DR. DEREK OCHIAI IS A LEADING ORTHOPAEDIC SURGEON FOR OVER 10 YEARS. OCHIAI SPECIALIZES IN SPORTS MEDICINE, PARTICULAR TO INJURIES IN THE UPPER AND LOWER EXTREMITIES, INCLUDING HIP, KNEE AND SHOULDER ARTHROSCOPY.
With at home workouts and planned activity being the only way to keep moving while being locked indoors during social distancing, a high volume of online resources have become readily available to help you keep a fitness routine.
While wanting to stay physically active is a great practise to take on. It’s important to make sure you are staying safe and within your physical boundaries. For many fitness has never really been a thing they worried about or actively worked into their day. In these instances it can be difficult to know where or how to start, or what easy mistakes you should avoid making to prevent injury.
Sports Medicine expert, Dr. Ochiai, shares his tips to kick-start your new workout regimen in a way that will keep you motivated while staying safe.
START SLOW:
“Start with doing things that you think that you can do and don’t work yourself to exhaustion the first time you’re doing it. You want to just slowly ramp up like any kind of exercise regimen… You don’t need a lot of fancy equipment. You can do air squats, you can do goblet squats, you can do planks, you can take a chair and do push ups against the chair.”
SET A TIME WITH FRIENDS:
“Start with doing things that you think that you can do and don’t work yourself to exhaustion the first time you’re doing it. You want to just slowly ramp up like any kind of exercise regimen… You don’t need a lot of fancy equipment. You can do air squats, you can do goblet squats, you can do planks, you can take a chair and do push ups against the chair.”
START WHERE YOU LEFT OFF:
“Think about what your regular routine is. You can look on your phone and a lot of times you can see how many steps you took a month before. Average it out per day and look at that to kind of see, especially if you haven’t started a fitness regimen before, see what kind of level of activity you were actually doing, you know, before this all started. And then use that and really kind of think, all right, how can I start safely an exercise regimen that I think I can do?”
HAVE FUN WITH IT:
“Do anything you can to make it fun. If you have little coworkers at home cause you’re teleworking with your kids, you know, try to engage them in an exercise regimen as well because there is a childhood obesity epidemic… And your kids are used to being able to go out and recess or have a PE classes and they are not having those right now. So instead of just sitting on the couch and playing video games, you know, try to engage them in activities that.”
USE SOCIAL MEDIA:
“Engage social media… exercise is something that we, a lot of us, use in combination as a group, like going to the gym is somewhat a communal type experience where you feel like part of a larger community. I mean, especially people who are into CrossFit. I mean, I think one of the major things that people, my patients, tell me who are CrossFitters, they just love going to the gym because they feel that other people are so encouraging and it helps them with their own exercise regimen. We can’t do that right now, but we do have for the most part, phones and computers and we aren’t able to engage WITH other people, it’s just not directly face to face.”
