If you are like most people, you made yourself a promise that this year you would get fit, and you started well, going to the gym three times a week, or doing that DVD workout in front of the television. However, life somehow got in the way, and now you are lucky if you manage a gym session once a month. If this is sounding familiar, then it’s time for you to kickstart your old fitness regime.
Getting fit
You may be thinking, why bother? Exercise, if you can drop it so easily, is patently not for you. However, you need exercise to help you live a long and full life, enabling you to do all the things you want to do without pain. Exercise will improve the way your body works, tone your muscles, and make you look and feel more attractive. Why would you want to give up on achieving that?
There may have been a good reason why your old fitness regime did not work for you. Perhaps you did not see results as quickly as you would have liked; maybe the exercises you chose did not excite you. A lack of motivation is the key reason why many people give up on fitness regimes, so this is the first area you should address. To motivate yourself, write down what it is about your body that you want to change, and why you want this change. Do you want to tone up or lose weight? Write down how achieving either of these will make you feel, and look at it every time you feel your motivation waning.
Exercise can be much more enjoyable if you engage in it with a friend, and this should help you to stick to a defined fitness regime. It may be easy to let yourself down by deciding not to go on that run on a rainy Sunday afternoon, but you should find it much more difficult to do the same to a friend. If you do not have a friend who wants to go exercising with you, look at local fitness groups to find a running mate.
Change up the exercises that you are engaging in. This is not just good advice to keep you interested. Engaging in only one form of exercise often means that you are only working on one part of your body, such as building up your leg or arm muscles, to the detriment of the rest of your body. Also, eventually, you will reach a plateau, where the exercise fails to deliver the same kind of results that you have been used to. Taking part in different types of exercise should deliver a full-body workout and ensure that you continue to see results.
If the thought of exercise really fills you with unease and disinclination, but you are resolved to try, then maybe you could start small by utilizing some on-trend fitness ideas. These could include workouts that last only four minutes, five minutes, or seven minutes. Everyone can spare this amount of time several times a week, so there is really no excuse for not giving them a go. Be aware, however, that these short workouts mean there is a significant ramp up in the amount of energy that you have to expend, so it is vital to protect yourself against injury by warming up and cooling down. If you do end up causing damage to yourself through these kinds of intensive workouts, or indeed any type of workout, then you could aid your recovery by wearing special clothing such as a compression shirt, which you can find at http://www.tommiecopper.com/men/tops. These types of clothes provide support for your torso and vulnerable areas of the shoulders and neck, aiding muscle recovery and helping to keep you dry and cool.
If you need time to get back into your old fitness regime, you may be tempted to wait until an easy day to renew your gym membership or dig out that old DVD, but the truth is that a delay may kill the idea entirely. If you have been inactive for a while, it is, in fact, best that you start by taking it easy with exercise. Act immediately towards getting fit by going for a walk. All you need is comfortable clothing and, more importantly, comfortable walking shoes to do this, and you will be enjoying a non-strenuous but entirely beneficial cardiovascular workout.
Stop looking for excuses why you cannot reactivate your old fitness regime, and begin today to get yourself back in shape and on the way to a fitter, healthier you.