Exercise Made More Efficient
Posted on November 3, 2009
Filed Under Fitness | Leave a Comment
Things that help you workout. In this article I will discuss products and techniques to help you with your workout routine. I will also cover possible ways to break though plateaus or tear down walls that maybe preventing you from your goals. The number one reason most people quit an exercise routine, and where you can find more information to help you reach your goals and products that help.
Staying the coarse. In my opinion the number one reason people deviate from their exercise program is not laziness, lack of time, or that its too hard. I believe that people fail at their fitness goals because of, or the lack of RESULTS and FEAR! Hey I understand, If I am going to spend all this time and energy on getting in shape I want too see results! But, what you have to understand is you didn’t get fat and out of shape overnight. Its going to take some time and dedication to get back in shape. You have to look at it this way. Exercise, eating right and staying that way is a life style change. I’m not saying that you have to give up all the foods that you love or spend hours in the gym or hours on the track. Just being a little more active and eating smaller portions will go a long way to accomplishing your fitness goals. That is where the fear come into play. Fear of totally changing your life style, fear of failure, fear of losing things that you enjoy…like beer,pizza and chocolate cake. You don’t have to give up those things unless your doctor recommends you do so. By the way you should always consult a doctor before starting an exercise plan. Get past the fear and start today and you will see result in time.
Plateaus So you have started working out and things are going great then all of a sudden your not seeing results anymore. You keep trying, your eating good maybe not great but your eating better, your staying with your work out that had been showing result. But you haven’t lost a pound in over a week. You feel better your starting like how you look now but the progress has somehow stopped. This is call a plateau. There are two major causes for plateaus. The first being; not enough calories. Yes, you heard me. You my not be eating enough. Lean muscle needs calories to grow and repair from all that exercise that you are doing. In order to protect itself, your body will purposely slow you metabolism and store fat if it is not getting enough calories to fuel those new muscles of yours. That is why you should never cut more than 500 calories from your maintenance weight calorie diet. Let me explain, if your diet requires you to eat 3500 calories a day to maintain the weight that you at now. Then you should not start right off with a 2000 calorie diet. Your body is smart and does not like to lose weight. If you have programmed your body to stay at 185lbs then it will beg ,barrow and steel from your lean muscle to stay at that weight and turn it to fat.
Varying your work out. Another little known fact is, your muscles have memory. Yes your muscles can remember how to do certain task or exercise. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. Let’s talk about the bad news first. Like a computer your body will send just the right amount of fuel (calories) to the muscle groups in question and it is a very efficient machine. That’s the bad news. You see if you do the same exercise day in and day out your body becomes a custom to that particular activity and you hit yet another plateau. The good news is that same muscle memory can be reprogrammed. You can reprogram your body and muscles groups by changing up your routine. “Why does this work?” You may ask. Look at it this way. When you have mastered a task that you have done a million time, it becomes simple to you and there is relatively little thought given to said task. Am I Right? It’s much harder and requires more energy to learn a new task…with me so far? What we are tiring to do is keep your body guessing. Your body uses more energy learning a new task which will avoid deep muscle memory.
Keeping Track. It is so important to keep track of your work outs in order to see results and adjust as needed. In order to stay on your fitness goals you have to be able to find ways to push yourself just a little everyday. Whether it is running a mile one day and then running a mile and a half the next or running a mile in 15 minute one and then running a mile in 14:45 the next. Not only will this help you get to your goal but it also gives you a sub goal to focus on for each workout. When you complete these smaller sub goals it will feel good and keep you going. You can easily keep track you routine in a journal. Now a days there all kinds of little gadgets that you can buy to help you keep track. You may want to look in to a step counter for the walking or GPS heart monitor. The GPS heart monitors are really neat because they can keep track of all sorts of important data for you. Like heart rate, target heart rate, how far you went and how long it took you. You can upload and down load information to and from your computer to track your progress and they relatively inexpensive. Somewhere a round the $200.00 dollar range.
Well that’s all I have for now. I hope that you can find some use for this article. Take one day at a time, one step at a time and you will get to all your fitness goals… I’m pulling for you! Thanks for reading. Matt
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