Ever had that feeling where you really can’t be bothered to do anything, let alone put your body through an hour of physical punishment. I have and I’m supposed to a ‘happy-clappy’ fitness professional. Truth be told, if I can’t tear my arse off the couch, then I won’t train. I’ve excepted that, sometimes its ok not be bothered. Granted it’s never gone more than two days, but if I’m not in ‘training mode’ then I won’t beat myself up for it. Far from it. I actually tend to go the other way and eat a load of crap while I’m at it. Which actually, motivates me to get my arse in the gym the next day.
Five reasons why it's important to exercise
1: To look good: Right, let’s be clear, if you’re wanting to start a new fitness regime it’s more than likely because you want to look good in whatever you wear. Which ultimately means you want to increase confidence and theres nothing wrong with that either. Feeling comfortable about your appearance will help with a lot of things; feeling confident and respected at work, be more outgoing, help you meet new people (possibly a new partner), wear new outfits you may normal not. Whatever reason it is, be confident in the real reason. I have clients say they want to ‘feel fitter to climb the stairs’, for health reasons, to increase energy etc, which granted I’ll except, they’re some legit reasons. But really, 99.9% of the time, the main reason for starting a healthier lifestyle is to look good.
2: Increase heart health: Theres loads of studies demonstrating the benefit of exercise on heart health which ultimately means less risk of heart disease and heart failure. Cool thing is, it doesn’t just have to be long slow and sometimes painful running to get some cardio. By lifting weights, you can get the heart racing higher much faster than a 45 minute jog. Even if you don’t want to ‘bulk up’ (which doesn’t just happen overnight from doing weights by the way folks), just aim for higher repetitions, lower weight and do less sets.
HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) is being bounced around a bit a the moment too. You can read more on that here. But its another great way of getting the heart rate up quickly into that ‘fat burning zone’ in a reasonably short session time. HIIT is basically pushing your body hard for a short period of time, say 10-60 seconds with a short amount of rest in between sets of exercises.
3: Decrease mental stress: A little bit of stress for everyone now and then is a good thing. The stress you put on your body through exercise, increases level of the stress hormone cortisol, which helps aid in providing us energy and to burn fat. Prolonged levels of cortisol can be bad and can linked to other organ disfunction. But the post exercise high is well worth it. After your workout you’ll decrease cortisol and increase all those ‘happy hormones’ like dopamine and serotonin. Other great ways of decreasing cortisol are eating better, yoga, meditation, or basically anything that chills you out, like hobbies you enjoy. For me it's reading.
4: Meet like minded people: The social benefits of exercise are becoming more recognised now. The point is, sometimes it's hard to motivate yourself. So knowing there's other people you can look forward to seeing in a class, makes the pain of exercise much more bearable, knowing that others are in it with you. Also, at home not everyone can be supportive. So hanging out with like minded people like a Personal Trainer or Fitness & Nutrition Coach can give the missing support and motivation needed to push you through barriers.
5: Learn something new: The mind thrives on learning an developing. Ever watched a kid learning something new, it’s amazing. Challenge yourself and your body, by learning new movement patterns which will help with injury prevention, increase strength and help get through any plateaus. Seek help from a fitness professional, so they can mix up your training programme or workout. If they’re any good, they’ll help with the nutrition side as well. So, if you know what better choices there are, the easier it is for you.
If you’re finding hard to get those results then get in touch and lets have a chat to see how we can help.
Phil Snowden
The Fat Loss & Performance Coach
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