Róbert Kristóffy Nóra
designers
“Our mission is to make working out more suitable to people’s everyday life. In time as well as in living space.”
Szilágyi
So first please introduce yourself, tell me what do you do, how old are you where do you live?
My name is Réka Szabó and I am 24 years old. I moved to Budapest 6 years ago, which I consider to be the best decision even now, because as a young person, I feel that the capital offers a lot of opportunities. I am currently in the sixth year of the English-French teaching program at Eötvös Lóránd University, which I plan to finish next spring. I mostly spend my free time with my friends and family, but I can’t say no to a solo evening either. My hobbies are reading, going to the cinema (yes, I think this is getting more and more rare these days), going to concerts (“Long live Hungarian music!”), and of course sports. I ride a bicycle in the city, but I also like to run, hike, swim, do aerobics, and lately I’ve been visiting climbing gyms more and more often.
You mentioned already you like sports. What sports did you do as a child? What was your relationship with sports?
My parents wanted to teach me to swim as soon as possible, so during my preschool years (around the age of 4), they took me to the swimming pool in my small town every day. Neither my brother nor I had a choice when it came to sports, which sometimes hurt me a little, but swimming training for more than 12 years instilled in me a love for sports and perseverance. Parallel to swimming, I tried other sports on a few occasions; this was the case, for example, with modern dance or ballet. However, I soon had to realize that flexibility and more artistic sports were not my genre. While my elementary school years were defined by swimming competitions, in high school I visited the dam side and the grove more and more instead of the beach, since I found running.
My parents were already big marathon runners, and it seemed obvious that I should try it too, to see if I had inherited the “running gene”. Genetics didn’t let me down, because I was able to quickly put on the rabbit shoes, and after a while the challenge was the kilometers, instead of the pool walls, and with the support of my parents, I dared to enter races of 10, 15, and 21 km.
Could you tell me about the role that sport plays in your life at the moment?
Ever since I was a university student, sport has been added to the list of “things that are considered a luxury from the point of view of time, but I have to include it somehow, otherwise there will be no harmony in my life”. Because there is no longer any coach or parent behind me who would emphasize that “for training yes, you have to go”. So there’s only me, and my own motivational words, which encourage me to make time for sports, for myself, 3-4 times a week. It doesn’t really matter what kind of exercise I do, the point is that it turns off my brain, works my body, and thus restores my soul. Whether it’s running, exercising at home or climbing a wall, movement is an escape from the pressure on me. While as a child I was reluctant to go to training, but now I can’t wait to go exercise.
I know you train at home. Could you tell me why you train at home and not in a gym?
I don’t like gyms. I’ve tried it several times, but in the end somehow I always had the thought that “it’s too expensive, I don’t like being stared at, and that I could do these exercises at home.” My mom always trained on home gym videos, which I took over after a while, and I had to realize that I don’t need to go to a gym with a bunch of strangers to do squats, for example. It’s a fact that it’s harder for people to exercise at home, and it’s even easier to stop it, but what I like about it is that it doesn’t matter how I look, what I’m wearing, all I need is a polyfoam, a video and I can start training for the day at any stage. In addition, as a girl, I’m not so attracted to weight-lifting exercise machines, I prefer to move myself with my own bodyweight and flexibility exercises, which I can do at home for free.
“It’s too expensive, and I don’t like being stared at”
What do you usually do to motivate yourself when you don’t feel the vibe for working out?
“Afterwards, you will feel 100x better than you do now!”Since sports have played such a big role in my life since I was a small child, I feel guilty sooner than others if I don’t move, so I can swing through dead spots sooner. The point is to always move as much as my body wants and can handle. If I can only move for 20 minutes today, that’s perfectly fine I’m already more than before. You have to keep this thought in mind, and then it will be easier to start.
If you could advise something to young people who don’t yet have a chosen sport, what would it be?
Try as many sports as possible, through which you will find out what types of movement your body likes and can tolerate. I can’t be impartial, but I think most people like swimming, because it’s not as stressful as, for example, boxing. I would also recommend cycling and hiking as popular sports, as your feet (and your bike) can take you anywhere, so who knows what new locations you can discover while moving.
“If I can only move for 20 minutes today, that’s also perfectly fine”
The first item of our visualized home office gym is the coffe table. This is a tipical everyday furniture that you usually can find even in small apartments. Our coffe table is a massive steel legged wooden table, that has a polifoam accessory for keeping magazines and tiny items. This polifoam part is also an anti-slip accessory because when you flip the whole table over, you get a training frame. You can change the height of the legs, so you get the frame and you’re good to use.
Chinups are similar to pullups in that you grip and hang from a straight, horizontal bar and pull your body up toward the bar, ideally to chest level. The main difference is the grip variation. Chinups use a supinated grip, meaning your palms face you.
Dips are a bodyweight exercise that develops the triceps and other upper-body muscles. The exercise begins when you hold on to parallel bars with your arms straight. You then bend your elbows until your upper arms are parallel to the ground before driving up to the starting position.
Grab the bar with an overhand grip, your thumbs wrapped around the bar to improve stability. You don’t have to necessarily be hanging at this stage but, ideally, your hands should be grasping the bar well above your head. Exhale as you lift your feet off the ground, raising your straight legs outward in front of you.
Similar to classic push-ups, bar pushups engage muscles across your upper body, including the pectoral muscles, anterior deltoids, and triceps. You have to put your body towards the bar, ideally to chest level.
The second item of our visualized home office gym is a bench. A bench that you can put into your lobby to put on your shoes or a bench that is an additional seating for guests. But also it’s bench that you can use for working out. The bench is a steel legged wooden bench that has a woven structure on top made out of polifoam. When you want to use it for working out you have to tilt the backrest part. And with the help of the removable polifoam mat you have an ergonomic tilting bench.
Set up your bench at an angle of around 30-45°. Lie back and place your hands on the bar, slightly wider than shoulder-width apart, with your palms facing up. Lift the bar out of the rack and press it up until your arms are extended and your hands are above your shoulders.
Set up a bench at an incline of 30-45° and sit with your feet flat on the floor and your back on the bench. Lift the dumbbells to chest height with your palms facing forwards. Breathe out and push the dumbbells up until your arms are fully extended, using your pecs to power the movement.
Assume a standing position while holding a dumbbell in one hand with a neutral grip. Hinge forward until your torso is roughly parallel with the floor (or slightly above) and then begin the movement by driving the elbow behind the body while retracting the shoulder blade.
To do a reverse fly with dumbbells, sit with your knees bent and hold a dumbbell in each hand. Lean forward, letting your arms hang down next to your calves with your elbows slightly bent. Slowly raise the weights until your elbows are level with your shoulders.