Alexandria Living Magazine interviewed Paul Roberts, owner of Sand & Steel Fitness in Alexandria's West End, about the stay-at-home order due to coronavirus and how it's affecting our health, what we eat and our fitness routines.
Watch the full interview about healthy eating, running and other exercise during the coronavirus outbreak with Paul Roberts of Sand and Steel Fitness here!
COVID-19, Coronavirus and How It Affects Eating, Exercise and More
By Paul Roberts, Sand & Steel Fitness
This spring’s stay-at-home order in Virginia — put in place due to concerns about the spread of coronavirus and the illness COVID-19 — has definitely upended our routines. Our gyms are closed and many people are working from home if they haven’t been furloughed or laid off.
It is not a surprise that many people are reporting that they’re gaining weight this spring. Fortunately, there are a lot of things we can do to get back on track with fitness and eating right — and avoid coronavirus weight gain.
Why We’re Gaining Weight During Coronavirus
First, let’s look at the reasons why so many people are gaining weight this spring.
The stay-at-home order has closed most businesses, including our local gyms, yoga studios, sports field and recreation centers.
In addition:
- We aren’t commuting, so we’re not burning calories walking or using the stairs.
- Social and team sports are out.
- We’re bored, which leads to more eating, itself. We’re watching TV more, too, and often we eat while watching our favorites on Netflix.
- Our eating schedule has been disrupted, which makes tracking our food consumption more difficult.
- And, we reach for comfort foods when we’re feeling the stress of uncertainty.
Solutions to Overeating
When we’re stressed out and overeating, there are a few ways we can calm this — we just may have to change the way we approach them. You can join a virtual gym or attend virtual gym or yoga classes, attend church services remotely, hang out with your family on Facetime.
In addition:
- Build a meal schedule. You can eat anytime, but anytime easily slides into all the time. Keep yourself on a schedule, and keep your portions measured.
- Create accountability. Use your scale everyday. Commit to making improvement, and measure your results.
- Turn off the TV. I know you are bored, but TV and overeating are related activities.
- Choose healthier alternatives. The more unhealthy foods you have in your house, the worse you’ll eat. So buy healthier choices like fruit, cruciferous trays, and frozen veggies (if you can find them.)
- Use your step counter – human needs to move to promote healthy metabolism. Find a way to get your steps in.
Exercising and Running During the Coronavirus
Running seems like it should be natural — but in reality, it is a very difficult thing to do correctly and safely. Running with bad technique causes millions of injuries every year. From plantar fasciitis, shin split, runner’s knee to back pain – injuries from running often chronic.
Runner get injured from running for five chief reasons:
- They lack knowledge have to run correctly – so they run with bad technique
- They lack the mobility to run correctly – so they compensate creating bad technique
- They lack symmetry in their strength – so the weaker muscles get strained
- They lack the strength to maintain their position throughout the run — so they start off OK, but they run poorly at the end of the run.
- They think that instinctively they know how to run.
For the purpose of this article, we define safe running, as running without any major technical faults. If you’d like to learn all the points of performance for proper running, please see this article: Learn the Pose Method of Running from a Running Coach.
Keeping Your Distance While Exercising During Coronavirus
Nearly every infectious disease expert recommends having an N95 certified mask when outside. Almost no one has one. At best, people are wearing standard issue surgical masks or a handkerchief. The message to wear a mask has been made worldwide from disease experts in China, Korea, and all of over Europe. But for some reason runners think this recommendation doesn’t apply to them.
You Can’t Run in an N95 Mask!
I’ve tried it, it doesn’t work. You just can’t get enough air inside your lunges to run in a sustainable effort. No surprise runners all over Alexandria, VA are just simply running without a mask. I guess in their heads they are thinking, ‘Well I’ll just keep my distance.’
Is it Safe to Run?
I pulled up the 10 most recent articles on medium with regard to running during the Coronavirus. The vast majority suggested that running isn’t that dangerous, and that the risk is minimal. When I looked up the bios of those people, were they CDC experts? Were they medical doctors? No, they were runners or employees in the running industry.
So, people who love to run or are paid to influence you to run are telling its safe.
Here’s the truth: Running is much more dangerous that people want to admit. A 2-meter is buffer is fine when people are moving slowly and breathing normally. But when they are running, there is a slip steam of coronavirus that lags behind them and a bigger cloud of virus particles caused by increased respiration.
Alexandria Runners: You Are Not Doing Us Any Favors
I spent two hours sitting at the Memorial Bridge in Washington, DC counting the runners go back and forth. I counted 416 runners. I measured some interesting statistics:
- 42% passed within or we passed by another runner within 1 meter
- 78% passed within or were passed by another within 2 meters
- 22% did not pass within 2 meters of another runner
- 30% ran with technique that will invariably cause an injury within a few weeks – terrible form.
- 54% had at least two major defects in their running technique
- 74% had one major defect in their running form.
- 16% ran with correct form.
So, Are you Actually Running Safely?
My limited test simply looked at whether 416 people were safe for the 2-4 minutes of running I observed. Doing the math 22% x 16% yields about 3% of people “safely” running over the Memorial Bridge on April 8, 2020.
So why are so many people running? Many people view it a fundamental right. They believe it’s healthy for them. It’s good for your heart. It’s good to lose weight. It can be all those things, but only when done correctly. Right now, you can’t control what other people do when they pass you.
Should I Be Running During the Coronavirus?
Yes, if you were already a well-trained runner* and you live in a very sparsely populated area. Otherwise, no.
There are better options available to you.
So if I Shouldn’t Be Running Outside, What Should I Do?
Most gyms are now providing “virtual” training, including virtual personal fitness, virtual personal training, virtual yoga, virtual spinning and other virtual classes.
Those classes are pretty empty right now, based on my conversations with local boutique gyms and my observations. Most people are either running or just waiting it out. Running isn’t a good solution for most people, and the Coronavirus is going to be with us for months, not week.
Sitting on your butt for months is going to lead to its own health problems.
Change is hard, but there was a reason you hired a personal trainer or took fitness classes in the past. That reason still exists. Your coaches are working extra hard to help you.
What If I Don’t Have Any Exercise Equipment at Home?
Now is a great time to learn private yoga. You don’t need any equipment for yoga, and yoga works very well in a virtual environment. Speaking from personal experience, a combination of Alignment and Vinyasa Yoga is more than sufficient to keep your body strong and it will even help you lose weight.
You can rent equipment. Most boutique gyms are renting their equipment to people who need it. Sand and Steel charges just 5% per week for equipment rentals.
Most people, though, have some equipment. Your virtual personal trainer can build you a custom program with your home equipment. They can train in real time in your living room.
Looking for specialty virtual classes with equipment you do have. There are “Dumbbell Only” classes. “Kettlebell Only” Classes. There are hundreds of spin classes. Ask around, because people are making new virtual classes every day.
One thing I don’t recommend is DIY sandbags. I’ve been seeing a lot of fitness companies promoting this. It’s a terrible idea. Sandbags are very difficult to use properly when they are professionally designed. Homemade ones? You are better off renting some dumbbells or just doing bodyweight training. Plus you’ll need several bags in different weights.
For more information on working out at home this spring, avoiding overeating and much more, watch the Alexandria Living Magazine interview at the top of this page!
Sand & Steel Fitness is a boutique personal training studio located in Alexandria offering handcrafted and customized workout programs. Learn more at www.sandandsteelfitness.com.
* A major defect in running form is one that will create nerve or joint pain if not corrected. In terms of what qualifies the author of the article to judge what is and is not a major running defect, the author has 30 distinct certifications in Mobility, Running, and Personal Training. He is a biomedical engineer from Johns Hopkins, and has helped over 5,000 people in Alexandria VA learn how to exercise safely.
