'No Excuses Mom' on how to find workout motivation during the chaos of quarantine: 'Prioritize it'
For fitness fans who have been following along, the name Maria Kang will certainly ring a bell: She’s the Facebook firebrand who burst into public view way back in 2013, when her “What’s Your Excuse?” fitness campaign went viral, prompting reactions from fat-shaming accusations to wholehearted embraces from moms who could relate, and who welcomed the kick in the pants.
Kang has both softened her approach and expanded her brand over the years, as well as laid herself bare by offering honest accounts of her life’s struggles — with eating disorders, marital strife, and body image, including breast implants and their subsequent removal, which she announced with an apology in 2019.
Now, this mother-of-three (to boys ages 8, 10 and 11), health care entrepreneur (she and her husband own a handful of eldercare homes), and full-time caregiver to a mom on home dialysis — not to mention the force behind the now-global No Excuse Mom fitness community, with hundreds of local workout chapters — is still finding time to inspire others, even in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Though, just like for pretty much everyone else, nothing’s been easy.
“I went on a rant yesterday on my Facebook,” Kang, 39, of Sacramento, Calif., tells Yahoo Life. “I understand where people are coming from in terms of isolations, but I’m [also] around a lot of mothers who are struggling with homeschooling, and who have been laid off or furloughed.” Still, she says, it’s important to “take some extra time to move.”
So how are we to keep motivated enough to work out in the midst of everything? Here, Kang (seen below in the photo that originally went viral, alongside an update she did five years later) offers some real-life tips.
Visualize your day — including fitness as a priority, even a low one
“Every night I make my to-do list — I have to do it the day before, then I envision my day right before I wake up, while I’m still in bed,” Kang says, explaining that she works through just about every aspect of her day — “my caregiving with my mother, what homeschooling will look like, being upset and how I’ll handle it, when I will work out.”
If it’s been easy to put off exercise in the past, the shutdown, for many people, depending on what your work situation is, might actually afford more opportunities. It’s just a matter of seizing them. “Even myself — I’m a business owner and a caregiver and a mother of three and I still get it in, too, it’s just that I prioritize it.”
Typically, she adds, “The biggest excuse people give is ‘I don’t have time.’ Now people have time. So [if you] have extra time, you can go out and go running and do some pushups.”
Don’t overthink it
Worrying about whether or not you have the right equipment, even simple free weights, is not necessary. “I think people think you need a lot, but you don’t — you just need your body weight and to get your heart rate up, for your blood pressure, and to do spurts of interval training, like maybe 20 squats,” Kang suggests. Such strength training is anaerobic, she says, “meaning you can’t go for longer than maybe a minute — pushups, for example. Do 10 to 20, take a break, do 10 to 20 again.”
Ideally, she says, an hour is perfect. “I have a home gym, so I have a Peloton, a squat rack, a treadmill, and ideally I’ll do 30 minutes of cardio, 30 minutes of weights.” Still, Kang mixes up her workouts, sometimes running or biking with her dog and her kids — yes, you can include them! She also offers video workouts on her Facebook page (as do other No Excuse Moms fitness leaders), if you prefer to just follow along with someone rather than figure out moves on your own.
Be willing to shake up your routine
Kang says that it’s been crucial to learn to roll with the punches during these past few months. “For the first month, I was anxious and depressed, and not working out really. I had to go into caregiving mode while taking in the COVID anxiety, and it was all just hitting me — like, this is serious,” she says, explaining that while her preference under normal circumstances was to work out in the morning, considering it a first priority, that doesn’t work in this new normal. “Now I work out late at night,” she says
And while she’s always been a big believer in consistency, she says, that doesn’t mean she’s had to stick to the same workout routine day after day. Instead, she finds what works with each daily reality. “So maybe instead of workouts with heavy weights, I’ll created little chalk games outside — I just re-find what fitness is and what activity looks like. Sometimes I feel successful just biking, or even playing hopscotch. Last week I was like, ‘I really need motivation, I’m used to my No Excuse mom community,’” and so, because she lives on a cul-de-sac, she figured out a way to work out together with a couple of neighbors while also maintaining social distancing.
Give yourself a break
“I think that people don’t process things the same way sometimes,” Kang says. “I had to give myself allowance and forgiveness to process what was going on — to know I’m allowed to feel and stay in bed. You can’t just be like, ‘let’s do this!’ You have to feel all the feelings.”
In the beginning of this crisis, she shares, “I felt grief — for my niece who lost her senior year, for my son who has no lacrosse, for my friend’s family who had COVID, for [eldercare facility] residents who can’t see family, for all the conferences and travel I had lined up — just so much grief. And I had to allow myself to process that, and the acceptance and anxiety.” She says she couldn’t understand how other fitness influencers were so quickly able to offer live workouts online. “I just wasn’t there,” she admits. But slowly, she’s finding her way back. Follow Kang’s workouts here.
For the latest coronavirus news and updates, follow along at https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus. According to experts, people over 60 and those who are immunocompromised continue to be the most at risk. If you have questions, please reference the CDC’s and WHO’s resource guides.
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