Did you make it a New Year’s resolution, like many of us, to start exercising and have a regular workout routine?
It’s a lofty goal and well worth attaining, but the failure rate is high since it requires so much of our energy and focus to get into the habit of having a daily exercise routine. As they say, it takes 21 days to build a reliable habit. That’s a lot of getting out and exercising, if you are new to it, with aches and pains, in cold weather you are not used to, and at hours of the day you normally would be home watching tv and being toasty warm.
Or we may start a routine only to get stuck and not progress any more.
This article will help you navigate past all the roadblocks that stand between you and a regular exercise routine.
If you’re new to exercise, one thing that can quickly kill the whole thing is if you get injured, suffer a sprain or a strain right out of the gate. This can put you out of commission for many weeks and then you may not feel inclined to start up again.
Best way to avoid common injuries: warm up before a workout, and stretch. Besides allowing you to avoid injuries, if you stretch ahead of time, it makes the whole workout less painful since you’ve already limbered up and your muscles are ready for the task at hand. You should also educate yourself about injuries and how to treat them properly. Websites like https:hipflexorsinfo.com/ will help you find reliable and helpful information about hip flexors. With this, you can easily address possible causes of injuries.
Another common problem that derails exercise routines is picking something boring to do, like running around a track, or even on a treadmill. It’s true, you see many people at the gym happily content to spend 45 whole minutes on the elliptical trainer, but you have to really ask yourself if this is something you could stick with in the long run, and do you really want to “do boring” for a workout when there are so many fun forms as well, if you search for them.
Maybe what might be better for you is to pick a rocking dance aerobics class that is fast-paced and fun and engaging. There are so many forms of fun exercise around that it’s a shame to pick a boring one, get bored and then drop it because it’s not exciting enough.
Or you can mix up your exercise routine, doing water aerobics on Monday, a dance aerobics class on Tuesday, Boju ball on Wednesday, high-energy line dancing on Friday, etc. You get my point. You want to be able to get lost in the aerobic activity rather than counting miserable minutes until it’s over with..
As well as varying the workouts, it’s best to vary the intensity level and style of the workout too. Make Monday and Wednesday, say, high intensity, producing lots of sweat, while Tuesday and Thursday are quieter, say, swimming laps in the pool, or a quiet (but aerobic) walk in a local park.
Nothing will make you drop working out quicker than overtraining, working out too much before you are ready to handle it. Start slow, perhaps a half hour three times a week and carefully move up from there. It’s critical to get enough rest between workouts, especially as a beginner, or else you will just get so exhausted that you will totally drop the whole working out business and sabotage yourself.
Last, one of the best ways to ensure that you continue to be a lifetime exerciser is the set realistic goals. Be sure the goals you set are attainable within a few weeks (e.g., I will be walking 6 times around the track by the end of a month.) Keep a very visible exercise calendar posted on your walls where you can write in exactly what you’ve done each day: “Jogged 1 mile today,” “Dance class- 45 minutes today,” as well as any notes to yourself about how you’re feeling, what you’re eating, how you’re sleeping. They have found that people who record these minute details stand a better chance of keeping going than those who do not.
If you constantly have your goals, long-term and short-term, written down and systemically achieve them, you’ll learn to trust yourself that you will do exactly what you have said you will do. This in turn will cause you to feel like a million bucks about your reliability, and your self-confidence level and trust in you and achieving what you’ve set out to do. This is priceless.
