There’s a lot of hearsay when it comes to your workout routine and gym habits. What’s good for you, what gets results, and what is the most efficient method always seems to be up for debate. It’s difficult for someone who doesn’t have a degree in physical therapy or exercise science to sift through all the speculation and ideas, and come out on the other end confident about their exercise plan.
Unfortunately, achieving your goals has a lot to do with your ability to plan effectively and to know what works and what doesn’t.
I’d like to take some of the guess work out of it for you, by listing some transcendent truths about exercise that are entirely trustworthy and non-speculative.
These aren’t theories about what will work, or what you can do for less time that will get you better results. This is just the truth about what it takes and what you need to do in order to make any changes in your body for the better.
No smoke and mirrors here: These are four definite realities about exercise that affect you no matter where you are in your progress.
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You will not make progress without a significant time commitment.
No matter what you read or what ads claim certain products can do for you in a “short” period of time, you will not get significant results without devoting a substantial amount of time.
The process of losing fat and building muscle can literally take years, and anyone who tells you otherwise if giving you false hope and doing you a tremendous disservice in my opinion.
Going into your gym with a mindset of months and years instead of days and weeks will be tremendously helpful for you. You’ll be less anxious to “get to the end” and instead develop contentment with your exercise routine that’ll help you push through and stay committed instead of burning out when you don’t see the results you wanted quickly enough.
You can’t allow your body to get comfortable with what you’re doing. You need to have variety within any routine.
Particularly in the area of a weightlifting and body weight exercise; if you’re getting comfortable with it and it’s getting easy, you need to move on to something else. Doing the same exercises every time you work out is helpful for a short time, but once your body gets used to the movement, it’s ready to move on to the next thing.
Maintain a high level of variety within your routine and make sure that you avoid getting comfortable with any one exercise or group of exercises. If you allow yourself to do that, your time in the gym is going to ultimately count for less.
Both cardio and resistance training are important.
Whatever form of either that you prefer, both your muscular strength and cardiovascular strength are equally important. Having one without the other doesn’t necessarily hurt you, but the two forms of exercise are highly complementary and doing them both in conjunction will make your overall health and strength more complete.
Often times, people gravitate to one or another. Strength trainers usually aren’t as committed to their cardio, while runners feel out of place in the weight area of the gym. However a well rounded workout routine will include both, so make sure you don’t allow your comfort zone or tendencies to keep you from engaging in both types of exercise.
You need to move and you need to sweat.
Regardless of whatever marketing ploys you’ve been subjected to that tell you they have an easy way to lose weight and build muscle, there is nothing that is going to get you results aside from getting up off the couch and working hard.
When you get done with a workout, you should be sweating, sore, and exhausted. If you aren’t, then you haven’t done enough in the way of challenging your body.
There’s just no way around this fact. You need to move and you need to sweat, and anyone who tells you that you can have some kind of Greek god body without doing those things is absolutely lying to you.
Don’t waste your time with those kinds of articles and marketing techniques. To get results of any kind, you’ve got to work, and at the end of the day you get out of it exactly what you’ve put in. Therefore if you want significant results, be willing to put in a significant amount of hard work.
