The moment I learnt that I was going to be working form home for the foreseeable future, I knew I had to do something about my day-to-day routine. About 99 per cent of it circulated around going to work, being at work, and coming home. I was up at 6.30am, out by 7.30am, and I didn’t make it home until 7 in the evening. But WFH turned that into simply moving from one room to another. So to maintain a sense of normalcy, my friends – Jess and Cecilia – and I put together a workout schedule to stay active and look after each other and our mental health.
We kicked things off by jumping on Google Docs and YouTube, using the latter to suss out a slew of home / apartment-friendly routines. Since none of us have resistance bands and all that, we settled on zero-equipment workouts. All we needed was a yoga mat, our laptops, and ourselves. And since we have nothing else to do after work now, we decided to do a couple of routines five days a week.
This is what the Doc looks like at a glance.
We even added cute subheadings like “WEDNESDAY: ARM’D TO WIN” and “FRIDAY: HIIT ME BABY ONE MORE TIME”, which definitely got me in the fitness mood. But then Monday night rolled around and I copped a bad case of the CBF, so I would 3000% recommend doing this with friends. For me at least, I would’ve slacked off if I didn’t have my two boos pushing me and doing the routines with me over Facebook’s video chat (we’ve since switched to Zoom for obvious reasons).We hit play at the same time, chucked each other on mute, then got our sweat on.
Now my friends and I have varying degrees of fitness. I have absolutely no problem swimming a couple of kilometres a day, but if you ask me to plank for a minute I will chuck a tanty and never talk to you again. Cecilia tagged me in that push up challenge on Instagram and I have no intention of doing it. Sue me! So we had to find videos that would suit all of us. And we had to find instructors that were actually motivating, because some are fantastically fit but very boring. So here’s what we came up with.
Each workout begins with a warm up, followed by two to three exercise videos (depending on length), and then we’d finish it off with a stretch / cool down. That’s about 45 minutes to an hour, five days a week. I haven’t exercised this much since I was on the swim team at school so this was new to me, but because working from home cut out so much of my daily outings and whatnot, having a daily routine again did wonders for my mental health and general wellbeing. It was just fun being able to jump around and punch the air with my friends. It’s the physically closest I’ve felt to them in weeks and I don’t think I can put into words how happy and whole that made me feel.
Before I get to the YouTube channels I think it’s important to note that none of us went into this thinking we could jump straight into a 20-minute extreme abs routine without collapsing after 20 seconds. Be realistic and ease yourself into things. We started Week Two of our challenge last night and we’ve swapped out only a few videos for slightly more intense workouts. Take it easy.
Okay, so here’s my main four go-to channels.
MadFit
Maddie Lymburner is an absolute legend. I’ve been following her since she had 64,000 followers on YouTube last year and now she has over two million subscribers. She uploads a lot, like every day, so you’re never running low on content. Her workouts range from beginner to extreme, including bop workouts, warm ups, cool downs, and yoga. She has videos on every part of the body, plus full body workouts. Maddie will also talk you through how to do certain stretches and moves, which is extremely helpful if you’re new to this.
Maddie’s just a ray of sunshine and never fails to get me motivated.
This was a bloody struggle after three ab workouts, tell ya what.
I love doing this stretch routine after work, sometimes just to loosen my back and stretch my wrists out.
The Fitness Marshall
Caleb Marshall is an absolute gift upon this world. If you love, love, love, having a boogie workout then you’ll froth all of Caleb’s routines. If you’re uncoordinated as hell (me) I’d definitely recommend doing the routine a couple of times so you can really learn the moves, but Caleb always takes things slow before going bloody off.
Exhibit A:
BANGER AFTER BANGER.
A lot of Caleb’s videos are also split into different levels, like the below. Cameron, on the left (Caleb’s husband), stays on level one throughout the Womanizer routine.
Look, I don’t recommend doing this after a couple of wines on a Friday night but if you do, you’ll have an absolute time.
Blogilates
I don’t know how, but Cassey Ho knows when you’re not doing a particular move properly and she’ll yell at you through the screen over it. For that reason, she is and always will be part of my workout routines. It’s like she’s right there with you in your living room, teaching you about form or pushing you to do one more squat. Arms, legs, booty, thighs – you name it, she’s got a video for it.
Cassey has so many routines to choose from, but Jess decided to bring back one of her squat challenges from 2015. I’m still mad at her for doing me dirty like this in Week One.
I hate this song now.
Pamela Reif
If you have a good grasp on form and whatnot and you’re just in need of someone to follow then Pamela Reif is your gal. In most of her videos, Pamela doesn’t talk. She just does the workout and barely cracks a sweat. But in saying that, her videos vary in levels of difficulty so it’s not like you’re clicking on a random video of hers and immediately being thrown in the deep end.
She does have longer talking videos though, if you prefer that style. I personally do.
Gonna pencil this in for Week Four and hope I don’t pass out. Update: Cecilia wants to do it next week instead. Pray for me.
