What a month it has been! It has been a roller coaster ride of emotions since this thing began and it’s been very interesting to see everyone’s different approaches to handling life in isolation. When the gyms shut, I’m not going to lie, for the first two weeks it was a panic. My wife and I, as with many other families, wondered how the hell we were going to make it through with income turned off at the tap one day but bills continuing the next. It was crazy!
Looking back, now I know that I don’t need to start busking to sing for my supper, it has been interesting to see how different people handled the massive change of routine and the impact on their health and fitness. A day or so after closure and the tears dried up, my wife Richelle, would just pace back and forth. She would wipe down the dinner table and on then to the kitchen bench and back. I honestly think she may have rubbed half a centimetre of hard wood and stone off those bench tops in the first week.
I threw myself at work in an effort to switch to online training as the world of business threw out its new Coronavirus catch-cry “PIVOT”. Pivot seemed to be the wrong word to use though words like “resurrect” or “resuscitate” made more sense in my experience. It was fair to say we were out of sorts.
Despite having arguably one of the best home gym set ups in Perth located in my carport exercise went out of the window. For some reason I just didn’t want to train. The shelves at the shop were empty and we were in that apocalypse mindset so the freezer was stocked with rubbish frozen meals and if I’m honest I… may… have drunk my weight in Swan Draught in that first week.
Things finally came to a head in our household the first day of our son’s home school. It wasn’t the gym closure and uncertain future that broke us it was logging onto a spelling workbook where I couldn’t figure out if I was in the right place nor did I know how to turn our microphone on.. with my wife and son in tears at 9:15am and I’d had enough. As I slammed my fist down on the on the makeshift school desk in the study, I declared a pupil free day. Stress makes us do strange things. So, virus aside, how did we get here? I believe health and wellness underpins everything in life. We know when we are fit and healthy we can manage stress, we find the best of every situation and we can give the best of ourselves to all those around us. But when shit hits the fan and our “Hierarchy of Needs” tumble and we get more than a little lost. Our health and fitness goals, are just that, goals. Though we NEED to be healthy our brain understands that having a chiselled 6 pack set of abs or losing 10kg is NOT a necessity and we can only ever achieve such lofty goals if other areas in our lives are satisfied and when these areas aren’t satisfied, or worse, they are at threat, these goals are the first things that fly out the window.
SO WHY HAS IT BEEN SO HARD TO EXERCISE DURING LOCK DOWN?
Well, there are two main factors, routine and threat to our basic human needs. Our most basic of human needs are our PHYSIOLOGICAL NEEDS which were put under threat in the first few weeks of Covid-19.
The foundation of these needs are based around:
Health
Sleep
Food
Shelter
With food being limited at the supermarkets for the first time in our lifetime and with the mass standing down of staff across the country shit got real!
The main thing to understand with these NEEDS is that the previous level needs to be fulfilled before we can achieving GOALS ie anything fitness related.
The next level of needs which took a hit were out SAFETY NEEDS:
Personal security
Emotional security
Financial security
Safety security
In a nutshell we were stressed out, had no financial security and above all we didn’t know we were safe from a Virus that we knew nothing about and was killing people on every channel on TV. For myself personally I fulfilled these NEEDS when I realised that gym would survive and I got a better understanding of how the virus was being managed through restrictions and how I was to play my part in the community so I could move to the next level.
BELONGINGNESS, LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP
With the stresses of the first two levels removed the next phase of the lock down, for me was re-connection with my family. Time to spend together as a family unit is probably the best thing to come out of this virus but, virus aside, if our our relationships are out of whack it’s not hard to understand why we might not be setting the world on fire from goal achievement perspective. I reckon the message has been pretty clear within our community; “We are all in this together” rings out on every TV and radio channel. Rainbows on side walks and teddy bears propped up in windows, waves from strangers while out walking demonstrates where we are at right now as community unit and.. well.. it’s a bloody great thing.
If and only when, we have a good balance in the 3 previous levels we move up a step in the ladder to our SELF ESTEEM.
At this point in time we can get back in the game. We can start to pursue again. It’s a comfort-ability with ourselves and our situation. It’s time to again start to add value, to give inward as well as outward. We have the freedom now to start new hobbies or pick up where we left off due to the stress of the threats at the previous levels have diminished.
Here is where we can start to see an ability to achieve our GOALS again and get back into the HABITS that we know will give us success. Habits that will give us SELF ACTUALISATION.
SELF ACTUALISATION
The cherry on top, the carrot on the end of the stick, achievement of our GOALS. This is where we have lost those 10kg, ran that marathon, done your first full set of push-ups on your toes. It’s all relative and individual. This is the point where you can now become the best version of you to serve oneself and others.
WHERE TO FROM HERE?
So what? We ate too much, probably drank too much, life was out of whack, we felt we failed our children in homeschooling… We are now on the way out. It’s not yet over but it will be. Let’s quit with the self beat up and get to the self actualisation and potentially a Swan Draught detox… or maybe that’s just me…
