Ten years ago I was convinced to start going to the gym by an old college friend of mine. I can remember the first day walking into the gym and seeing all the equipment in front of me and thinking where on earth do I start? Now ten years down the line, I have learned so much about health and fitness, whether it be from experienced trainers, internet research, youtube videos and even trial and error, but the most important thing I have learned to date would be that everybody’s different. This is one thing that can be applied to every aspect of Health and fitness.
When I say everybody’s different I mean, if I was to train along with someone else who did the exact same routine as me, used the same weight as I did, did the same amount of repetitions, same amount of cardio and even followed the same diet as me, the chances of us getting exactly the same results are probably zero. There are so many reasons behind this, such as difference in peoples genetics, metabolism speed, body type, level of strength, daily activity and even the way peoples bodies respond to certain exercises. The key is getting to know your body and finding what works best for you. This can take a long time but you will see results along the way and will most certainly reap the rewards once you have cracked it. The first step would be working out exactly what your goal is. This should then be broken down into a few shorter term goals, as someone who’s working towards shorter term goals would be much more likely to succeed, as when each short term goals is reached, you’re a step closer to your long term goal and will feel a sense of achievement which will keep you motivated and push you on to reach your next goal. However if you just worked towards one long term goal, then there’s a good chance you will lose interest and possibly give up altogether after some time as you will feel like you are not progressing or getting anywhere fast.
The next step would be to do some research relating to your goals. Look into the different ways people train when they are trying to achieve a similar goal to yourself. For example, someone who was training for a powerlifting or a strongman contest wouldn’t tend to do workouts involving high repetitions and low weight, just as someone looking to tone up wouldn’t tend to perform low repetitions using their maximum weight in their workouts. The same process should be applied when it comes to diet also. You can get yourself a basic template diet plan, whether it be from internet research or speaking with people who have experience in that field. The diet can then be modified over time to suit you personally and what you want to achieve. For instance, if you were following a fat loss diet but after a few weeks you were not making as much progress as you would like, then you can look at both your training plan and diet plan and make adjustments that can put you back on track, such as… Am I taking in too many calories? Am I eating at the right times? Are my levels of carbohydrates or fats too high? Am I training as often as I should? Am I doing enough in my training sessions? You can look at all these points and then try to pinpoint where you may be going wrong. The appropriate changes can then be made to put this right and get you back on track to seeing further results.
One important thing that you need to bear in mind relating to everything I have talked about, would be that whether your doing internet research or speaking to different experienced trainers, people’s opinions will differ and in a lot of cases even completely contradict each other. The best bit of advice I could give in regards to this would be to keep an open mind and be open to trying different things. Make sure your patient and keep working towards your goals. As the saying goes ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’ and neither will your perfect body be but if you stick at it and follow these guidelines then you won’t go far wrong and will most certainly achieve your goals.