6 tips for those who are going to the gym

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Are you going to sign up for the gym again? Just started doing it? These tips will help you train properly.

Success in the gym, as in any aspect of life, comes with an understanding of the fundamentals. Now it is fashionable to try something new, exotic, unusual, but all working techniques have long been invented. The life hacker invites you to familiarize yourself with the basic principles for beginners, which are applicable in many sports. Don't waste time discussing "this cool new sports supplement" or boggle your head with gourmet meal plans. Just follow these six truths and you will get results.

1. Focus only on the long term

Most people train with short-term goals in mind. This is not entirely correct approach. Do you understand what is the difference between short term and long term?

Your goal is not to lose / gain 10 kg in three months. Your goal is to recover and try to maintain your health for the rest of your life

Your goal is not 150 kg on the bench press. Your goal is to become that guy who never skips a workout

Your goal is not to sacrifice everything for the best results by spring. Your goal is to get fitter next year. And even sportier in a year

Avoid thinking about short-term results. Look at things from a broader perspective, and all these intermediate results will come naturally.

Stop acting like a healthy lifestyle is something special. You can go to the gym regularly. This is fine. This is not a sacrifice. Not an obligation. This is fine.

With a long-term perspective, you will notice positive changes along the way. By seeing these results, you will know that everything is going well.

2. You need a workout schedule

Many people practice irregularly because they try to think about what they shouldn't think about at all. When would I come to the gym next time? Here are the typical reflections of the modern spoiled person:

Will I have enough motivation to exercise when I get home from work?

Will I have enough free time to work out today?

Will I have enough willpower to get up early, have time to do everything and leave time for the audience?

It turns out that in our time for training, it is imperative to be motivated and inspired. How about you stop seeing sports as something that stands out in your everyday life and make it part of your life, part of your daily plan? Make a workout plan and follow it. This is a very important point that distinguishes a beginner from a professional. This distinguishes a person who takes things seriously, from a snowdrop who comes to the gym a couple of times before the beach season.

Many of those who visit the gym do it three times a week. This is quite enough. So I will go to the gym on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. At seven in the evening. Early on Saturday. Here's my schedule. Now I don't have to think about choosing a day to train. I don't sit and wait for a burst of motivation. I have everything planned out, and visits to the simulator are included in the plan for the day. In the same way as you track the travel time to and from work. It's very simple, and there is nothing special about it.

Exercise schedules become even more important when tough times begin in life. It happens to everyone, it is part of our being. You may have to. The schedule will remind you of the next workout after a missed workout. Without a schedule, you might wake up with the knowledge that you haven't been in the gym for four weeks.

The quirks of life can be misleading. This even happens with world-class professional athletes. The bottom line is, they go back to training anyway. Missed class on Thursday because of work? According to the schedule, the next workout is on Saturday. See you in the hall.

With the schedule, you will be in control of your life, not the abstract level of your motivation.

3. Focus on basic exercises

Too often in the gym there are people of "modest" physique, trying to pump the outer head of the biceps in isolation in the absence of biceps as such. Something may come out of this, but in general (and especially for beginners) there is a simple truth: you need to focus on the most complex, basic exercises that include as many muscle groups as possible. The snatch and clean and jerk are not just indicative and the only exercises in modern weightlifting (there was still a bench press before 73). The whole body works there. Just by doing at least these two exercises, you will get incredible results.

The following exercises can be recommended as basic ones:

• bench press;
• deadlift;
• with a barbell;
• push;
• jerk;
• pull-ups;
• from the floor;
• push-ups on the uneven bars;
• twisting on.

Optionally, this set can be supplemented with several slightly more specific options, but you need to remember the essence: exotic isolated exercises are done when a good one is already formed, there is muscle mass and you need to give it a more correct, aesthetic look. Read the biceps example above again.

4. Hurry - make people laugh

For many people, “exercising well” means either exercising very intensely, experiencing subsequent muscle soreness, or training to failure.

It might be commendable. The aspiration and ambition in sports is just wonderful, but for a start it will be useful to create a certain base, a foundation.

Almost everyone in the gym strives to approach the maximum weights as quickly as possible, and this is a very big mistake. At the initial level, you need to give your body time to get used to new activities for itself, to learn to cope with gradually increasing loads. Accelerate a little, and you will not have injuries and pain.

Training to failure is a good way to exhaust yourself, but not build a solid foundation initially.

At the end of each workout (and each exercise), you need to keep the strength for a few more repetitions, while focusing on gradual but stable progress.

This principle works in any exercise. For example, you do a barbell curl for the biceps. In the first workout, you need to take very little weight. Get comfortable with the exercise, adjust the technique. It's easier to do this. Increase the weight a little the next week. It will still be easy for you, and that's okay. Your muscles, joints and ligaments will thank you again.

It has been a few weeks now, and you are still lifting weights with which you have no difficulty. All the while, you are increasing your potential. And then one week you feel that the ever increasing weight on the bar was given to you hard, but you coped with it confidently - precisely due to the accumulated potential. And you have a margin of safety and strength for further progress, because you did not train to failure (that is, you could have done more repetitions).

5. GRADUAL weekly progress

This point needs to be emphasized. People walk steadily to the gym, do the same exercises with the same weight, and at the same time do not feel an increase in strength. There are runners who do the same distance every day but fail to lose fat mass.

A simple thought experiment can explain the essence of this error. You are in a quiet room. The fan suddenly turns on. It is quite noisy, and this sound is extremely annoying to you. But time passes, and the sound that seems so prominent and loud is already perceived as background noise. You almost stopped noticing it. Your brain concluded, “This is probably normal in this environment. So I won't pay much attention to it."

In the case of training, the same thing happens. You have run 2 km. Then again 2 km. And again 2 km. The body believes that such a load is the norm, and, moreover, quite quickly. In a simplified model, that is, without taking into account the factor of changes in nutrition, the disappearance of dynamics in physical activity leads to the stabilization of body weight and strength indicators.

Want to see your progress every week? Make progress in your workouts every week.

There are many options here, but the rule is one: increase the load gradually. You will not be able to add 10 kg to the barbell weekly for a long time. Your potential will not keep up with your impatience. However, progress is not only driven by an increase in working weight. You can increase the number of repetitions or approaches. You can reduce your rest time. There are many options - Google will tell you.

6. Keep a workout diary

What can be counted is possible. How will you adhere to the previous rule if you cannot remember the indicators from the last workout?

There used to be a notebook and a pen. There is now Google Play and the AppStore with thousands of sports apps to track your training activity. Applications are good in that, based on the entered data, they are able to build visual graphs, according to which anyone can easily track progress.

Action plan for today

• find a gym in your area (you probably know a couple, but somehow there was no time to go there);
• based on the operating hours of the hall, amend your diary (three days a week, 1, 5 –2 hours is enough);
• arm yourself with a notebook and a pen, or put a workout log on your smartphone;
• make a training plan focusing on basic exercises;
• start with small weights;
• gradually increase the load each week.

Good luck with your workout.