Be honest, just how many times have you seen photos of friends at the gym, or on a exercise ball or a selfie of someone showing their abs or biceps every time you have logged on to Facebook or Instagram and wished you too could get a fit and toned body and started a fitness quest? Social media influences a lot of things we do in our everyday life and fitness has been no exception.
Sidharth Sigdel, trainer at Oriental Fitness Club, claims that the biggest trend in fitness in the past year has been combat sports. He claims that a lot of people have been interested in joining either a kickboxing or a Taekwondo class. According to the trainer, boxing, different forms of martial arts like Karate, Judo, and Tai Chi are other combat sports that are popular in Nepal.
“A lot of people also prefer to get personal trainers and take up one-on-one sessions these days,” he says adding that many feel this individualized attention is necessary for exercising correctly and not succumbing to injuries while working out. However, there are people who prefer working out by themselves at home, with the help of YouTube videos and other fitness apps. “It’s quite common for people to have a separate space in their homes just to exercise,” he says.
A gymnasium in the heart of the city
Whatever the case be, Sigdel claims that everyone is jumping on in on the digital fitness trend. The fact that you can track everything through digital media, get information and guides to perform workouts by yourself and also create routines or diet plans with the help of different experts has made many Nepali fitness enthusiasts depend on digital media these days for their fitness and health related needs.
While this year has seen a bunch of fitness trends, here is a round up of three of our favorites that Sigdel too claims are effective and totally worth the time and money you spend on them.
High-Intensity Interval Training
High-Intensity Interval Training, commonly known as HIIT, has been popular among the fitness enthusiast crowd for a while now. But rather than fizzling out like most trends do, 2018 has actually seen a surge in people who are opting for this form of rigorous exercise. In HIIT workouts, you alternate short periods of intense anaerobic exercise with less intense recovery periods, until you are too exhausted to continue. During a HIIT workout session, you work very hard for an interval of about 20 to 90 seconds and then have an interval where you only carry out low intensity exercises to let your body and its stamina recover properly before carrying out another interval of high intensity exercises. HIIT workouts are convenient and effective. You can get your daily dose of exercise through just a 30 minute long session and it also burns a lot of calories. But they are very hard on your body and doing a HIIT session every single day is not recommended. You can do this up to three times a week.
Group Training
Although group training is not a new thing, this practice has been gaining a lot of popularity in the recent times. This year a lot of people are enrolling in group training sessions. Usually during a group training session, about five or more people all follow the same routine under the instruction of a trainer. Group training can be conducted on any fitness routine – from dance cardio classes or zumba classes to high intensity interval training classes. Almost all fitness institutions also let you try out a group fitness class that they run for free or at a nominal charge so that you can decide whether you like it or not. The biggest plus of a group workout class is that since you sign up for monthly or half yearly classes (and you have already paid for it), you actually make an effort to show up for the classes everyday which keeps your exercise routine on track. Another plus is that these sessions also help boost your social life: You get to make new friends.
Wearable Technology and Fitness Trackers
If you are someone who likes analyzing how you move and want to view your workouts in numbers and real time data then things like heart rate monitors, smart watches and activity trackers will provide you a thorough insight to all of those things. You can track everything from the number of steps you have walked on a particular day and the hours you spent sleeping to the total calories you burned and the total time you spent working out. Among this bunch of gadgets, a heart rate monitor is a good investment since it gives you an exact rundown of how hard you are working out. It calculates how hard your heart is beating in real time. Also, wearable technology and fitness trackers are not just limited to Apple Watches and Fitbit anymore.
Things like smart fabric and textile, smart eyeglasses, activity rings that track your movement through your finger and yoga pants that give vibrational feedback to the wearer to encourage good form are also available in the markets today. You can also track your diet and keep a log of what you have eaten or the amount of water you have consumed on a daily basis through the tracker apps.
