Jes Reynolds…Your Fitness Coach

There are numerous gym tips I can share to help you achieve performance or fitness related goals.  There are so many in fact, that I feel it’s important to first take a general approach, and you can then insert the previous tips I’ve shared into your each step.

1) Determine a clear and specific goal.

2) Evaluate yourself in the three areas of fitness – exercise, nutrition, psychological.

3) Use your goal to create a step-by-step road map that includes incremental victories and ultimate.

4) Find a partner with similar goals and motivation.

5) Re-evaluate yourself each week and identify areas that need improvement.

These basic gym tips are the true steps to achieving any fitness related goal.  For example, if you have a general weight loss goal, but you don’t evaluate yourself in each of the three areas of fitness, you could be totally missing that one final piece of the puzzle.

Think of this, you work hard in the gym all 5 days during the week, you eat relatively healthy and get lots of sleep, but for some reason when the weekend comes, it’s a no holds barred food binge.  You know you’re sabotaging all your weeks’ hard work, but for some reason you keep doing it, week in and week out.  You missed one of the most important aspects of achieving fitness related goals, the mental aspect.

Olympic athletes do it, why shouldn’t you?  It’s the practice of visualizing yourself achieving your dream.  Whether it’s to run a marathon or lose 10 lbs, this mental practice makes all the difference in the world.  In addition to visualizing, you should also ask yourself questions like:  Why am I doing this?  Why am I sabotaging myself?  Do feel like I’m constantly denying myself?  Am I still afraid of being fat?  Am I running away from the ‘fat kid’ I was in middle school?  These questions should elicit feelings and answers that help you understand more about yourself and the things motivating you to either achieve or sabotage your goals.

I hope these gym tips have helped give you insight into what it really takes to achieve your fitness and performance related goals.  As a personal trainer, I’ve worked with hundreds of clients in each of these areas, and I guarantee that as you master each of these tips, you’ll succeed in reaching your goal.

 In the first two gym tips I discussed, we addressed the first two of three crucial components to health, fitness, or athletic success: mental preparation and nutrition.  Our next tip is focused on the third component, which is exercise.  In order to achieve fitness goals, especially those related to athletic performance, you should incorporate a progressive resistance exercise program into your plan.

A simple explanation of progressive resistance is that of Milo of Croton and his ability to carry an adult bull on his shoulders, which obviously requires amazing strength.

Milo (Greek: ?????) of Croton was a 6th century BC wrestler from the Greek city of Croton in southern Italy who enjoyed a brilliant wrestling career and won many victories in the most important athletic festivals of ancient Greece.[1][2][3] In addition to his athletic victories, Milo is credited by the ancient commentator Diodorus Siculus with leading his fellow citizens to military triumph over neighboring Sybaris in 510 BC.

Milo was said to be an associate of Pythagoras. One story tells of the wrestler saving the philosopher’s life when a roof was about to collapse upon him, and another that Milo may have married the philosopher’s daughter Myia. Like other successful athletes of ancient Greece, Milo was the subject of fantastic tales of strength and power, some, perhaps, based upon misinterpretations of his statues. Among other tales, he was said to have carried a bull on his shoulders, and to have burst a band about his brow by simply inflating the veins of his temples.

…Legends say he carried his own bronze statue to its place at Olympia, and once carried a four-year-old bull on his shoulders before slaughtering, roasting, and devouring it in one day.[2][3] He was said to have achieved the feat of lifting the bull by starting with a newborn ox, and carrying it everyday.[12][13]

^{Source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_of_Croton}

The take-away from this story is that each day Milo lifted just a little more than the day before until he achieved an amazing goal.  This is the definition and purpose of progressive resistance exercise. 

A well designed fitness plan recognizes that exercise is a systematic method of applying stress to the body.  Your body responds to that stress during the recovery process by adapting, and adaptation prepares you for the next workout.  In order to achieve a goal, you should plan to increase or change the type of stress applied to the body during workouts (progressive resistance exercise).  By changing number of reps, increasing amount of weight, limiting rest periods, or changing the type cardio you do, you’ll be incorporating progressive resistance into your plan.

Remember, the body adapts during the recovery period, not during stress.  If you neglect to include recovery time in your workout plan, it may inhibit your ability to progress and improve at the rate you desire (psst…one of the crucial gym tips). 

Including progressive exercise in your plan and evaluating yourself from a weekly, monthly, and yearly perspective will prevent you from becoming discouraged about poor performance such as a bad game or a disappointing workout.  As you use this theory you’ll begin to appreciate the times when you’re at your best and encourage yourself through times when your motivation is low or the china business of life takes time away from your training schedule.

Progressive resistance is one of my favorite gym tips, and one which I use to determine the type of workouts I do each day.  It’s also an excellent concept to remember when recovering from injury or any type of surgical procedure.

Of course it’s important to know which workout ideas will help you achieve your goals, but sometimes the most valuable gym tips are those you’ll use when you’re living life outside the gym.  If you truly want to succeed, learning to create a healthy nutrition menu that considers your specific goals is a must.

Define your goal

It’s important to realize that a nutrition plan for a marathon runner is going to be entirely different than a plan for weight loss, bodybuilding, or sprint distances and recommendations should be tailored to your body and the responses you see and feel after shifting your nutrition.

Once you’ve determined your goal, make sure it’s defined clearly, using S.M.A.R.T. Goals is the method I recommend using to ensure goals set properly.

Create a step-by-step plan to achieve your goal

Like we’ve talked about in previous posts, effective goal achievment happens when you break your goal down into increments and work one step at a time towards the final result. Studies show that one reason diets fail is the lack of sustainability over time.

S.M.A.R.T. Goal Nutrition Example

A common goal among fitness enthusiasts is to lose 10 lbs. Basically, this is a smart goal, but it doesn’t include a time factor. Let’s use the example of wanting to lose 10 lbs in 8 weeks as a goal. Next, we create a map that leads us to that goal. While exercise will be a significant contributor to acheiving success, learning to create a healthy nutrition menu is paramount.

First, determine your current caloric intake.  Second, create a food log and track what and how much you eat for the first week.  Ad at least 3 20 minute workouts per week.  Cut out pop, juice, and late night snacks.  Follow these guidelines for 3 weeks and assess your results.  Did you lose weight?  Did you gain weight?  Once you understand your response to making a few small changes, you can adjust your healthy eating plan and exercise activities to accomplish more.  Remember to stop and asses the effect of the changes you’ve made before continuing forward for the entire 6 weeks.

I’ve also written an article that explains the importance of creating a healthy nutrition menu and why it’s one of the most important gym tipsyou can utilize.  Educating yourself in the subjects of nutrition and exercise will propell you forward so I encourage you to read this and offer me feedback or questions if you have them.