODY. These are the amounts of protein, fats, and carbs per meal that you will have custom calculated to ensure you lose body fat and maintain (and even gain) muscle mass while you’re on the keto diet.

Going to a sports nutritionist or a licensed dietitian to have your macros custom calculated with cost you a few hundred dollars, and rightly so. It’s a science.

Body Spartan programs all custom calculate your macros for you and there’s a 14-day free trial of our All Access Pass right now!

Even if you can’t get to the gym during the Coronavirus pandemic, you can still use our programs to custom calculate your macros so you can stay in shape and lose body fat!

Seriously, just sign up for the 14-day free trial, pick ANY shred program in our arsenal and you’ll have your macros – 100% free of charge. This is our way of offering you assistance during this Coronavirus outbreak. If you don’t want to continue beyond the 14-days, you may cancel at any time before your trial is up without being charged 🙂

Body Spartan All Access

Access to EVERY Body Spartan Program! 14-DAY FREE TRIAL
  • Get full access to our all of our amazing programs
  • Full, custom calculated nutrition
  • 10 & 12 week programs
  • Instructional videos
  • Full workouts
  • Triphase, polymorphic, and contest prep style training
  • Body composition tracker
$19.00 / month with a 14-day free trial

2.  Do your cardio

Now that you’ve got 80% of the progress under control with nutrition, the next thing you can do to lose body fat and stay in shape during the Coronavirus pandemic is to do your cardio.

As of right now, outdoor activities are still considered acceptable, even under the current conditions (this may change in the next few days or weeks). One of the best cardio activities for losing body fat, is High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), and one of the best HIIT routines is jog/sprints.

The basics of HIIT is to rotate intervals of low intensity exercise and high intensity exercise. Without getting into too much detail, you basically rotate between a fast walk/jog and sprints, as an example. The goal is to get about 30 seconds for each interval and do this for about 20 minutes.

Now, sprinting for 30 seconds all out is almost impossible for anyone that’s not a track athlete. What we do is sprint power poles or telephone poles on our street. If you live in an area that has underground utilities, just pick a good distance and sprint down the block, then walk/jog back. Do this for as long as you can with the goal of trying to get 20 minutes of HIIT exercise.

If you don’t want to go outside, you can always do HIIT routines indoors. There’s a million HIIT routines online that you can Google. Any of these will work for you – as long as you’re sticking to your nutrition plan. We’ve also included two from our Revolution Program that you can use below:

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3. In-home workout routines

So here’s the big one – finding a way to get resistance training done at home, without gym equipment.

Now, if you already have some dumbbells, bands, etc. then it just becomes a matter of utilizing those the best you can. If you don’t have equipment, then it’s back to the basics with body weight training.

Here’s the ideas we’ve come up with using what you have available for body weight and make-shift equipment that hasn’t been purchased at a store:

CHEST:

  • Pushups: do as many sets as you can, to failure each time. The goal for chest is to keep your elbows flared so you engage the pecs, rather than triceps with elbows in tight. You can also mimic an incline press by putting your feet on the couch or on a stool.
  • Flies: The best make-shift idea we came up with, was using water bottles or gallon water jugs as weights. It’s not a lot of weight, only slightly more than 8-lbs, but it’s something. If you utilize time under tension and do ultra slow reps both on the positive and negative motions, you’re gonna get a pump, which will keep and build muscle mass. If it’s still not enough weight, empty the water and use sand or dirt. Just make sure you have a screw-on cap or it’s gonna get messy real fast.

BICEPS:

  • Curls: Fill a plastic grocery bag full of cans, double up the bag for safety, and start curling. You can do close grip style curls, medium grip, wide grip, and hammer curls.

TRICEPS:

  • Triceps kickbacks: Use the same grocery bag and do triceps kickbacks. Just lean over and brace yourself on a counter or chair and start reppin it out. You can also use the water jugs for this as well.
  • Seated overhead extensions: Get creative. We’d stuff a standard backpack full of whatever you can and grab it by the top handle for this one. The reason for the backpack is so that you don’t bang the back of your head with the grocery bag. However, it can be done with the grocery bag, you just need to lean back a little farther and control the motion. Again, higher reps are the key since we don’t have a lot of weight. Swap out time under tension for a set here and there to get some solid variation and muscle confusion.
  • Chair dips: Grab a chair and do body weight triceps dips with your feet on the ground. If you want to increase the intensity, use a second chair to put your feet on.

SHOULDERS:

  • Raises: Use the grocery bag trick or anything that you can get your hands on for weight and do raises, lots and lots of raises. Front, side, and rear delt raises until you can’t do any more.

BACK:

  • Bent over single arm rows:  Again, any weight is better than no weight. Double up that grocery bag and work on the mind muscle connection. Use a slow tempo with a long contraction at the top – holding for 2-5 seconds at the top on each rep.

LEGS:

  • Free squats: If you have kids, have them jump on your back and start doing squats. Tell them you need their help and make a game out of it. Have them count along with you and see how many reps you can get each time.
  • Body weight lunges: No secrets here, just lunge. If you feel like it, use your make-shift weights to add resistance.

You can do these EVERY DAY! There’s research supporting that the protein synthetic response can be triggered within a 24 hour window. This means you don’t have to wait for your muscles to recover. Just go right back to it the next day, sore or not.

Final tips for staying fit while your gym’s closed due to the Coronavirus

Quick summary:

  1. Stick to your nutrition plan
  2. Do your cardio
  3. Do your in-home workouts
  4. DON’T FALL OFF THE WAGON BECAUSE YOUR GYM CLOSED

Again, the biggest factor in all this is nutrition and you absolutely HAVE to have your macros custom calculated for your body and your goals if your nutrition plan is going to work.

Remember, we’re offering custom nutrition FOR FREE by signing up for our 14-day free trial. You can cancel ANYTIME before the end of the 14-days without being charged. Go to any program, grab your macros and stick to them!

Stay positive, smile, and live in a grateful state of mind that even in a pandemic, we still have options to stay healthy and fit!

Body Spartan All Access

Access to EVERY Body Spartan Program! 14-DAY FREE TRIAL
  • Get full access to our all of our amazing programs
  • Full, custom calculated nutrition
  • 10 & 12 week programs
  • Instructional videos
  • Full workouts
  • Triphase, polymorphic, and contest prep style training
  • Body composition tracker
$19.00 / month with a 14-day free trial

 

All access pass

Body Spartan All Access

Access to EVERY Body Spartan Program! 14-DAY FREE TRIAL
  • Get full access to our all of our amazing programs
  • Full, custom calculated nutrition
  • 10 & 12 week programs
  • Instructional videos
  • Full workouts
  • Triphase, polymorphic, and contest prep style training
  • Body composition tracker
$19.00 / month with a 14-day free trial