Tip 6: The Mind-Muscle Connection
You might be asking yourself right now, “What’s the mind-muscle connection?” The mind-muscle connection is when you focus your mental attention towards the muscle group you’re working out. This helps the muscle fibres perform better and, consequently, resulting in a better workout.
The second question you might have would be, “How can I achieve mind-muscle connection?” Start by concentrating on your muscles that you’re working out and imagine them contracting as you work out. This will help build a connection between your mind and body. Hence, with each workout and reps, make sure that you use your mind to move the muscle with intention.
Tip 7: Patience and Persistence Is Key
Most people would work hard on their goals for a maximum of two weeks and when they don’t get the results or feel discouraged along the way, they quit. Patience is extremely crucial when starting your fitness journey because greatness doesn’t happen overnight or in just a few months.
There are going to be days where you’d feel like you’re not making progress or the scale says you’re not getting any lighter. Believe me, this is also part of the process. You must be persistent with your goals. Don’t hope to see results in a short amount of time because, in doing so, you’d only be discouraging yourself.
Instead, be patient, set realistic expectations for yourself, and be ready to expect a few setbacks on your progress.
Tip 8: Longer Workouts Doesn’t Mean a Better Workout
At the start of your journey, you might take a longer time to finish your workouts most likely because you find them hard to do or take long breaks in between each exercise. In due course, these workouts might become easier and you’d likely add more workouts into your daily training.
Though you may feel capable of doing more, this could potentially set you back in terms of muscle mass and overall progress. As you train longer, your stress hormones that help control your energy and metabolism would start breaking down your muscle protein for more energy in your body.
Training intensely for more than two hours would turn into overtraining and can cause loss of muscle protein. For the best results in your training, spending about 60 to 90 minutes is ideal.
Tip 9: Making Sacrifices
One of the hardest things when starting your fitness journey is making the necessary sacrifices such as diet, time, and personal fun. Changing your diet might be the hardest among the three. however, as you progress in your workouts you’d naturally start changing your diet.
As you work out, you’ll start to understand what types of food makes you feel more energetic and which food might not sit right with you. Just like that, an elimination process of unhealthy food begins.
The next big sacrifice would be your time. If you’re a beginner to this journey, it’s advisable to schedule a fixed time in your schedule, whether it be before or after your daily activities. Having a fixed time in your routine ensures that a specific time is made purely for you to work on yourself.
Finally, and probably the hardest for those who love going out, you must learn to say no to certain plans that come in between your workout times. But, learning to say no might be useful not only for those who need to allocate time for their workouts but also for those who are constantly pressured into doing things.