Our daily movements have become very limited these days, so the workouts we do also need to be adjusted to this new lifestyle.

Even if we keep up with the usual workout routine and exercise for an hour every day, the time we spend moving outside of the workout will be significantly reduced compared to a usual day when we are free to go out and about.

Home training to maintain your fitness

There is only so much you can do in an apartment/house, and if that’s all the space you have to accomplish your goal of 10k steps, it is probably not going to happen.

Research shows that the amount of calories we burn in our 1 hour workout is just a fraction of what we burn by going about our daily routine of cleaning, shopping, running after the kids in the playground, etc.

Still, most of us will keep eating a similar amount of food we did before the lockdown in Abu Dhabi, which will result in an energy imbalance, we will be taking in more energy (food), than we can burn, which will result in… well, you know what.

A lockdown/staying at home exercise routine

So I made this lockdown workout routine for those of us who want to stay in shape and full of energy even now, without having to reduce our meals.

When it’s not lockdown time, I usually do weight training at the gym 4-5 times a week, up to 1 hour each time. Outside my workouts, I am quite active during the day.

To maintain the number of calories I burn in a day and to give my muscles the stimulation they’re used to, I had to adjust my workouts so that I can do more without overdoing it and getting injured.

At the same time, I wanted to keep it interesting and not get bored by doing the same thing. All of this with minimal equipment that I have at home, which is 2x 3kg dumbbells, 1x 12 kg kettlebell, 1 ab wheel roller, 1 power band and the sofa (yes, you can do many exercises using a sofa).

I use this equipment on some days, but they are not essential, you can work out without any equipment whatsoever.

A few basic rules

For these exercise at home routines I set a few basic rules:

• I do a short workout ‘before’ every meal
• No rest day during the lockdown. I do listen to my body though, and if I feel like I need a rest, I just do an easier workout or yoga, but I still move
• My workouts will be whole body-focused, without dividing my days into upper body and lower body (simply because I don’t have enough equipment to do that)

I divided my usual 1 hour workout into 3 parts.

At Home Workout Routine Part 1:

Before breakfast (but only after my morning coffee) I do a morning flow for 20 min to wake up my body and stretch it, or a gym ball workout and 5 min of ab exercises (with or without the gym ball). You can find many morning flows on YouTube.

Examples of the morning workouts I do:

At Home Workout Routine Part 2: 

This is the main workout of the day, which I do just before lunch.

I do the same warm-up every time: a) 10 Downward dog to plank, b) 20 squats, forward and backward lunges each, c) 40 – 60 mountain climbers d) 10 burpees.

Then comes the main part of the workout, which takes 30 minutes. I work most of my muscles by some of the following exercises:

• push-ups (elevated or regular)
• front lift, side lift with the 2x 3kg weights (you can use water bottles for weights)
• triceps dips on the sofa
• kettlebell rows (skip this if you don’t have one)
• squats with or without weights, or with the power band, super-slow or regular ones
• and quads: front lunges and back lunges, Bulgarian lunges with back foot on the sofa. All of these with or without weights
• plank, forearm plank, side plank, mountain climbers, crunches, sit-ups, bicycles, V-ups, leg lifts with the back on the floor, glute bridges, abs with the ab wheel roller
• don’t do all these exercises every day, just 2 or 3 for each muscle group and I do them in supersets of 10 reps x 3 sets or as a HIIT session (45 sec work/15 sec rest) if I’m not feeling motivated. Having the timer there makes me more focused.

At the end of the workout, I will do another 5-10 min of ab exercises.

An example of a main workout I do:

At Home Workout Routine Part 3:

Just before dinner I’ll do an easy, 15-20 min workout. It might be a relaxing, wind-down yoga session, or a gym ball workout if I didn’t do one in the morning.

In the end, I’ll stretch my back and hamstrings, those suffer the most from sitting down a lot.

An example of my yoga sessions:

Does working out at home help maintain fitness?

Working out this way every day helps me keep focused and motivated, and it will be much easier to return to my normal, active life when things get back to normal.

Give it a try for a week and see how you feel! By the end of the week, you will have much more energy and you’ll be ready for anything.

We are all different, we all have our energy peak at a different time of a day, so you can adjust the workouts to your schedule and energy levels, maybe doing the main workout in the morning, and the 2 easier ones later in the day, or doing the main workout before dinner if that’s when you’re most motivated.

The point is that we keep moving even when we have to stay home in Abu Dhabi.