Containment: physical activities to practice at home

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Sheathing is an exercise that requires no equipment. iStock / visualspace

By: Christophe Diremszian

The confinement period is complicated to stay in shape. The only solution is to take advantage of the space available at home for physical conversation. But if a sporting activity is within everyone's reach, it must still be practiced correctly and usefully.

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Need energy for the day, get rid of the stress of confinement or just stay healthy? Many solutions exist, and inexpensively. The most important thing remains motivation and listening to your feelings. Exercise at selected times, and with the advice of professionals. Sarah Ourahmoune, the 2016 Olympic vice-champion of boxing, regularly gives an appointment on social networks for muscle building courses, especially for beginners, to whom she reminds to remain reasonable.

" If you've never done sports, you have to go gradually without setting yourself too ambitious a goal ," says Sarah Ourahmoune. We can start with short, short sessions of 10 to 15 minutes with the sole objective of moving a little. There is really the possibility of working all parts of the body without the need for equipment. Afterwards, we can use everything we have at home : a chair, bottles of water, towels ... We can very well concoct training programs without necessarily being professionally equipped at home ” , she assures.

► Read also : Coronavirus, how to continue playing sports without taking risks

Simple and effective gestures

If you are teleworking and therefore not necessarily available to follow a course on television or via Intrernet at a fixed time, no excuse. There are also very simple movements to do in front of your computer to relieve pain related to the sitting position, as explained by Jérôme Bianchi, physiotherapist and osteopath at the Mouratoglou Tennis Academy.

Tensions are generated in two places in the body : the whole part of the neck and the upper part of the back, and then at the level of the lower back. The exercise is simple, it's already to learn to relax with the breath. We breathe in and breathe very slowly, trying to blow for 7 to 8 seconds, 6 to 8 times. The important thing is to make work by the diaphragm, it is the essential muscle of breathing ”, he explains. Then he continues: " The second thing to do is - at the level of the lower back - to lie on your back completely flat and bring the ax, via the knee, towards you to precisely find a little mobility in the hips and lower back, and then doing sheathing work. If we already manage to do that, we manage to keep a balance. "

The importance of family sport

To combine business with pleasure during the sessions, why not involve your children who will no doubt be happy to let off steam a little? Sports Minister Roxana Maracineanu recommended one hour of physical activity per day for the youngest during confinement. But no need to transform the accommodation into a football field or obstacle course.

Sarah Ourahmoune, mother of two daughters, appealed to her imagination. There are lots of games that can be set up in a fairly simple way to work on speed, coordination, but above all to get them moving and create family moments. It is also an opportunity to create memories and to anchor in them this habit of playing sports, ”she says. Then she adds: “ For me, sport is part of education and it is the role of parents to instill that, to make people want. There, we can very well imagine parent-child sessions by making games, playing with a ball, with stuffed animals, by sheathing. There are plenty of sessions suitable for families, it's an opportunity to get started. "

Respect some common sense principles

For those who are not usually content with 15 or 20 minutes of exercise and who can no longer bear to see their walls, putting on shorts and a swimsuit to go outside is still possible, within the limits set by the authorities. But beware, warns sports cardiologist Laurent Uzan: no excess.

In the current context, a few common sense principles must be observed. If you are infected, you do not play sports. If you are not infected and you are used to doing it, you keep doing it without being intense. If you are not infected and have never done any sport, you go out, you walk. But we are not going to start jogging when we are going to find ourselves spitting out our lungs and being in somewhat complicated conditions on the potentially immune level behind in a phase like this , "says the doctor. Uzan. " I prefer someone who will walk 30 minutes, three or four times a week rather than someone who will run his marathon on the balcony where there is no interest, and the potential risk behind and the message that vehicle on the population in general is absolutely the opposite of what is advised in the current phase , "he says.

Prudence and endurance, rather than performance. Sport must remain a pleasure to better appreciate its beneficial effects in the short and long term.

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  • Coronavirus
  • Containment
  • Sports