How to keep your fitness and productivity levels up this winter

By Ben Binder, Founder of Avatraxx

With the days getting darker and the temperature dropping, exercise is normally the last thing on your mind, but it’s the time of year when health and fitness really count. Our immune systems take a bit of a battering, so we’re prone to catching colds and other viruses, whilst comfort food can be too good to turn down.

On top of this, new, modern working patterns may have given us more freedom over our daily structures and time to focus on our health, but this has also delivered the temptation of curling up on the sofa, or in bed doing our work on those dark, cold, wet and windy winter days.

We know it’s tough, but targeting small and achievable daily habits, such as doing a short, daily stretch or workout via an app or YouTube video, or during your day in the office ensuring you hit the gym even if it’s just for 15mins running on the treadmill. It’s vital to ensure you stay on track with your health and fitness over the winter months.

Set your habits up with a trigger so you naturally start to do them. For example, getting into bed at the same time every night. Once you have your habits figured out, your routine will start to form.

However, you may still struggle to feel your best if you focus on only one element of your health. If you are looking to move more then, yes, create habits that help add further movement into your day, but also consider your eating habits, as eating better will complement your goals to move more.

Your energy over the winter months won’t just come from your workouts, it’s massively dependent on hydration and food.  If you eat badly, you are likely to still feel sluggish. Food has a big impact on how you look and feel so it’s good to be mindful of what you’re putting into your body.

Once you start to develop your habits and establish routines be they daily or weekly you will find you’re boosting your energy levels and in turn, your productivity will improve, and this will hopefully stimulate you to up your aims over winter to achieve more.

Ben Binder provides LABS members with weekly HIIT and Yoga classes. Members can book on to the classes via the LABS app.