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I recently went to a bit of a 'remote' place (all while properly social- distancing) and ran into a few issues when I had to teach my class:
The day before, I sent out my intended exercise program to all of them. I made sure, they had done all of the exercises before at some point during my sessions, so they knew how to perform them correctly. I also included a short 3-minute instructional video I took a few days before, to go over all the exercises. The workout had 5 sections to complete. We started at the same time as usual and each participant had to send me (via what's app or text message) a pic or short video of each completed section as 'prove' after each one. In exchange they would get letters. After completing all 5 sections, they then were able to form a 3-word phrase out of the random letters. In this case the answer was: I LOVE BOOTCAMP :) I liked it because I could interact with them despite limited resources and could give tips, hints etc, while they could compete against each other and still feel like they are in a session with everyone. It took about an hour to complete. Here is my workout:
Split squat Glute/ham hip lift
Crossover crunch Single leg glute bridge Leg drop
Mt. climbers Swimmers just legs PHRASE: I LOVE BOOTCAMP Feel free to change the exercises or phrase, of course! Happy word scrambling !
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When the COVID pandemic started and we decided to work from home, most people also lost the opportunity to include exercise into their daily lives. For some, biking to work is not an option anymore, the gyms closed and weekend hikes vanished from our schedules. Luckily, a lot of online classes emerged, offering a great way to get some movement in and create some sort of daily/weekly routine. For me, personally, it was challenging as I need movement to function properly. With no Volleyball to blow off steam, I signed up for as many online classes as I could to replicate the types of HIIT workouts I used to do before the lockdown, besides also teaching a few of them at Eastside Fitness. After a while, I felt burned out. Stress is a funny thing - you think you can combat it with movement but the wrong type - at the wrong time - can actually make it worse. After about the third week at home, I felt absolutely drained and it didn't make sense to me at all. I was technically working out less! I quickly realized that my cortisol levels must be off the charts and I started shifting to different types classes which were more focused on low impact moves - and it worked! When we go through a phase of mental stress, our cortisol levels rise as a fight-or-flight response and the same thing unfortunately happens when we work out at high intensity. Given all the uncertainty of COVID, my brain was already in alert-mode and adding high intensity workouts didn't help. Once I shifted to HILIT (high intensity low impact training), I started to feel better. I was still moving but without all the jumping and impact that will put additional stress on my system. Don't get me wrong - HIIT workouts (which I also teach) are a great way to move your body after long hours sitting at an office desk - and if they still work for you, that's excellent. However, if you have noticed something similar or are currently suffering from a lot of stress, keep this in mind and maybe modify exercises, if need be. Listen to your body! Contact me if you would like some help with modifications.  Now that most of us are teaching online and slowly getting over the initial feeling of being overwhelmed by technology, it's time to focus again on what we do best - teaching and creating effective and fun classes!
This old classic can make your online or even in-class session a lot more interactive! The prep-work is a bit time consuming, but given the fact that you can use it unlimited times, totally worth it. For my class, which happened to be an online-Zoom class, I came up with 25 different exercises and made a worksheet (aka a Bingo-card) using a 5x5 grid for each participant, putting the exercises in a slightly different order for each worksheet. I then sent each card to the respective person via email with the instruction to print it out and have it ready for the Zoom session. I wrote the numbers 1-25 on small pieces of paper and put them in a hat. You can also just write all the names on the paper, but I found numbers were faster. My exercises had 3 colour-coded categories: Cardio- orange, Technique- green and Strength- black. If I was to draw a cardio exercise, they have to do it for 1 minute, the Technique ones are 5 repetitions per side and for the Strength, they have to do 4x30 second intervals with a 10 second break in between. My 25 exercises are: 1- Skater 2- Squat jump 3- Lunge jump 4- Jumping Jack 5- High Knees 6- Star Jump 7- Burpee 8- Romanian Squat 9- TGU (turkish get up) 10- Deadbug push 11- Walkouts with shoulder touch 12- Hip lift 13- Sideplank dip 14- Triceps push 15- Biceps push 16- Push up 17- I,Y,T 18- Swimmers 19- Boats 20- Sidelunge Kick 21- Glute bridge 22- Crossover crunch 23- Crunch 24- Long arm/leg superman 25- Plank tap At the beginning of my class, I explained that the goal would be to get a 'Bingo' which means crossing-off 5 exercises (that were called out randomly by me) in a vertical, horizontal or diagonal line. I started my 1 hour class with the regular 10- 15 minute warm up and mobility drills. (Have a look at my Instagram- or Facebook Page "FitnesslabYVR" for my free videos) Then I picked the first number out of the hat... it was a 4, so they had to do cardio jumping jacks for 1 minute... then we went on to drawing the next number... It actually worked out perfectly, because 50 minutes in, one of my participants showed me her completed Bingo card and we went on to stretching. If a 'Bingo' had occurred earlier, I was planning on either playing multiple rounds or just trying to finish as many of the 25 exercises as possible by just drawing them randomly out of the hat. They were lucky, no burpees came up :) |