How to Maintain Your Muscles Away From the Gym

If there’s one thing positive that came out of the 2020 pandemic is the increased rate of exercise. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), close to one-quarter of adults over 18 meet Physical Activity Guidelines for muscle-strengthing activity.

Unfortunately, some individuals couldn’t maintain this due to the lack of equipment or closure of local gyms. Thus, they feared the loss of hard-earned muscle mass. Fortunately, there are ways to maintain this without the regular use of machines. Here are a few ways to maintain muscles away from the gym.

Massage Therapy

Massage therapy does more than loosen tense areas of the body. It allows you to get back to some form of training to maintain their tone. A massage therapist in Temecula, like those at Release Muscle Therapy, works to deliver natural endorphins into your system.

As a result, you feel less pain in your muscles. Furthermore, the more you partake in this therapy the more in tune you are with your body’s rhythms. Thus, you can focus on specific muscles as you go about your routines.

Maintain High Protein Intake

It’s no surprise that fatty diets reduce positive muscle mass. While it might be good to have once in a while, heavily saturated fats convert your hard work into flab. So, prevent this by maintaining a high intake of protein.

This doesn’t mean to strip all fats and carbohydrates from meals. Rather, these must be reduced at the same time good proteins are increased. For instance, lean meats, poultry, fish & seafood, and Greek yogurt are all fine sources. They provide double-digit protein values to maintain both muscles and energy.

Stay Hydrated

Unless you’re someone that needs to show off your muscles for a film shoot, you cannot dehydrate yourself. Doing so causes you to lose important nutrients and sodium that regulate your body’s functions. Therefore, you want to stay hydrated even when you’re away from the gym.

Normally, the amount of water you take in should equal four liters (one gallon) if you’re a man and three liters (3/4 gallon) if you’re a woman. Drinking this amount maintains your energy levels and flushes toxins out of your system. Furthermore, it maintains a proper flow of blood to your muscles so they remain strong and flexible.

Increase Unilateral Training

Maintaining your muscles through the use of bench presses and other bilateral machines is a fine way to increase strength. However, it doesn’t tend to duplicate real-life movements. As a replacement, consider unilateral training.

This is the performance of an exercise using a single arm or leg. So, instead of squats, you do lunges to enhance the muscles of separate legs. Step-ups and arm curls using single weights are also good forms of unilateral training.

Yoga

For some individuals, yoga represents a form of meditation. You go beyond the realm of physical exercise. When combined with deep breathing, yoga connects the body and the spirit.

Yet, it’s also great to maintain muscle tone. In fact, because you utilize your body weight through different poses, you discover muscles you didn’t know existed. When you’re sore, yoga helps you relieve the tension of tight muscles from previous training.

Do Anything

After two to three weeks without weight training, your muscles tone starts to shift. Yet, there are ways to maintain it through, well, doing anything.

Obviously, sitting on the couch for hours at a time exaggerates the loss of muscle strength. So, get up, stretch, or walk around. Perform yard work in the form of mowing, trimming grass, or pulling weeds. Household activities such as mopping or sweeping help keep your muscles moving.

As the above information stresses, there are plenty of ways to main your muscles away from the gym. What you need to do at this point is implement them. Don’t let the lure of a comfortable bed and streaming services stop you.

Fight the urge to do nothing and move around. Maintain a proper diet and continue to hydrate. If you don’t want to do yoga or unilateral training on your own, then call your friend to help you. The more you stay active the better preparation you have when you decide to return to the gym.