Are you trying to make a change in your lifestyle to become more fit? Its tough to find a place to start up, even if you used to train and just stepped away from it for a while. If you read some of the other articles you may already have some vital information on how to achieve Steady Strength. Let me give you a really quick review on the secrets of how to start a healthy lifestyle.
There are three basic things that will hinder or help you as you make changes in your life. Ignorance is a factor that will keep you from even trying to do new things. Let me reiterate that I DO NOT mean that to sound demeaning or bad. Everyone is ignorant about lots of things. The purpose of Steady Strength is to inform you in a practical way that you can relate to. When you have the basic knowledge then you will have the confidence to get up and do it!!! Working out and being healthy is not always easy. That’s why you need to find your motivation. When you figure out what that is then set short term and long term goals in order to see the results. When you start seeing your first results you won’t want to stop. Lifestyle can be the hardest thing to change. It is the ultimate habit to break. That is why you have to be progressive about it. You can’t expect yourself to change everything in your life over night. Be realistic with yourself and start with small healthy choices. Those small changes will add up!
Everyone’s goals will be different concerning their muscles. Some of us want to look like the hulk. Others may want to be very trim and aerodynamic. Either way, we all have muscles and to be healthy you have to exercise them. Doing resistance training is one type of exercise that involves your muscles exerting force against external objects. Exercising your skeletal muscles is a great way to increase your metabolism. It has many other healthy qualities for all age groups and sexes. Cardiovascular training is another type of exercise that puts a positive level of stress on the heart muscle and lungs. The purpose of the heart is to pump cells to the lungs to be filled with oxygen, and then to all parts of the body. If you don’t have oxygen then you can’t live! It’s a basic necessity. In order for you to be healthy your heart must be efficient. American’s are not exactly known for having the greatest hearts. It’s the #1 cause of death in the U.S.A ! Let’s take better care of our hearts people!!!
There are two types of cardio. Intervals are when you do short bouts of high intensity work separated by low intensity. An example of this is doing sprints. This makes your heart rate go up and down. Its a great way to use fat as an energy source. Endurance is a steady medium intensity exercise like running or biking for a long distance. This gets the heart rate up which is good. The body will use stored sugars (glycogen) as the main source of energy for this activity. The best workout plans will incorporate both resistance training and cardio training in any form. When both of those types of training are used together properly, any of your health or aesthetic goals can be achieved.
When you’re not sweating you still have to be health conscious. Nutrition has to be viewed as an extension of your workout plan. “You are what you eat”, is the simplest way to look at it. If you eat fried, greasy, fat food then your body and health will reflect that. If you eat lean, nutritious, wholesome foods, then your body will love you for it! You can workout all you want, but if you don’t put the right things into your body the results just won’t be nearly be as good.
You may be starting to workout for the very first time and that is GREAT! Some of you may even be advanced athletes that have just taken a break from intense training. Either way you should all start up again in the same boat. The only difference is that the more advanced individuals will progress more rapidly, and that is totally fine. When you start off, you should find a comfortable location other than the gym. The reason for very beginners is because you are trying something new and you need to build confidence and focus. For more advanced people, you should stay away from the weights in the gym at least for the first week. This is a good way to break that temptation. In either case, if you can’t exercise using your own bodyweight, then you have no business lifting extra weight anyways.
When you are starting your workout, bodyweight exercises are a great way to do resistance training and cardio. Build a progressive workout that keeps you active for at least 6 days of the week. This will get your body used to doing somethings on most days. It will build a habit of working out and keep you mindful of making time in your busy schedule for this. You can use the 1 week workout that I created for you, or you can create your own that is similar. There are many ways to do it so don’t think that your wrong if you’re not doing the same thing. Every exercise has a way to make it easier or more difficult so no one has any excuses! Watch the videos on the exercises if you are not sure about the form, or you want to know how to change the difficulty.
Once you start to train and make healthy changes in your life, keep taking steps forward by learning new things to improve yourself. Don’t forget to come back and review the secrets of how to start a healthy lifestyle. It can be helpful to get back to the basics every once in a while. Now go have fun working out and enjoy the results that your body gives you!!! If you want to inspire other people to start training leave a comment with your story.
About Adam Pegg
