Don’t let the cost of a gym membership or your fear of the gym deter you from getting fit. There are many ways to get fit in the comfort and convenience of your own home that are as effective as going to the gym. Check out these tips on how to make fitness possible, regardless of where you choose to go!
Do not make it excuses. When it comes to working out regularly and sticking to it long-term, you can prove to be your own worst enemy. Once you make a plan to workout two or three times a week, stick to it. No exceptions. Don’t let yourself put it off.
Taking up a sport can be a great help to a personal fitness routine. A sport that requires some cardiovascular exertion and muscle strength will provide the benefits of exercise that every fitness program should include. A sport that you enjoy can be easier to participate in and stick with than simply working out for the sake of working out.
Exercising with your dog can be a great motivator. Having to take your dog out can increase the frequency of your workouts as well as your enjoyment. Some health clubs even offer classes or activities that can be done with your pet, such as “doggy yoga”!
There is always another option to get a workout in no matter how busy your life is. Are you dragging the kids to and from soccer practice? Why not get in your own walk or run while they are busy at practice. Do you love reading? Try downloading some audio books and going on a walk while listening to your favorite book.
Keep your goals short and simple as you start on a new fitness program. You can easily overwhelm yourself if, after a lifetime of being a couch potato, you decide you should be able to run 10 miles at full speed on the treadmill. At the beginnin, keep your goals simple. Start out with just a walk for a few minutes every other day. Work up to longer and more frequent walks as you progress.
Sometimes it can be difficult to determine whether or not your training program is too strenuous for your cardiovascular system. Prior to starting or intensifying a workout program, measure and document your heart rate immediately upon waking. This should be done for at least five days leading up to the change. After you have started or intensified your program, continue to take measurements on the days after your workout. An increase of more than 10 beats per minute indicates that your body may not be recovering from the change as efficiently as it should be.
You can do more than traditional abdominal exercises to build great abs. Dead-lifts and squats are shown to build ab muscles. Studies have shown that by doing these two exercises your abdominal muscles are forced to do a lot of work in order to maintain your posture while exercising.
To help gain weight you can use nutrition guidelines to increase your caloric intake properly. This will help you to gain healthy weight and mass, verses simply gaining only fat. If you have a high metabolism, you will not want to simply increase your sugar intake, you want to ingest high amounts of protein nutrition to help you make more muscle with exercise.
Practice balancing on a sofa cushion to improve your body’s overall balance. Stand on it with one leg, and move a medicine ball, jug, or something else a tad weighty, from one hand to the other, side to side, and behind your head. When you have this down, challenge yourself by doing it with your eyes closed.
You can climb hills much easier and faster by shifting your sights upward. Try only looking at the top of the hill, while tilting your head and eyes upward. This incline causes your air passages to open up more, which means that you can get more oxygen more easily. This will cause you to be able to breathe much easier while running up the hill, without getting as tired out as you would have, if you would have continued looking down as you ran.
To get the optimal muscle growth following a weight workout, make sure to eat a protein shake immediately following your session. It’s been found that people who eat immediately following their workouts (within five minutes) increase their muscles, but those that wait and eat the shake hours afterwords tend to not have as much muscle growth.
As you can see, there are many ways to get fit – whether at home or in a gym. You can spend nothing or as much as you want on equipment, but regardless, you can always get a great workout. Incorporate these tips into your fitness routine and enjoy the perks of just ‘rolling out of bed’ and getting right into your workout.
