Many people start their fitness journey with the intention of changing their body shape but don’t do enough of what is required to achieve it. While you may be turning up to your sessions and have a relative structure with your diet, doing it half-heartedly is only going to lead to frustration.
It is important to ask yourself if you are working hard enough. Are you pushing yourself? Are you going above and beyond? Are you making the required sacrifices? Getting in shape is not easy and it requires a lot of work and progression over time.
If you are trying to achieve a better body on your own, it can be very easy to slip into cruise control and not progress each week. It is also difficult to identify the areas you should be improving to achieve the best possible result. So, what are these areas and how can you make sure that you progress?
Training Intensity
When it comes to your training sessions, you need to make sure that the quality is going up each week. To do this, you should be taking shorter rest periods, prioritising perfect exercise execution, performing each repetition with slow tempo and making sure you are hitting the targeted muscle group. This is not only going to increase your energy output, but also give you the best chance of building muscle.
Extra Session(s)
Are you training frequently enough? This is a key question you should be asking yourself. While recovery is a vital part of the process, it is also harder to make progress from one to two sessions per week. So, if this is you, aim to add another session to your week so that your energy output for the week is higher and therefore increase your rate of fat loss and muscle building.
Lift More Weight
Once you have learned how to execute exercises perfectly, you should then focus on gradually increasing the weight you are lifting. To gain muscle and lose body fat, you need to make sure that you are consistently overloading the muscle(s), week by week so that it is working harder, meaning that the breaking down is more intense during the session and therefore new muscle tissue is being developed during the eating and recovery phases. Lifting heavier will also increase your energy output, leading to a higher chance of fat loss.
Prioritise Your Time
To get in shape, you must be prepared to make sacrifices. This does not mean abandoning your social life or taking time off work, but it does involve living your life with more control and staying consistent with the tasks required to reach your goal. So, it is important to be organised and have a schedule that works for you. By doing this, you are pushing yourself because you are prioritising your training and nutrition over other events that may slow down your progress.
Be More Active
Although training and diet are both vital, they are not the only things that will help you create that crucial calorie deficit to help you lose fat and change your body shape. Adding in a sustainable form of cardio to your routine is going to help you burn those extra calories that will place you in a deficit of 400-500 calories.
This does not mean you have to jump on the treadmill every day. It means finding a form of cardio that is low intensity, enjoyable and easy on your body. The most popular form is walking a minimum of 9-10k steps per day, which can burn anywhere between 300-400 calories, depending on the individual. Aside from the fat loss benefits, going out for a walk is great for your mental health and allows you time to de-stress from certain situations. Make this part of your daily routine and it will hugely benefit your progress.
Summary
So, if you want to get in the best shape of your life, you must be prepared to push yourself in a number of areas. These include training intensity, doing more sessions, gradually lifting more weight, prioritising your time and being more active. If you consistently levelled up in these important tasks, you would find your progress improving dramatically and your goal being closer than you ever imagined.
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