Tag: Advice

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Start Your Fitness New Year’s Resolutions Now or Regret Later On!

Reality of Setting Fitness Goals

That old saying, how there’s no better time to start things than today, couldn’t be more appropriate in the case of fitness resolutions that people tend to set as the New Year approaches. But leaning on one moment soon doesn’t make any real sense if you come to think about it. If we were to get real and completely honest with ourselves, we’d have to admit that we’re only using a particular date as a motivation to start taking better care of our health through fitness that’s currently lacking from our lives.  

But this is also just a comfortable way of delaying what we should have already done by now. If you visit dedicated websites like gym-expert.com daily and you set higher New Year’s fitness resolutions, this doesn’t necessarily mean you’re also going to’ do it. So why not get ahead of times, and use the present as the perfect time to start our fitness training?

Get a Head Start

Let’s face it, waiting for January 1st to start daily fitness sessions is nothing but procrastination. Even studies have shown that a demoralizingly low number of persons that use this time to set a goal end up doing it. Think about this and your health, and try to set new fitness resolutions for today! This way, on January 1st, you will have already reached a daily fitness routine, and you can use that moment to start improving it.

Image credit: https://pixabay.com/photos/running-sprint-cinder-track-498257/

Develop a Routine, Make a Plan, But Start Small

Yes, we’ve said routine, and even though this word has a negative connotation in day-to-day life, in matters of fitness training, it’s a great thing for your health. And nobody says you have to go big on fitness exercises right from the start. If you set the standards too high, you might get disappointed and feel tempted to drop the whole thing and once again wait for the New Year to put your fitness resolutions into practice.  

So what you should do is to come up with a relatively easy fitness routine, plan it across the entire week, and start doing it bit-by-bit. An excellent way to do this would be by picturing your ideal number of pushups, planks, or abs, cutting it down to half, and start the resulted fitness plan right away.  

The Season Can Steal Your Motivation

Weather plays an essential part in our lives. It is known to influence our mental health and general mood directly. Especially cold seasons can have a pretty negative impact on your motivation. Since it’s so cold outside, you might be less inclined to get out of the house only to go to a fitness gym.

Image credit: https://pixabay.com/photos/walking-snow-feet-run-winter-1283978/

But you shouldn’t let the season interfere with your newly set fitness resolutions. You can work out just as well indoors, and if you tend to get depressed when you look outside the window, simply drop the curtains!

Starting Now Should be Important to You

We really can’t stress enough the importance of “now,” and living in the moment. You must find the mental strength to ignore that comfortable part of your brain telling you that tomorrow is the best time to start. Or that the New Year is the perfect occasion to set your fitness resolutions. It is just our way of deceiving ourselves, usually out of commodity, laziness, or sheer unwillingness. And there’s no better time to start fighting this than now!

Enjoy the Empty Gym

The weather outside also influences the traffic of most fitness gyms directly. Especially during cold, harsh winters, these can be pretty low populated, if not empty. However, you shouldn’t see this as a downside, on the contrary! You should enjoy the fact that you have the entire gym all for yourself. No eyes on you, no waiting in line for one particular fitness machine, no one but you, having all the space and freedom to put your new fitness resolutions into practice.

Find Your Support System

However, if you have the type of personality that doesn’t go well with solitude, or you’re the type that loses motivation quickly when left on your own, that you should find a system to keep you continuously motivated. When it comes to fitness, nothing could be more appropriate than a fellow gym buddy. You can work out together, help one another and most importantly, motivate each other through friendly fitness competition.

Image credit: https://pixabay.com/photos/kettlebell-fitness-crossfit-fit-3293475/

And if by any chance you can’t find anybody to go to the gym with you regularly, then you could ask a close friend or a family member to check up on your fitness progress. Alternatively, you could also consider buying a smartwatch or a fitness band, as most of the models out there have advanced fitness features that will monitor not only your progress, but also your health. 

Conclusion: Track Your Progress and Enjoy

In the end, nothing can be more satisfying and rewarding than getting noticeable results and becoming aware of your progress. So, monitor and keep track of your fitness sessions, and it won’t be long before you find yourself surprised by how much you’ve come along. And when this happens, you will no longer need any New Year’s fitness resolutions at all!

Randolph Ray

Randolph Ray

Writer at gym-expert.com and a Nutrition & Fitness expert. Passionate about exploring and writing about healthy food habits, fitness things, and other related stuff.

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Weight-Loss Mistakes That Could Make You Pile On The Pounds

weight-loss, mistakes, weight-loss mistakes, diet, food

Losing weight is easy, right? You just need to start increasing the number of workouts you do each day and start eating a bit less. That’s it, isn’t it? Well, in actual fact, it might not be as simple as that. There are a lot of mistakes that some people make without even realizing it, and these mistakes could lead to them actually adding on a few extra pounds. Depending on the mistake, that extra weight gain could even occur if you have increased your workouts and decreased your food intake.

Thankfully, it can be very easy to spot these mistakes and make the necessary changes to your lifestyle that are needed to get in better shape. Here are some of the most common mistakes when trying to lose weight – make sure you don’t make them yourself!

Image credit: Pexels

Doing Too Much Cardio

There are lots of people out there who believe that doing a lot of cardio workouts is the key to losing weight. True, the more you sweat and get out of breath, then the more calories you will be burning. However, just sticking to cardio isn’t good enough, as your body will become used to it, and it won’t be quite as effective as you would have hoped. So, it’s important to know how much cardio to lose weight is necessary. Generally speaking, two to three sessions should be enough. However, you need to make sure that you are also doing at least two strength sessions each week as well. Strength training is another effective way for your body to burn calories, and can also turn all that fat into muscle.

🎶 #HIIT me with your best Cardio🎶 I’m throwing in some light hand weights for this cardio blasting session 💦💦💦 All of these exercises can be done on the floor if you don’t have a step bench accessible. 👹Do not break between the 2 exercises in the circuits . ————- Circuit 1: burpees - 30 secs Squat jumps- 15 secs - - Circuit 2: side lunges - 30 secs Steps ups and down - 15 secs - - Circuit 3: travelling skiers - 30 secs Toe taps - 15 secs ————- Perform as many rounds as possible! Have fun!😅 👆🏻note: do you have a good eye for detail? Noticing anything different in a couple of the videos? Write your observation in the comments below 😊 . . . #hiitworkout #hiittraining #hiitcardio #exercise #fitspiration #fitnessjourney #fitness #homeexercises #cardio #momstrong #runnersofig #momswholift #fitnessworkout #fullbodyworkout #functionalfitness #strongwomen #igfitness #workoutideas #gains #homeworkouts_4u #cindyyufitness #fitmomsofig @workoutvideos__ @home_workouts_dailyx @home.exercises @hiitmax @gym_videos @gymresident @gununegzersizi

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Not Eating Enough Calories

If you ask anyone about what you need to do to lose any excess weight, I’m sure that they will tell you that it’s necessary to reduce the number of calories you eat every day. This is true to some extent, but you shouldn’t follow a too restrictive diet, or else you could actually find that your body stops burning off any fat. That’s because not eating enough calories will drastically slow down the metabolism and will also lead to muscle loss.

food, cooking, diet

Image credit: Pexels

Opting For Diet Foods

These days there are a lot of “diet foods” that say they have zero calories or fat in them. These may look very tempting when you are doing your grocery shopping in the supermarket as you will still be able to eat some of your favorite treats and not feel guilty about it. However, these foods are often highly processed, which isn’t good for the body. As well as that, all the highly calorific sugars are often replaced with chemicals and additives that are harmful for the body in various ways. Ideally, it’s best to stay away from these foods and stick to natural unprocessed foods that have the complete range of nutrients that your body needs.

Overestimating How Many Calories You Burn

When you come away from a very productive workout session, you will no doubt feel very out of breath and sweaty. They’re both signs that you worked super hard! And that means that you will have burned off a whole bunch of calories, right? Well, unfortunately, it can be very easy to overestimate just how many calories exercising actually does burn off. As a result, lots of people end up thinking that they burned off more than they did, and they don’t alter their diet accordingly. Generally speaking, most hard thirty-minute workout sessions will burn off between 200-300 calories. So don’t make the mistake of thinking that you burned off 800 and go away to treat yourself to a big meal!

weight-loss, mistakes, weight-loss mistakes, diet, food

Image credit: Pexels

Forgetting To Eat Enough Fiber

People know that it’s important to eat a good mix of both whole-grain carbohydrates and protein so that their body has all the necessary nutrients for energy and to aid recovery. However, you also need plenty of fiber in your diet as well, and this is something that many people often forget about. A diet rich in soluble fiber can actually help you feel a lot less hungry through the day as it reduces the appetite. So, you will find that you are less likely to overeat. Not only that, though, but lots of fiber in the diet can actually reduce the amount of calories that are absorbed by the body. So that means that you won’t be taking in as many calories, even if you are following a calorific diet!

Hopefully, you no longer make these weight-loss mistakes!

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Build healthy habits with Evernote

Nowadays, there is pretty much an app for everything you imagine.   Visit Google Play Store and then tell me if I´m wrong. But more doesn´t mean better, and a different app for tracking each one of our habits may result overwhelming or counterproductive.
Instead, using a single and versatile app, like Evernote to track your habits may be the right solution in many cases.
As you know (or should know), Evernote is a note-taking app. A digital diary, in a few words. You can use it as your journal, day planner, to keep things that inspire you (like articles, images and social media post) by using Web Clipper, as your to-do list or done list, to take class notes and help you with your homework, plan your travels or your wedding, write a novel, record meetings, save business cards and, as you have seen on this blog, record your workouts or keep your recipes collection.
Keeping everything organizing in the same place saves you lots o time and help you to be more productive. And when it comes to building a new habit the last thing you want is the need to get used to a new app because it doubles your work.
As each note is a blank canvas, you can create whatever you need. That´s why Evernote is great to build new healthy habits or get rid of unhealthy ones.
Let´s not forget that to make sure your goals are clear and reachable, each one should be:
Specific (simple, sensible, significant).
Measurable (meaningful, motivating).
Achievable (agreed, attainable).
Relevant (reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based).
Time-bound (time-based, time-limited, time/cost limited, timely, time-sensitive).
For instance, the healthy habit #1 is drinking more water. You can easily keep track of your daily water intake with Evernote. How?
1 – Create a new notebook (Click on File -> New notebook) and name it My water intake. Click OK.
2 – Click on your new notebook and create a New Note (Ctrl + N) and name it Water intake. You will use this note as a template and this will save you a lot of time.water intake 1
Let´s say you don´t drink any water at all and you plan to drink 6 glasses of water every day. That´s a Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound goal.
3 – Type numbers from 1 to 6 and then add a checkbox next to each number (Ctrl + Shift + C). Why would you put checkboxes? To mark them every time you drink a glass of water. This ensures you don’t miss a single one.water intake 2
4 – Duplicate this template as many times as you need (Right-click on the note -> Duplicate Note). water intake 3
I recommend you to rename each duplicated note with the date and keep the first one as your template. It will take you seconds to create and rename the notes you will use in a week.
water intake 4
Let´s go a step further and suppose you drink too many sodas or beers and you want to reduce the consumption of these drinks by replacing them with water.
Using the same notes, you can keep track of what you drink every day and be conscious if you´re going in the right direction.
Just repeat the step 3 for sodas and beers and voilá! You will be able to easily check the days you did right, the days you did wrong (and also write your comments/excuses why those days didn´t go well), and keep yourself accountable and focused on your goals.
water intake 5
Access your water intake notes on your mobile device by adding a shortcut. An icon will appear on the main screen of your device making your notes just a tap away.
With your note open on your phone or tablet, tap on the menu button (the column of three squares) and then select Create Shortcut.
water intake 6
Your shortcut will appear on the main screen of your mobile device.
water intake 7
You now have a completed and easily accessible habit tracker! Any updates made to a note are synced across all devices once saved.

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Fitness advice: Propioception, your first fitness goal

Fitness Advice: Propioception, Your First Fitness Goal

Once you start exercising, your first goal should be to improve your

Proprioception

From Latin proprius, meaning “one’s own”, “individual”, and capio, capere, to take or grasp, is the sense of the relative position of one’s own parts of the body and strength of effort being employed in movement. Proprioception, simply put, means “sense of self”. Proprioception is the capacity of the body to determine where all of its parts are positioned at any given time, and it plays an important role in the world of sports.
 
The International Association for Dance Medicine defines proprioception metaphorically as the sixth sense, extending the classical five senses to include the body. This body sense is more than just a feeling of movement. It is intimately tied to our feeling of muscle tone, perception of effort and, most importantly, our perception of balance.
 
A professional athlete has a high degree of proprioception awareness, just watch this:
 

While one’s proprioception may not mirror a professional athlete’s, working on your proprioceptive skills will make a difference in your day-to-day activities. There are a number of exercises to train your proprioception.

Balancing Exercises

Good exercises for proprioception development would be activities that challenge balance and equilibrium. Balance exercises help your body and brain to control the position. You can improve proprioception using a balance board, a Swiss ball, a Bosu or/and a medicine ball.
 

Strengthening Exercises

As you build strength in the muscles, the brain begins to understand the request of this strength more and more. As strength builds, it helps improve proprioception awareness with the mind and body and also allows you to continue/hold a movement or action longer in proper form.

Exercises While Closing the Eyes

You can gain the ability to inform and trust your muscles to perform different exercises with the eyes closed. This enhances the communication between the brain and the muscles so that you are able to perform activities properly without watching the movement take place.

Plyometric Movements and Drills

Exercise involving coordination and movement patterns enhance the kinesthetic awareness. Vertical jumps, running figure-eight patterns, change of direction drills and crossover walking help to establish the connection between muscles and nerves. As you are asking the body to perform certain movements, it trains the brain to respond to these movements.
 
It is always important to seek expert training support whenever possible. Work with a fitness professional or physical therapist with these types of exercises as they will be able to individualize a program for your specific needs, whether elderly wanting to gain a better sense of balance and basic day-to-day functions or an athlete wanting to enhance performance and prevent injuries.
 
 

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10 day challenge, 10 minutes workouts

10 Day Challenge, 10 Minutes Workouts

This is part of a conversation I had earlier this morning. I came to the conclusion that the truth is the best weapon to fight the nonsense of the fitness industry. I have nothing else to say today:

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