Athletes in lockdown: From a Leicestershire farm to a Spanish flat, how sports stars are getting creative

Professionals from different corners of the sporting world – from gymnastics to rugby via F1 and BMX – tell Lawrence Ostlere how they are keeping up training in lockdown

Sporting regimes have been thrown out of kilter by lockdown (Getty)

Athletes are creatures of habit. Training is a rhythm, a pattern to be planned and executed to a timeline, and it is safe to assume that just about every precisely built programme has been disrupted by the effects of lockdown.

Like every other aspect of society, sport has been drastically affected by the coronavirus pandemic, with everything from the Premier League to the Formula One season either on hold or wiped off the calendar entirely. The Olympic Games have been pushed back 12 months and even so, experts retain doubts over whether the world’s biggest sporting show will go ahead.

In what was only a matter of days, athletes all over the world stopped playing sport in front of thousands or preparing for the mega-event of their lives, and were instead forced to adapt and improvise or else fall behind. Lockdown means different things to different people depending on their circumstances. For many athletes, it is a time to get creative, making makeshift gyms in awkward spaces to prevent their skills from fading.

Here, several professionals from different corners of the sporting world – from gymnastics to rugby via F1 and BMX – tell The Independent how they are keeping on top of their game during lockdown.

Before taking inspiration, always seek advice on how to use improvised or makeshift equipment.

Emily Scarratt, 30: Rugby union for Lichfield and England, 2019 world player of the year

Emily Scarratt has improvised to train at home (Getty)

I’m quite fortunate I’ve got a family farm where I’ve been able to build a gym, which is pretty comprehensive to be fair, I’m quite proud of it. I might keep it once this is all over. And also just being able to do quite a lot of jobs and help dad out, which obviously I like to do but you don’t often get a lot of time to do that, so that’s been that’s been quite nice and kept me quite busy.

Manual labour on the farm is hard work

We’re a beef and arable farm, and obviously I’m the manual labour! I’m not particularly skilled in anything too technical, so I leave that up to dad. But I’ve been pressure-washing things, moving things. We had some trees fall in the bad storms just after Christmas, so chopping those up and moving them around. It’s nice, it keeps you active, it’s hard work. I thought I was fit and then you do some of those jobs and you realise maybe you’re not.

In my gym I’ve got two towers of pallets, which I can then put a bar in between for pull-ups. I’ve got two big round hay bales which is my squat rack, and some random things I found around the farm that’s like two big spare tyres with a plank of wood to make a bench. It definitely is safe but I don’t think it would be passing any health and safety guidelines in a mainstream gym.

I try to schedule each day because I’m better like that, it’s just how I work, but it’s not necessarily always the same. Most days I’m in the gym, maybe three or four times a week, but I schedule it around other stuff I’ve got going on, maybe bits of work I want to do – I’ve been going through my level three coaching course at the moment so I’ve got quite a lot of work to do. It’s different to being outside and being manual.

I like to cook so I’ve been trying to cook different meals, or bake, when I can get hold of any flour. And then I’m doing different things to try and keep my mind active. I classically started a jigsaw, I’ve never done a jigsaw by myself. It’s really slow progress but I’m getting there. Hopefully you challenge yourself physically and also challenge your mind a little bit.

Nile Wilson, 24: Gymnast, Olympic bronze medallist in Rio and two-time Commonwealth champion

I moved back in with my parents so I’m back with mum and dad again which is great to spend time with family. I managed to pre-empt this happening and stole some equipment from the gym, so I can keep just ticking over, and the weather’s definitely helped to be out in the garden in the sunshine.

My dad's got this wooden pergola, his prized possession, and I'm ruining it

There’s some pommel horse equipment that was quite simple to set-up at home, although it was a challenge to put it all in the car. I’ve got a few mats, and they do a kind of mini version of parallel bars, they’re called parallettes, so you can put the parallel bars on the floor and do a lot of handstand conditioning, push-ups. My dad’s got this wooden pergola in the garden, it’s his prized possession, and I’m ruining it by putting on some gardening gloves on and jumping on it, doing some muscle-ups and chin-ups, just trying to improvise where I can.

There’s all sorts that you can condition or do bodyweight training on. Kitchen sides and cabinets and quite good. I’ve seen my good pal Max Whitlock using his sofa, but my sofa isn’t quite good enough so I won’t be doing that.

Jade Jones, 27: Taekwondo, Olympic champion in London and Rio

I’m very lucky to be in lockdown with another athlete and world champion, Bianca Walkden. We’ve changed our garage into a taekwondo gym, we put mats down and we got a wat-bike. We’re still trying to keep a routine, go down to the gym every day and do a kicking session, and just tick over, so I’m really lucky in that way.

George Russell, 22: Formula One driver for Williams-Mercedes

The neck is the main thing for us, so I am in my parents’ house with my trainer, and we’ve done a lot of work with the neck harness. Often it’s just literally him pulling and pushing from my head to keep it strong.

The core is really important. We do some obvious standard core exercises and some that are a bit more extreme. It’s about just trying to keep your body as still as possible when you’re going through corners. I’ve also got a turbo trainer so I’m doing a lot of cycling.

I've got a home simulator but it's not the same

We’re having to improvise. We had some old shelving units around the garage which we created into a squat rack, and we’ve attached TRX [ropes] to the ceiling in one of the garages. You can use it for so many different things, you can improve and find different ways to use your own body to do the exercises. I was using the kitchen table for some exercises to pull from, so it’s finding bits in the house which are around you. We got some logs which we used for squats, but now I also have some more hi-tech equipment.

I’ve got myself a home simulator, which is a seat, steering wheel and pedals. I set it up and I’m racing online with my mates and a couple of the other F1 drivers. Even though it’s not overly realistic, it’s still driving and that’s keeping me busy. But the thing with racing is the speed, the adrenaline: driving round corners at 200mph you know there are going to be big consequences, whereas on the Playstation, if you make a mistake and hit the wall, you press the restart button.

Shauna Coxsey, 28: Climber, twice World Cup winner training for first Olympics

I’ve been working with my coaching team to make a plan for what I am able to train at home and what I need to do to stay fit and healthy. Luckily I’ve got a great space to train at home, a ski-erg in the shed and I’ve been getting out on my bike too.

Our basement is dedicated to training. We’ve got a climbing wall for training strength and power in the basement as well as weights and other equipment. I usually spend a couple of days a week training from home so it’s something I’m used to. Of course it’s not ideal to only train at home and to train for the three climbing disciplines [for Olympic Games in Tokyo] but I do feel incredibly fortunate. For climbers it’s really important to keep training our fingers to keep them strong and healthy so I have spent a lot of time hanging off my Beastmaker fingerboard.

Bas Keep, 37: Red Bull BMX creative

Bas Keep in action in his garden (Red Bull)

Lots of the guys are buying up wood and building ramps, or trying to buy ramps online and doing the best they can in their gardens. Everyone’s doing their bit off the bike to stay fit but it’s interesting, people are definitely having to get creative and start thinking about ways to use their gardens or sometimes even their front rooms as a little facility. I’m the same, I bought a couple of little kicker ramps online, literally a few inches high, and did some stuff in my garden.

I did wall rides in the garden until it started wobbling

I’ve got a courtyard garden. I look online and see some of my friends living in Australia, California with huge backyards and acres of space and I live in the south of England and I’ve got 20 square feet. I’ve just been doing some 180s, some basic tricks. I’ve made the odd video, and you can also do some practice laying on your back and holding your BMX up in the air. You can practice tricks like that. My house is 150 years old and I’ve got like a brick wall that runs down the side of it. I did wall rides on that, but it started wobbling. At the time I didn’t really know how much it was wobbling until I looked back on the footage and it was like, wow, OK, I need to stop.

Shane Archbold, 31: Cyclist, New Zealand national road race champion

I’m in Girona [Spain] with my girlfriend. We’re only allowed out to buy necessities – no cycling, no exercise. We’re trying to only go to the supermarket once every two weeks. In New Zealand you’re allowed to ride 2km from your house, and back home on the farm I probably wouldn’t have any issues with the local government or police if I went for a ride. But I don’t regret staying here.

I do two training sessions per day [on my home trainer], two and a half hours each. Personally, I hate it! I like going out in the fresh air, but it’s OK. At first a friend on another team invited me on a Zwift [training app] ride. I took part in a race on there, which was extremely hard, but it’s nice to mix up. Otherwise it’s Netflix, Playstation. Luckily we have a terrace so I can do some core stability work, we can play some table-tennis. We have air conditioning but it doesn’t cover the whole place, so summer could be a challenge when it gets up around 40 degrees.

Nile Wilson and Jade Jones are working with Aldi, the official supermarket partner of Team GB, to keep the nation fit and healthy, with an exclusive workout series hosted at www.youtube.com/AldiUK.