Health & Wellness
Sarah Lee is a heath educator at the University of Richmond. She can discuss the importance of staying physically active while social distancing and can provide tips on how to stay motivated.
Sarah offers the following:
Get outside (while staying safe and maintaining social distance)
Whether it's in your own backyard or out for a walk in the neighborhood, getting outside will help break up the day and give your body some fresh air while also adding some movement into your day. If you live somewhere with less physical space to work with, such as a city with tight sidewalks, try to safely cross the street or step to the side while passing others to maintain the necessary social distancing recommendations.
Try an at-home workout
A quick Google search will offer you tons of free workouts that you can do from the comfort of your own home, most involve no equipment at all. Try out Les Mills On Demand and Fitness Blender for a wide variety of at-home workouts for aerobic exercise, strength training, yoga, and stretching.
Set movement goals
If you are not able to do a formal workout all at once, reframe your thinking into setting a movement goal for the day. This could could be related to a certain amount of steps you want to accumulate, or it could be simply moving for 30 minutes throughout the day. The American College of Sports Medicine exercise recommendations state that the overall accumulation of the movement time throughout the day is more important that the length or intensity of any single session.
Sometimes it takes discipline over motivation
Often times we think that finding some external motivation will help us to get moving (and sometimes it does!), but other times we might just need to rely on discipline to actually get up and take some action steps. Create a routine for your days, and, if you need to, think of it as work – you just have to get it done! The hardest step is often the first one, but once we get started we feel much better.
That being said, give yourself some grace.
Even with motivation and/or discipline, sometimes we just need to allow ourselves to have an off day. We’re living through an unprecedented time right now with the COVID-19 pandemic, and everything is new and scary and somewhat out of our control. Allow yourself to be okay with not being as busy as usual, to take some time to rest, and give yourself some grace to do what you need to do in the moment to stay well.
Contact urnews2use@richmond.edu to connect with Lee.