As with most things in life, breaking and making habits, eating, exercise, career and growth, it comes done to understanding the basics. In Here are six simple concept you must follow for you to be successful in the gym.
In this article by James Clear, he discusses the habits and benefits of being successful in the gym. As with most things in life, it comes down to mastering the basics. With that in mind, here are 6 exercise tips, weightlifting basics, and training essentials that nobody wants to believe, but everyone should follow.
The 6 exercise habits to believe in
1. Commit for the long-term.
Most people workout with a short-term goal in mind. I like looking at health in a different way…
The goal is not to lose 40 pounds in the next 12 weeks. The goal is to regain your health for the rest of your life.
The goal is not to bench press 300 pounds. The goal is to be the guy who never misses a workout.
The goal is not to sacrifice everything to get your fastest time in next month’s race. The goal is to be faster next year than you are today. And faster two years from now than you will be next year.
Ignore the short-term results. If you commit to the long-term process, the results will come anyway. Furthermore, stop acting like living a healthy life is a big deal. You can go to the gym every week. That can be “normal” for you. Not a sacrifice. Not an obligation. Normal.
What’s funny is that when you commit to being consistent over the long-term, you end up seeing remarkable results in the short-term. That’s the power of average speed.
Making it to the gym isn’t always easy. Try these five habits that you will need to make your own in order for you to make sure that you get going every time.
2. Set a schedule for your training.
Most people never train consistently because they are always wondering when they are going to train next.
They are always wondering…
“Will I be motivated to workout when I get home from work?”
“Will I have enough free time to exercise today?”
“Will I have enough willpower to wake up early and run?”
In other words, most people train when they feel motivated or inspired.
Our reasons to start exercising, running or going to the gym, vary from person to person. Do you want to lose weight? Are you preparing for your first 5km fun run or half marathon? Or is it just your new years resolution? What ever your reason, we can help you at The Life Habit on how to stick to it by adopting some good habits.
3. Focus on the best exercises.
Great results come from great focus, not great variety.
Too many people waste time in the gym because they bounce around without any real goal, doing a little bit of this machine and a little bit of that machine. Thankfully, there is a simple rule that will always guide you toward the best exercises: the more an exercise makes you move, the bigger the benefits it will deliver.
This is why the clean and jerk and the snatch are the kingpins of weightlifting. They are the exercises that force your body to move the most (and the quickest). As a result, the people who do these exercises see incredible results.
4. Start light and train for volume before intensity.
Ask most people if they had a good workout and they’ll say things like, “Oh yeah, it was so intense.” Or, “I’m going to be so sore tomorrow.” Or, “I finished my workout by doing a set to failure.”
It’s great to push yourself, but the biggest mistake that most people make is not building a foundation of strength. Everyone wants to jump in and max out with a weight that is “hard.” That’s exactly the wrong way to do it. Your workouts should be easy in the beginning. Training to failure is a good way to wear yourself down, not build yourself up. You should have reps left in you at the end of your workout (and at the end of each set). Take point #5 (below) to heart and your workouts will get hard enough, fast enough. Trust me.The phrase that I like to keep in mind is “train for volume before intensity.” In other words, I want to build the capacity to do the work before I start testing my limits.Just to be clear: volume doesn’t have to mean “do sets of 20 reps.” (I rarely do more than 10 reps in a single set.) Instead, I like to think of volume over a period of weeks and months.
5. Make SLOW progress each week.
Most people walk into the gym every week, do the same exercises with the same amount of weight, and wonder why they aren’t getting stronger. You’ll see people step onto the same treadmill, run two miles like they always do, and wonder why they aren’t losing weight.
Here’s a little story that explains the problem and the solution…Imagine that you are in a quiet room and someone turns on a loud and noisy fan. At first, it’s obvious and irritating. But if you are forced to stay in the room long enough, the fan starts to become part of the background noise. In other words, your body registers the sound at first, but eventually it realizes “Oh, this is the new normal for this environment.”
Your body adapts and the noise fades away. Something similar happens when you exercise. When you start to train, it’s like turning on the fan. Something new is happening in the environment, and your body registers the change by getting stronger and leaner. But after a few workouts, your body realizes “this is the new normal.” Your body finds a way to adapt to this new environment, just like it did with the noisy fan. As a result, you stop getting stronger and stop losing weight.
What got you here won’t get you there. If you want to see different results, you have to do something different. If you want to see progress each week, then you have to progress each week. Remember you are doing ok, what we are saying to you, is that you can still take it to the next level. I am not saying that you want to go to the next Olympics (maybe you do, that would be great), what I want is, for you to be the best that you can be in your sport, by getting the small things right.
6. Record your workouts.
What gets measured, gets managed. If you can’t even tell me how many sets and reps you did with a particular weight two weeks ago, how can you guarantee that you’re actually getting stronger?
Tracking your progress is simple: get a small notebook and write down your workouts. (I use a little black moleskin notebook that I bought at a bookstore.) At the top of the page, write the date of your workout. Then, simply write down the exercise you are doing. When you finish a set, record it in your notebook while you’re waiting to do the next one.
Recording your training is especially important because it brings all of these points together.
You can look back and see how you’re making long-term progress (point #1). You can see on which dates you trained and how often you were on schedule (point #2). You can verify that you did the best exercises each workout (point #3). You can see how you are slowly building up volume and developing a foundation of strength (point #4). And you can prove that you’re making slow, methodical progress each week (point #5).
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