COVID-19 and quarantine: expanding understanding of how to stay physically active at home

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is today the biggest public health challenge in the world (Park, 2020). The first case of COVID-19 was diagnosed on December 8, 2019, in Hubei province, China. From that day, in just over 3 months, the virus has spread to more than 177 countries/areas/territories around the world, with more than 266,073 confirmed cases and 11,184 deaths, according to WHO on March 21, 2020 (WHO, 2020). The most common clinical manifestations of COVID-19 are mild flu-like illness, potentially lethal acute respiratory distress syndrome, or fulminant pneumonia. As a result, numerous countries have decided to implement (some by government decrees, as well as martial laws) the establishment of mandatory social distance in a family environment, closing non-essential commercial environments, in an attempt to reduce the peak of the infection curve (Lewnard and Lo, 2020). We know that a large part of the world population is far from the minimum conditions of physical exercise recommended by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) to improve the health component (Katzmarzyk et al., 2019). This fact would give important relevance to the level of physical activity exercised by the population throughout the day.However, once the extreme hypokinetic behavior is implemented as a result of the quarantine, a cycle of perverse events begins, making part of the population more vulnerable to the deleterious effects of acute and chronic diseases, including respiratory tract infections (Hall et al., 2020). In a recent position paper presented by Chen et al. (2020), the authors try to propose to the general population to continue exercising regardless of the current moment the world is living. In fact, as the authors mention, based on other researchers, "anything is better than nothing," and the sedentary lifestyle is something that should not be encouraged, i.e., any energy expenditure added to the routine of these people would be significant. Recommendations for the population to keep regularly active highlight only a minimum applicable technical basis, without presenting any suitable parameters for carrying them out. From the initial positioning of Chen et al. (2020), the ACSM via publication on the website of the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise (ACSM, 2020; WHO, 2020), as well as other institutions (ACSM, 2020; WHO, 2020), expanded the proposal about the practice of physical exercise to be performed at home. Tasks such as brisk walking, up and down stairs, dance, jump rope, yoga exercises, and bodyweight strength training are also recommended for indoor workout (Table 1). ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion