With winter here and the warm weather leaving us, it can be difficult to motivate yourself to get out of the house and go to the gym. It can seem like a lot more effort to get to the gym in this climate. But then, by starting now, you can start making good habits and make getting fitter next year much easier.
We’ve listed our best tips to make fitness and exercise as easy as possible.
1.Make it a habit.
Like anything, starting can be the easy part. Many people start with good intentions and start going to exercise classes three times a week. After the first couple of weeks, three times becomes one, and before the month has finished, they have stopped altogether. This is because a habit hasn’t been formed yet. A habit is formed after about 30 days of doing an activity consistently. The powerful thing about building habits is that while they may be difficult to establish, once you’ve been doing it for long enough, it becomes effortless and you don’t have to think about it. This means that a lot of the effort you use actually to make it to the gym will no longer be used. You’ll find yourself working out as just another part of your day.
2.Work out at home.
If life just gets in the way, and you don’t have time to make it to the gym, or perhaps the gym is too far away, consider doing home workouts. Using an app like Aaptiv on iTunes allows you to follow along with a guided workout from your house. Picking a workout from running, weights, yoga, or more, means you can get variation in your exercise, and even a 30-minute workout each day can make a huge difference.
3.Focus on compound movements.
Compound movements are those that use multiple muscle groups at once, such as the squat, deadlift, and bench press. These give you a lot of stimuli as they are the exercises that you can use the most weight on. This also means you’ll get the best results for the time you’re putting in. The opposite of this is doing isolation exercises, which work just one muscle at a time. These two types of movements can be used together; for example, you would use the bench press as your main upper body movement, and then do tricep extensions to hit this body part on its own to finish the workout.
4.Meal prep
Working out is only a part of the puzzle. For many, it can be the easy part. To make your nutrition as easy as possible, we recommend meal prepping as the main thing you can do. Spend a bit of time to plan out your main meals for the week, keeping it as simple as possible, and focusing on healthy protein, fats, and carbs. You can then prep your meals in bulk and freeze them for the week. This removes the need to think about what you’re going to eat every day, and allows you to focus on getting on with your day knowing you have a healthy option with you.