‘Studies have shown that exercise is vital only to your physical health but also to your mental well-being,’ Meir said in the clip.
‘You may need to get a little bit creative to get that heart rate elevated while at home without heading to the gym, but we are confident you can come up with something.’The coronavirus, which began in China December 2019, has forced around 20 percent of the world’s population into their homes either by way of stay-at-home or quarantines.Nearly every country has been infected by the disease – there are more than one million cases in the world and the death toll has surpassed 55,700.During this anxious time, many are looking for ways relieve stress and have turned to exercise.However, being stuck at home can be difficult to get a great workout in, but Meir and her team have shared their routine while they are also spending time in isolation.Exercising in space poses unique challenges, but without exercise, astronauts can lose up to 15 percent of their muscle mass, some of it permanently.Aboard the ISS is the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (aRED), which, according to Meir, is the crew’s one-stop weight machine that uses two large vacuum tubes to generate the resistance.The system uses a piston and flywheel system to simulate free-weight exercises in normal gravity to work all the major muscle groups through squats, dead lifts and calf raises.Astronauts have reported see similar results to using free-weights.‘While aRED's primary goal is to maintain muscle strength and mass, resistive exercise also helps astronauts increase endurance for physically demanding tasks such as space walks, NASA explained in a statement.The crew also needs to do some cardiovascular exercises, which is done using a small treadmill or stationary bike –but they are different than what you see at your own gym.The treadmill aboard the ship is designed to allow astronauts to run without vibrating the equipment.It is also equip with a harness that is connected to bungee cords, which keep the runner in place while in the microgravity.‘One of the interesting thing we like to point to people on the ground that it is a bicycle, but we don’t’ have a seat and we don’t have handle bars,’ Meir said as she strapped herself into the bike and grabbed onto handles attached to the wall. NASA astronaut Scott Kelly who spent nearly a year on the ISS has also shared his best advice for surviving isolation.The retired astronaut spent a total of 520 days on the space station, with his longest mission lasting 340 days from March 27, 2015 to March 1, 2016.Kelly says the one thing he missed the most during his year on the ISS was being able to go outside, particularly the smell, sound and sights of nature.He says people should also follow a schedule, have a hobby, keep a journal, binge-watch TV series and 'get plenty of sleep' when forced to stay indoors.He said other astronauts on the ISS would play recordings of Earth sounds, like birds and resulting trees on a loop to bring themselves back to Earth.'I actually started to crave nature - the color green, the smell of fresh dirt, and the feel of warm sun on my face,' he told the New York Times.'You don’t need to work out two and a half hours a day, as astronauts do, but getting moving once a day should be part of your quarantine schedule (just stay at least six feet away from others),' he added.