Everybody wants to be fit and attractive. We see images of fit bodies in magazines and on billboards all over the place. Television is full of commercials with fit people smiling and enjoying life. Wouldn’t it be great if you could be one of them?
Well, you can. Getting fit is not that difficult. You have probably heard all kinds of advice and tips about how to get stronger and lose weight. But sometimes the difficult thing is knowing how to start. You need something that is specific. Here are some things you should know.
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Workout in the morning
There are several reasons why working out in the morning is more effective. First, it trains you to treat your health as a priority. If the first thing you do is exercise, then your subconscious mind will treat it as being the most important part of your day.
Another reason is that your workout fires up your metabolism. By activating your metabolism early, you have all day to burn excess body fat.
Morning is also when the air around you is at its freshest. Before all the cars going to work start pumping exhaust fumes into the air.
Don’t over train
To the uninitiated, it may seem like the more exercise you do, the better. However, you need to keep in mind that your muscles grow when they are resting, not when you exercise them.
This means that you have to have a good workout session to breakdown your muscles. Then you need to give them the time to rebuild and grow.
In the beginning, you should start out with three sessions a week of no more than forty-five minutes. This is enough to let you feel it, but not enough to make you burn out. The sessions you do with various products don’t count.
With the right frequency of training, you will get optimum results.
Reduce cardio and lift more weight
Cardio is great for burning fat, but you need to do more. You also want to build lean muscle and develop a strong, firm body.
Hitting the weights will help you with this. You need to focus on your lower body. Particularly your hamstrings and glutes. By strengthening these, you will encourage your body to burn more fat. That’s because these are the biggest muscles in your body. If you can get them to work for you, they become great fat burners.
On the other hand, if you do a lot of cardio, you will most likely make yourself exhausted. It is really hard to keep training once you have exhausted yourself on cardio. You won’t be able to complete the main part of your workout which is the strength training.
So make sure you only do as much cardio as you need. No more. Keep your best efforts for the weighted part of your workout.
Incorporate all of the basic movement patterns
It can be tempting to do all of your workouts on the machines that sit around the gym. They are there to be used right? They are easy and convenient. But the only problem is, they can only be used in one plane of motion.
It’s no good using your body in only one way when it is designed to work through multiple planes and move in a variety of ways.
For this reason, you should train with free weights. So that you can move them about freely and work your muscles through a variety of planes of motion.
The basic movement patterns you should use are:
- A squat. You can use weights or just do body-weight squats.
- A push. Pushups or bench press will cover this.
- A vertical push. Use a military press or try handstands.
- A pull. Try rowing exercises.
- A vertical pull. Pull-ups are the classic exercise to cover this.
- Core strengthening. You can work out your core by holding a plank position for time.
- A hinge. You need to hinge at the hips, not the lower back. Train this movement with hip thrusts or bridges.
So that’s it. Everything you need to know to get started with exercise. Start early, lift more weight and do less cardio, and use a range of movements. Following these tips will jump-start your exercise routine and put you ahead of the game. Before you know it, you will look great and feel fantastic.
