Since gyms are closed, quarantine has resulted in people working out at home to offset the sedentariness and snacking that typically accompanies WFH (working from home) and binge watching.
But beware: those HIIT (high-intensity interval training) workouts on YouTube could be more harmful than helpful if you do them incorrectly… or too much.
“The trend now is a work-from-home injury — a lot of neck, shoulder, lower back, and hip injuries — for older people, it’s frozen shoulder,” observes Kevin Choy, physiotherapist and founder of online platform New Human. “Actually injury rates have gone up because of all the free HIIT class workouts that have been popping up on social media. People are doing two classes a day — every day — since they don’t have anything else to do, or they don’t have much to do at home. So people are getting injured just because of the stress that they’re giving their bodies.”
Choy, who studied physiotherapy at the University of Santo Tomas and De La Salle’s Health Sciences Institute, used to give corporate talks on how to take a more proactive approach to physical health: how stretching and movement are more important than simply trying to lose weight or bodybuilding by lifting weights. “So it’s a lot of self-care that we wanted to promote.”
A job offer brought Choy to Hong Kong, where he is now based, and runs a healthcare clinic called Momentum with cofounder Dr. Kieran Rogers. New Human is the online offshoot of Momentum, where they consult with clients about their physical concerns via Zoom and develop tailor-made, holistic programs designed towards returning them to optimum health. Often Choy finds himself acting not just as a physiotherapist but also as psychologist to his clients.
“I help them manage their sleep, nutrition and diet, get some sun, some air, move more often,” says the New Human creative director and instructor. “A lot of the time I deal with people who are just overly conscious and paranoid about their posture at home. So I try to tell them, actually, your best posture is your next one. The more you move, the more beneficial it is to the body. You actually have an Apple Watch or activity tracker in your brain that tells you to move.”
Choy shared more tips for physical and mental self-care:
• Listen to your body and what it’s trying to tell you. “Once you start feeling a little bit of discomfort, all of a sudden you’ll notice that you’re starting to massage yourself, but just stand up and stretch. That alone is a good tip, because as complex and dynamic creatures, we are really meant to move.”
• Be more cautious about the workouts that you’re doing. “Just be more mindful about who the instructor is, maybe do a little bit of research. A lot of the gyms in Manila now are offering free classes, so if you know the instructors already, that’s good.”
• Don’t binge on working out. “Just because you’re at home, you’re not invincible. It’s like alcohol: if you haven’t been drinking a lot and then all of a sudden you binge drink, you don’t have the same tolerance as before. A lot of desk jockeys, during the week they’re super-busy at their desk, and then during the weekend they think, ‘I’m going to make up for the lack of activity I had during the week.’ And that’s when the injury happens. Stress is stress — that’s how the body recognizes it. So if you go 70 percent on Monday, maybe your Tuesday could be 50 percent or Wednesday could be 30 percent, where you’re just doing some nice, active recovery, and then you can start going back up.”
• Limit your screen time. “I suggest buying blue light-blocking lenses. Blue-light emission from our screens can cause a lot of eyestrain and really affects our sleep quality. I get people to close their eyes with their hands and block off the light for two minutes. The best tip I can share is to abstain from screens 60-90 minutes before bedtime.”
• Sunlight exposure is so important these days. “Recently they have seen data in the Philippines and Indonesia that patients were eight times less likely to have a severe form of COVID-19 and 20 times less likely to have a critical form of COVID when patients were sufficient in vitamin D. We are more likely to be deficient these days, especially working from home and being in quarantine. Therefore, we shouldn’t forget to buy vitamin D supplements to help our immune system if we are not getting at least 15-30 minutes of direct sunlight exposure several times a week.”
• Breath work is also important. “When you have the right kind of breathing, you calm down your nervous system, and when you do that, it’s like having CBD oil or prepping your body to sleep. So if you’re in a high-stress situation, your nervous system is just always firing and ramping up, whereas the breath work can actually help put you back into equilibrium.”
• Practice stillness. “This practice is literally not doing anything at all, maybe just staring out over the horizon, going to the garden and literally just standing, not doing anything. A lot of times people now are trying to be productive, but it’s okay to not be productive once in a while and not stress about it too much.”
• Eat a balanced diet, and try fasting. “Fasting boosts your immunity, because it gives your digestive system a break in order for other systems to be able to work a lot better. With intermittent fasting or fasting itself you have a window for gut healing, and everything starts with the gut.”
• Choose healthy snacks, like peanuts and vegetable sticks. Cut out the refined sugar and processed carbohydrates.
Through New Human, Choy hopes to make people realize the importance of self-care. “It’s quite hard because in the Philippines, it’s very orthopedic surgeon- and doctor-driven,” he notes. “If you go to a surgeon or a doctor, often it’s ‘We recommend surgery,’ but have you taken a therapy or rehabilitation approach before thinking that a scalpel is going to fix you?”
He envisions a “new human” to be someone in tune with their body and very proactive about their physical, mental, even social well being. “Rather than always saying, ‘My body’s like this and I have to accept it because I’m getting old,’ this is such a good way to age gracefully. I want people to understand that it’s how we age that really matters. And there is something that you can do about it.”
* * *
For more information or to consult on a holistic healthcare program designed for you, visit https://www.lifeinmomentum.com/new-human. Follow Kevin Choy on Instagram @miyagihands.
Follow the author on Instagram @theresejamoragarceau, Facebook (Therese Jamora-Garceau), and Twitter @tjgarceau.