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Stay safe, healthy and boost your immune system to fight against the virus and other diseases 💉💉

With the whole world battling the very crippling pandemic of the new coronavirus (COVID19)😷, we, as individuals, should also do our best in our own little yet impactful way, that we can to combat the outbreak. This is by staying healthy and limiting our physical interactions with other people.

🧐Being healthy means that you have a strong immune system that can fight against communicable and non-communicable diseases whether it be a bacterial or viral infection. In this case, you can boost your immune system by simply working out. 

Given these unprecedented, difficult times, work, events, and other meetings are simply on hold or held in an online format leaving you imprisoned in your own home. On the bright side, you’re able to bond with your family (but practicing social distancing is still a must), but you would still need to get your muscles and blood going to keep your immune system intact and ready to fight any infections.

Many studies such as this one published in 2019 in the Journal of Sport and Health Science indicate that moderate exercise decreases the risks of respiratory infections. This is because of habitual exercise that improves your immune system. 

Exercise is crucial in amplifying our defense against germs and diseases, but it’s important to remember that not all types of workout can do this.

🤔🤔How can you workout to actually boost your immune system during these critical times?

👉👉Read on to find out! 

Staying safe when training

outdoors 🤸‍♀️🛤

You can opt for outdoor training. Nothing beats the fresh air as you jog around your block or hike in the mountains near you.

This would highly be a great option to boost your immune system and build your endurance if not for the unfortunate global circumstance we are all in.

If you are truly keen on your outdoor workout, be sure to follow the necessary guidelines to keep you safe from any infections.

Here’s a brief summary of the things you need to keep in mind if you’re going to train outside with reference from the World Health Organization.

🎯 Safety guidelines for an outdoor workout

• ☑️ Avoid “high touch” surfaces in your location. It’s also a great idea to avoid your local gym and parks as they have a high risk of carrying bacteria and nasty viruses as seen in a recent study. Avoid places that you need to touch potentially infectious surfaces

• ☑️ Wash your hands upon and use a 70% solution of alcohol-based products to sanitize. Do this especially once you get back home.

• ☑️ Avoid touching your eyes, nose, mouth for now. If you’re going to wipe your face, be sure to have a clean towel with you.

• ☑️ Keep your training moderate. Avoid overly high intensity or excessive endurance training for now. We’ll get back to that later.

• ☑️ If you’re not feeling well, postpone your workout for now as you will be more susceptible to more infections. You also need to double-check the symptoms you are exhibiting and practice proper respiratory hygiene.

• ☑️ Maintain social distancing – Maintain at least 1 meter (3 feet) distance between yourself and anyone who is coughing or sneezing.If you have to train as a group, try to limit your group into a very small number. Make sure everyone isn’t exhibiting any symptoms and still maintain your social distance. It’s very challenging at the beginning since we, people, are social creatures, but it’s better to be safe than sorry!

👍 In-home workout to minimize the risk of infection while still boosting the immune system

Not everyone has the luxury of freedom since many countries implement a strict lockdown that prohibits people from going out of their homes unless for emergency reasons. Not everyone is also comfortable going outside since it still poses a risk of infection no matter how careful you take your actions. 

The solution?

Train at home.

It may not be the ideal situation for everyone as it cannot replicate the fresh air the outdoors can provide, but with our given situation, working out indoors is our best option. And for some, their only option.

Training in your own home obviously prevents any unnecessary contact with other people. You really can’t say who’s infected or not since the coronavirus has an incubation period and can remain on a surface from hours to days.

Regardless, training at home minimizes any risk of catching the virus so you can remain healthy to protect yourself and your family. 

Know your goal🥇: Focus on

your health🩺

Before working out, it’s important to set a goal so you’ll know how to structure your training and know where you are headed. You’ll also feel more confident and motivated with your training while keeping the process enjoyable.

There are different goals and of course, there are also different training approaches.

FOR HEALTH🧪🩸: TRAIN WITH MODERATE INTENSITY WORKOUT

With the very much recent outbreak, the importance of improving your health is highlighted. Heck, it should be your top priority at this point.

By prioritizing health, you are looking into boosting your immune system. You don’t have to go all out, every day with your workout. Moderate exercise is enough.

On a conducted research, it has been found that staying physically active even with only 20 minutes of moderate exercise drastically reduces any upper respiratory tract infection symptoms.

Being fit, being an elite competitive athlete and being healthy with a strong immune system aren’t necessarily the same situations.

As mentioned above, you can be healthy with at least a 20-minute workout every day with enough intensity to break you a sweat. You can go for a maximum of 60 minutes of this moderate intensity.  

A great way to train for health is with calisthenics!🤸‍♀️🤸‍♀️🤸‍♀️

Calisthenics is a great approach you can take in your home training. You can build your strength, mobility, endurance, flexibility, and importantly, BOOST YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM.

To train with calisthenics moderately, nothing beats following a personalized program like what The Movement Athlete Academy provides.

Personalized programming gives you just enough challenge and stimulation onto your body without leaving you exhausted, weak and overtrained.

The Movement Athlete app can create a personalized workout routine that is adjusted just enough for your skill level in each training. This is done with autoregulation training. Your workout routine is based on your performance in each training and the app is adjusting to your skill level all the time.

You won’t be disappointed with too easy training routines and you won’t be struggling with something too difficult.

📌REMEMBER: You don’t need to be dripping out buckets of sweat, sore and

gasping for air to know you did great in your workout.

Exercising within a 20 to 60-minute routine with moderate intensity 4 to 6 times a week is already great. Of course, moderate-intensity means different from person to person. My moderate workout might be too intense or too light for some. That’s why personalization and autoregulation are vital in your workout structure. 

FOR COMPETITION AND PERFORMANCE 🏆:    TIME TO TONE IT DOWN

For elite competitive athletes and performance-oriented individuals, (we’re talking about gymnasts, endurance runners, triathletes, bodybuilders and the likes), we understand your goals as you strive for greatness in your respective field. You might want to lower down your intensity, volume or frequency of training as performance does NOT always equate to health.

Advanced competitive training routines are very specific and oriented purely on producing the best performance that your body can handle. With the hours of heavy training, it adds to the various other factors affecting your health such as:

• 👊 Everyday life stress
• 👊 Mental, physical and emotional stress
• 👊 Sleep disruptions
• 👊 Nutrient deficiencies
• 👊 Environmental factors

These aren’t always avoidable and if you partner this with the very strenuous training, a weaker immune system prone to viral and bacterial infection is guaranteed for you. This is the case for a recent review published in 2018.

In this situation, it would be ideal for competitive athletes to cut back on your training regime and focus first on your health. This doesn’t mean you need to go light. The level of difficulty we’re talking about is relative. Train on a challenging enough stimulus that doesn’t push your body too much to its limits.

Don’t worry. This is a temporary situation that would hopefully end soon so you can get back to your performance-oriented training! 

🤔🤔🤔How can we train at home without any fitness equipment?

You might be wondering about how to actually train since you don’t own any gym equipment.

This approach is excellent even if you don’t have any equipment, but you can maximize your benefits from calisthenics if you have a few essential pieces of equipment. Nothing fancy, nothing expensive such as the following examples down below: 

• 👌 Pull-up bar
• 👌 Dip station
• 👌 Parallettes
• 👌 Resistance Bands
• 👌 Wall

What if you still can’t have access to any of this equipment?

Let me tell you a story.

Around 2500 years ago, Milo of Croton, an ancient Olympic Games champion wrestler, was dominating the sport with his godlike strength. 

How did he acquire his strength? 

When he was younger, he carried a newborn calf on his shoulder as part of his training. He did this routinely, religiously with the same calf. As the calf and Milo, himself grew older, he continued this ritual even until the calf turned into a young, much heavier bull.

There’s a lot of principles you can learn from this story, but for now, our main point is just to be creative with what is accessible to your environment.

📌 To give you a headstart here’s an article on effective and creative alternatives to your calisthenics equipment.

🔎🔎Common Myth Busted – You can still do some strenuous workouts

Exercise-induced immune suppression debunked

For those who are still want to have vigorous workouts, fret not. This doesn’t mean that you’re doomed when you do these types of workout. You just need to listen to your body even more.

While there were older studies that link temporary immune suppression on strenuous workouts, a more recent review of the evidence shows that strenuous workouts don’t suppress your immune system. It still strengthens your immune system as long as you don’t overdo your exercise training.

Overtraining doesn’t always mean strenuous and heavy training. Overtraining means that your body is no longer able to recover from the high-intensity workout routine that you consistently do in a given time frame. This results in immune suppression, not just the heavy workout.

💡💡The difference between medicine and poison is dosage

For exercises, it’s the same. A strenuous workout is good as long as your body surely can handle it. Once it’s overdosed, it starts to get detrimental not just for the immune system but for whole overall health as indicated in scientific findings.

Just keep your rest periods and sleep are long, stress levels intact and that you have a proper diet.

To summarize:

At these unfortunately difficult times, we need to stay healthy to protect ourselves and our family from the new coronavirus as well as other diseases. 

At the same time, lessen the chances of spreading infectious diseases by training at home and practicing proper precautions provided by our health specialists.

So train with purpose and respect the limits of your body to boost your immune system.

Train with The Movement Athlete Academy.

Stay strong and keep safe, everyone!