PGthePT: Beware of trying to ‘catch up’

Christmas, Birthday, Easter and the rest all rolled into one for me last week when it was announced that gyms can reopen from July 10th.

It’s been a long four months, and in truth it’s really made me as a coach, and The Edge as a gym collectively up our game. And it’s made me even more excited to be able to open the doors and welcome everyone back with an even better training experience than before now on offer.

If you’re raring to go and get back in the gym then a quick word of warning – TAKE IT SLOW. There’ll be a desire to pick up from where you left off, or worse again throw yourself into a training regime far beyond what you were capable of before everything was closed down, never mind after it.

I know there’s a feeling in the air that we need to ‘catch up’ with the time we’ve lost away from the gym by going at it like mad men as soon as we can but that’s a recipe for disaster. The phrase “use it or lose it” exists for a reason. You haven’t been able to use the strength you’d built up over your time training previously, your technique might have gotten a little rusty purely from the fact that you’ve not been able to do heavy squats, deadlifts or whatever as you haven’t had access to the weights you where used to. So, put that all together and it means you’re going to have gotten weaker. Fortunately that isn’t a long term problem, or at least it won’t be if you reintroduce yourself to training again with patience and common sense.

I was talking to an old online client at the start of the week, he told me that seven – SEVEN! – of his teammates pulled up with hamstring, calve and groin injuries in their first session with conditioned games. SEVEN out of 18. Mental.

And it is coming down to guys going too hard too fast. You phase yourself in to a return to play, you phase yourself in to a return to the gym. This is for sure a marathon not a sprint, and if you sprint your race could be run before it even gets started.

Things are going to be different in gyms now too. Given the restrictions placed upon us with Covid-19 still at the forefront of everyone’s mind you’re going to have to appreciate and respect the changes that are in place. We, at The Edge, have created Training Pods that are individually bookable. Everything you need will be provided within the pod, and you are responsible for all within it. No walking around the gym floor. No pawing over every dumbbell before you decide what you’re going to curl. If there’s something you need that isn’t in your pod you shout to a trainer and they’ll try their best to get you sorted.

If you’re going back to the gym next week – HAVE A PROGRAM. Don’t go in aimlessly. If ever there was a time to value the time you have to train it’s now, so make it count. Go in with a plan. Adhere to the rules. Execute the plan. Leave. And do that over and over, slowly bringing the weight, volume and intensity of your sessions up so that in a months time you’re back to where you want to be, otherwise you could be finding yourself on the physio table instead of the pitch!

For more information contact me via Facebook.com/PGthePT or on Twitter @PGthePT.