Resistance training is something that pretty much everyone should be doing. While doing cardiovascular exercise (running, cycling, high-intensity walking etc.) can help you in several areas, such as improving or maintaining fitness, performing resistance training has an even higher number of benefits.
These include a better shape to your body, increased muscle strength, better balance, better posture, better flexibility and stronger bones. This can then lead to improving other areas of your life too, such as your confidence, energy levels, overall mood, performance at work, and relationships with other people.
As a result, many people see those benefits soon jump into a resistance training session. However, without knowing what to do, how to do it, how often to do it and when to do it, resistance training can become a complicated, intimidating, confusing and overwhelming experience. People don’t know where to start and can soon put themselves at risk of giving up before they even get going. But how can you fix this? Here are some important points to remember when you first start resistance training
Follow A Plan
When you first start, it is essential that you are following a simple, structured and effective plan that is easy to read. If not, you are going to be wondering around, doing a bit of one exercise, a bit of another and then finish too early without pushing yourself. Not having a plan that gives you the exercises you need to be doing, as well as the frequency and intensity at which you should be doing them, will make you become lost very quickly.
Find someone, whether it be a personal trainer or a friend who knows plenty about resistance training, and ask them to provide you with something to follow, whether it be a structured workout or some exercise ideas, so that you can get off the ground early. Once you do so, you will find that you become more comfortable in the gym, you will become more experienced, you will enjoy it more and, most importantly, you will start to see results, provided that you are executing the exercise correctly and that your nutrition plan is in line with your fitness goal(s).
Hire A Trainer
One of the best things you can do when starting out in the gym is to hire a personal trainer. As mentioned before, it can be very easy to become overwhelmed as a result of not knowing fundamental points about resistance training. Furthermore, many people do not have the time to research these things due to work schedules and other lifestyle factors.
A personal trainer makes the process a lot easier and simpler for you by taking care of your training and nutrition. This is through creating structured plans that are easy to follow, developing your confidence, knowledge and overall performance in the gym, and providing you with a nutritional plan that is sustainable. In addition, trainers are key for improving your exercise execution so that your sessions are effective, you reduce the risk of injury and you get great results as soon as possible. By providing you with all this, trainers allow you to focus your time and thoughts on other areas of your life, whilst making great physical and mental progress at the same time.
Take Your Time
In the modern world, people want to achieve things as quickly as possible. Research has found that human patience has decreased and that the demand for fast solutions has increased. When you are aiming to get in better shape, it is very important to remember that progress takes time, so long as you are doing the right things. Depending on your goals, achieving a better physique requires months or even years of consistency and dedication. So, although you can make great improvements in your first year of training, do not get disheartened if you are not yet where you want to be. Celebrate the small wins and make sure that you keep progressing.
This also applies to your performance in the gym. Too many people try to lift too heavy, too soon, and consequently, make limited progress and increase the risk of injury, which can lead to a sustained period of no exercise altogether. Before you start to increase the weight, it is absolutely essential that you master the execution of the exercise first. Once you do this, you will then hit the target muscle much more effectively and prevent doing damage to your body. You can then gradually increase the weight as you get stronger. Patience is key, especially when it comes to performance and results.
Be Consistent And Enjoy The Process
Once you establish more patience, it is then vital that you are consistent with your training and that you enjoy it, in order to make good progress. If your training sessions are few and far between and you despise working out, do not be surprised if your progress is not what you want it to be. In order to improve your body shape, you need to be consistently performing 3-5 resistance training sessions per week, depending on your goals and training level, for a significant period of time. This, combined with an effective and sustainable diet, will be essential to reaching your fitness goal(s).
It is also important that you find a way of enjoying your training. This may only happen once you become more experienced and confident, but many people love the challenge of pushing themselves during their training sessions and thrive off the results they see with their own physique. They also find working out to be very beneficial for their mental health, as it is a chance to forget about other areas of life and focus on making great improvements with their body, as well as improving their energy levels, mood, performance and self-confidence. If you enjoy the process and the challenge, you are more likely to stick to it.
Starting resistance training can understandably be intimidating for many people. However, by incorporating these strategies into your routine, you will find that you will have a clearer, more structured routine that you can stick to over a long period of time. And by doing that, you will soon see huge progress, both with your body and with your life.
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