The effects of lockdown in the past few months has had a major impact on both the way we all work (working from home, at least for some part) and our physical activity levels.
Although we were allowed to exercise by going for a walk once a day, now that our clients are beginning to come back into the clinic, we are starting to see the real physical effects of lockdown and there are 3 particular effects:
1. A lot of people have lost strength
Unfortunately walking is just not enough to build or even maintain muscle strength. When we perform strength training with weights or the Pilates equipment, we overload the muscles (do a bit more than we would usually do) to cause the muscles to grow and improve. Walking is a steady state activity, which means that it doesn’t get harder the more you do, so your muscles adapt fairly quickly and there is no more growth effects. As people have returned to in-clinic session, we have had to slowly re-introduce weight training to most people and slowly rebuild strength once again.
2. In general, activity levels are lower when working from home
Again, although a lot of people would go for their daily walk, overall activity levels were lower. Because we just didn’t have to travel as much for work, the incidental exercise that would involve walking to the office, going from your desk to the printer, picking the kids up from school, the number of steps you would usually take was less, so overall general fitness was also lower. Although we may not fully go back to working at the office in the future, even a few days a week working away from home will mean more incidental exercise in your day.
3. As strength reduced, so did balance
Lastly and very importantly, as strength is reduced, balance gets worse. We heard many stories of our clients having falls, which is very dangerous, especially as you get older. It is awful to hear that our clients have fallen and broken a wrist, or vertebrae or even worse, a hip. One of the most important reason to get our clients back to strength training in clinic is to prevent falls and minimise the risk of broken bones.
We are seeing more of our clients coming back to the clinic and we are doing our best to keep everyone safe with regular:
- Cleaning of the equipment
- Social distancing
- Personal Protective Equipment including use of gloves for all manual treatments
Contact us on admin@mdheath.com.au or call us on 03 9857 0644 or 03 9842 6696 to book your next appointment or book online here.
Want to know more?
If you would like more information or have any questions about load management and maintaing a good exercise routine in lockdown please comment below!
Or are you a new client and would like to book for a FREE full body assessment with one of our Physiotherapists or Exercise Physiologists? Book online, call us on 03 9857 0644 (Kew East), 03 9842 6696 (Doncaster East) or send us an email at admin@mdhealth.com.au