How do you maintain your fitness in Ramadan?
Most of the health advice in this holy month is directed towards the type of food, its quantity, and the times of its consumption, and the issue of the effectiveness and fitness of fasting during the month rarely receives the attention of people.
What can an athlete who does daily exercises in order to lose weight or develop his muscles do when he fasts? Does he keep his daily exercise program or stop it? And if he continues to do so, how can he adapt himself to abstaining from food and drink all hours of the day, and how can he avoid the danger of dehydration during these longest and hottest days of the year?
What about those who are not accustomed to practicing any sport? Do they maintain their habit of resting bodily throughout the day, or do they resort to supporting their religious duties with some movement and exercise, to maintain some physical fitness along with their spiritual fitness?
In the following, we present some principles that we consider appropriate for everyone in this regard:
Ramadan, in the first place, is a month that includes a religious obligation that requires a Muslim to direct all his energies towards worship, remembrance, recitation of the Qur’an, upholding ties of kinship, and extending a helping hand to needy people. Not to remain motionless, sitting in your home or office all day, but to give your body its right of movement and activity, in order to ensure the functions of your vital organs from inaction and damage.
Let your first goal in adopting the movement be not to go back in terms of your physical fitness before fasting. And if your goal in exercising is to lose weight, consider this month an ideal opportunity to lose weight by adjusting the quantity and quality of your food, not by increasing exercise.
But if you are reluctant to implement any kind of exercise, it is time for you to engage in the simplest and for limited periods of every day this month.. The important thing is not to overload your body and your immune system, by adding great muscle effort to your cuts in food and drink.
It is recommended that you reduce the intensity of your previous exercises during your fasting period. If you run for half an hour a day before Ramadan, for example, during this month you can limit sports days to five days a week, and replace jogging with brisk walking, and if you are accustomed to lifting 5 kg of weights during your exercises, there is nothing wrong with reducing it to three.
Switch the timing of your exercises, which you are accustomed to, to a time that suits the times of Iftar and Suhoor. Perhaps the two best suitable times for fasting people are about one to two hours after breakfast, and about half an hour before Suhoor, because you will not be thirsty during them, and because you have received your daily need of food calories, and your stomach is not then full of food, which requires the transformation of a large part of the blood What your muscles will need. And choose from the two times what comforts you, so that you do not feel tired, but feel that you have increased activity and vitality.
Whatever your choice in terms of the type, duration and timing of exercise, it is recommended that you stick to a regular program that you repeat throughout Ramadan, as this will put your body and mind in the best possible health condition.
If you are one of those who practice the two types of sports: cardio (walking, swimming, cycling), and resistance (lifting weights, running strength machines in gyms) before Ramadan, then it is okay to keep the two types after reducing them during your fasting, and you can combine them together in what has become called Circuit training, which intensifies a number of exercises with one brief exercise, without giving a chance to rest between exercises.
