With a new year just around the corner, it’s the perfect time to reset your workout routine. Millions of people have already started to work out and exercise to meet their resolution of staying active or losing weight.
But, getting out of your comfortable routine and into the gym can be challenging, especially when you are new to the gym and exercising. And, to maintain workout in your daily routine, it is necessary you start on the right track.
With all the chatter about magic workout to do or the perfect amount of time to spend in the gym, it’s hard to know where to start. But, don’t worry! We’re here with some beginner-friendly training tips that will give you a head start on your journey towards an active and healthier life.
1. Diet Like You Mean It
Many people believe that achieving a healthy and better-looking body is 30 percent training and 70 percent diet. But, it is 100 percent committed to both.
Why work so hard transforming your body only to feed it with high calorie, low nutrient, and poor food? And, spending an hour in a gym is not as important as what you do with the rest 23 hours. Also, dieting always doesn’t need to be scary. You can still eat good and tasty food, but you need to make smarter choices. Like instead of processed food, eat proteins and vegetables. And, try having chicken with quinoa and green beans instead of pizza.
2. Keep The Posture Right
How your posture is during the exercise and lifts has a significant impact on your body. And, every wrong move you make while lifting weight takes you one step closer to a spinal injury. If you are not a professional trainer or not being guided by one, you must keep your lower back slightly arched, head and neck in a neutral position and your chest up.
A strong core is the base of a healthy spine. If your core is not strong, your spine doesn’t have any support. So, no matter what lifts and movements you’re doing, engage your core. With this, you’ll use your core muscles that protect your spine.
3. Do Compound Movements
Usually, when you enter the gym for the first time, you are drawn straight to complex exercise. You mostly isolate a single muscle instead of a muscle group that slows down the muscle growth. So, it is always better to use multiple muscle group exercises like squat, bench press, shoulder press and pull ups with a slow and controlled movement for fat loss and rapid muscle gain.
If you are beginners, choose exercises that use at least half of your body. You should build up your endurance before you start to focus on one particular muscle set.
4. Control Your Lifts
Patience is the key to fitness. So, when you see people lifting more weight than you, don’t just copy them as it’ll lead to bad form.
You won’t achieve anything by lifting more weight; it’s the control and focus that makes the difference. You have to take care of every angle and technique to get results from an exercise. Which means, the better you can contract each muscle group correctly during your lift, the more your muscles will grow. For better results, your efforts need to be controlled and focused.
5. Focus On Your Muscles
The muscle growth is not all about an extreme workout, but you need to focus your mind on the muscle you’re training if you want good results. Flexing your muscles, trying to lift with imaginary weight, and trying to create a bonding between your brain and muscles can help you visualize and develop the target group muscle.
This mind training develops a better control over muscles and at the same time it tricks the muscles to feel stronger and perform better. Also, it is a great way to maximize a workout.
6. Squeeze
It is often seen that people work harder than required but they don’t get that impressive results. If you are one such people, the chances are you are missing an essential part of almost every exercise –contraction. Contraction is the principle of lifts that is widely ignored and rarely focused on.
