Ways To Get Back Into Fitness Following The Christmas Break

Outline Your Expectations From The Very Beginning

It’s important to outlay your pre-existing expectations and goals before entering any new fitness regime. This plan or idea will give you something to fall back on when you inevitably start to lose motivation further down the line.

Don’t be too hard on yourself, realise that after such a long break and loss of momentum it’s difficult for anyone to get back into positive healthy habits, but not impossible. Realise you’re not alone, but the key is to just turn up. Get yourself over to the gym or track, because the hardest part is getting started. For those of you that have already been before, you can focus on how amazing you feel post-session, or the benefits it has for your body and mind.

People workout for different reasons, you need to identify your reason for working out as that will provide you with the motivation you need to sustain the whole session. However, motivation is temporary, but habit forming and creating fitness routines will give you momentum so that it doesn’t take any willpower to perform the session. It will help to pre-determine your exercises, time and place that you’re working out, this leaves nothing to chance and makes it harder for you to find an excuse to neglect the routine.

Working out in brand new gym clothing can mentally make all the difference, you just feel more up for the session when the fit is good, so make sure you make use of these Nike discount codes, to save you some money in the new year.

New Beginnings

Adjust your mindset, remember this is an excellent opportunity to start again fresh and begin a healthy new years resolution. Begin by starting off slow and build up the workout intensity over time. You don’t want to push your body too hard initially, first create a detailed plan of which exercises you want to perform, for how many reps, sets and consider the time if that’s relevant to your exercise. Having a clearly defined plan will provide you with your own roadmap towards success, a guide to achieve your goals.

The Right Nutrition

You’ve probably heard before that looking good and feeling healthy is 70% food and 30% actually working out, well this is mostly true. 70% of weight loss comes down to changing fundamental dietary or eating habits and 30% percent is from exercise. Now this doesn’t mean exercise isn’t important, it’s just that the majority of people neglect this key aspect of the equation. The majority of people eat fast food or processed meals because they have a lack of time while they’re working. The answer here is meal prepping, this is a surefire strategy to ensure you’re getting the right nutrients including your five a day, every day. You can eat the foods you want and save money along the way. You just need to plan ahead and It will save you time if you meal prep at the beginning of the week, for the whole week.

It Always Helps To Have A Partner

You might be thinking you have to start this New Years resolution by yourself, but we’ve found it’s always better with a friend, with them by your side you also now have a newfound mutual responsibility to turn up and get the session done. They will motivate you when you feel like you have nothing left to give and further down the line they’ll thank you for inviting them on your fitness journey. It makes a workout feel like you’re just meeting up with a friend, it’s a great opportunity to catch up and socialise.

Always Stretch

Most people don’t realise the importance of stretching until it is too late, if you don’t know what we’re talking about then this usually happens when you get a little older when your body isn’t so forgiving. Stretching is an essential part of any workout and it’s the best defence for preventing potential injuries. Just 5-10 minutes of stretching before and mostly after you workout will increase your range of motion, improve your posture and lengthen out and relax your muscles after they have been worked tirelessly.

Finally

Always try and make exercise fun, don’t ever feel like you have to, remind yourself that you GET to do exercise, some people have lost mobility and no longer have the same range of motion as they used to. Remember how privileged you are but also try to gamify your sessions through the idea of progressively overloading your exercises to get to the next level.
Reward your progress with healthy treats that make you want to hit new targets and progress in your session.

Progressive overload is the idea that to grow or improve muscle mass you must try to make the set harder by adding more weight, reps, sets or time in motion to each exercise, this way your muscles adapt to the increased intensity by growing in size. Also no one is forcing you to perform a particular exercise, so make sure to choose one that you actually enjoy waking up for in the morning but then you’re more likely to stick with it for the long term.

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