If you are anything like me at the moment, you are (stuck) at home. And I am currently at home my husband, my 3-year-old and my mother in law. Between trying to work at home, entertain my daughter and keeping the house running as close to normal as possible, something was starting to give.
My gym was closed. And it didn’t have any online classes. But I knew I still needed to keep active. After all, the main reason I joined the gym was for my mental health.
I’ve been going to yoga classes at my gym since I signed up last September. So a yoga challenge seemed like the perfect choice for me. So I decided to start a 30-day yoga challenge.
Complete one video in a series every day for 30 days.
Now, the yoga classes that I go to at the gym are mostly in the evening, starting at 7.30 pm. They go for an hour and have a 10 minute Shavasana at the end.
Any time I’ve done yoga along with a video at home, I stop the video as soon as it’s over.
So as I usually do, I’ve been starting my yoga session after I put my daughter to bed, around 7.30-8 pm.
Three days into my challenge, I realised that I wasn’t actually looking forward to my practice. It felt like a chore, and I really didn’t want to do it, even though I knew that I would feel better afterwards.
So the next day, I decided to do a yoga video during the day. That day I practised at about 11 am. I felt great for the rest of the day and thought that I could unwind properly after putting my daughter to bed. So the next day, the next day and the next day, I continued to complete my yoga workout during the day, while the sun was still shining.
Then I got to day 7 of the challenge and said to myself, I think I will do this outside today. So I set myself up outside with a towel for extra padding, my yoga mat and my iPad. I kept the volume as low as I possibly could to still hear it. I was really concerned that my neighbours would overhear it and judge me for it.
I’ve now done a few workouts during the day, and I feel so much better for it. It doesn’t feel like a chore, and I get to enjoy my evenings with my family. Plus, sometimes my daughter joins in, and we all have a bit of fun!
Years ago, when I first joined a gym, I learned pretty early on that I didn’t like doing weight training in the morning. It turns out that that wasn’t the issue. I just didn’t like doing weight training before work. I can’t imagine doing leg day then going off to work.
Because at the weekend I would get up and go to the gym and do weights. Granted it wasn’t exactly early in the morning, more like 10 or 11 am. So I knew that if I went to the gym in the morning before work, I would be running on the treadmill and occasionally riding on a bike. And I didn’t really have a favourite time of day to do those, I’d run on the treadmill with my couch to 5k app at any time of the day.
So the time of day that you exercise doesn’t really matter that much. What really matters is the time of day you like to work out. Or the types of workouts you prefer to do at different times throughout the day. So as long as you are exercising, it doesn’t really matter.
