Fitness Fundamentals

By Bill Covert, personal trainer

Getting into shape and maintaining good conditioning involves a lot of important factors. Not everybody responds to the same technique, eating style (notice I did not say diet), or exercise.  But fitness is one of those things, that unlike life, you always get out of it what you put into it. You can love someone and they might not love you back. You can do a great job and show up early everyday and not be recognized for your efforts.

But with fitness, like a math problem, it always works! Two plus two ALWAYS equals four! If you eat properly and exercise with consistency, and make the right decisions, your results will come EVERY TIME.  The process is SIMPLE, But that doesn’t mean it is EASY.  So we need to make the process as easy as we can for ourselves. We need to have a few fundamentals in place at all times. These fundamentals include:

1. Staying motivated

2. Avoiding negativity

3. Having a clear vision

4. Maintaining consistency.

Especially for someone that is starting a fitness program for the first time, or even for someone who is an experienced athlete and has taken a long period of time off, the beginning can be the most challenging. So, getting motivated is the first step. We all have different reasons for embarking upon our fitness journey. It may be that we simply want to look and feel better. Or It may be because our doctor told us we need to lose weight or improve our blood levels. It may be because we’re getting married or have an event that we want to look good for. 

Regardless of the reason, you’ve decided to change yourself. This could be challenging, and even unnatural. As we age, our body is going to change, and the average person gains a pound a year since they graduated high school.

So, we need to motivate ourselves and refuse to accept what the aging process would normally do. It’s important to remain motivated regardless of the challenges that will always arise, like our busy schedules, challenges at work, with family, or with unexpected bumps in the road. We need to be able to work around these challenges and continue on our journey regardless of what those challenges are. Obviously, we need to make time to fit in our exercise, and that may mean getting up earlier in the morning and getting more organized. 

Making More

It also involves MAKING more out of the time we have. For instance, one way to make more out of our time is to prepare several meals at a time so that we can “grab-and-go” with our healthy foods which we prepared the night before.  I’ll talk more about that later. We need to remember why we chose to get in shape, and never forget that reason.

Plan every day and include this part of our day with Fitness as if it is part of our job. We need to fight against natural urge to skip a workout and sit in front of the television after a hard day. We need to always remember that fighting against the tendency towards laziness, although challenging will always be worth it.

Avoiding negativity

When I talk about negativity, I’m really not talking about negativity from other people. I’m talking about the negativity that we place upon ourselves. Thoughts that it’s going to be too difficult to lose this 50 lbs, for example.  We need to simplify things, and rather than view it as 50 lbs, view it as 10 lb at a time. Once you’ve lost the first 10 then you only have 40 lbs to lose and so on. We need to try to make things more manageable mentally.

It’s also important to avoid things that can discourage us. If you happen to be out of shape, you need to fortify yourself with positive affirmations. Let your goals be a source of strength and comfort. If you are out of shape, find something to wear to the gym that you look best in, for instance, if you’re out of shape, maybe wear a baggier your shirt, and something that you feel comfortable in.

Again, let your goal be what you focus on rather than the fact that you have let yourself get out of shape. Congratulate yourself that you made a decision to do something about it, and KNOW with absolute certainty that your success WILL come as long as you continue with this process. The process will not let you down like other things in life.

VISION:

Whether you are a beginner who has never been on a serious training program in the past, or even if you are an advanced athlete that has let him or herself go, you must have a vision of what you want to become. You must ask yourself how much do you want to weigh? What is the reason you decided to make this change? What is the time frame in which you wish to achieve these goals? Have a clear vision of what you want to look like and go after it.

If there was a time in your life when you were happy with the way you looked, then find a photo of yourself when you were in that condition and put into your mind the idea of getting back into that same condition.

Maybe there’s someone you admire who is in the condition that you wish to be in. Get a photograph of that person and post it on your bathroom mirror, to remind yourself of your vision. Every time you go to the gym, keep in mind what this vision is. Never go to the gym without having that vision in your mind. Break it down into smaller parts, and never do a single exercise or a single repetition without that vision.

To break it down further

Never do a single repetition without knowing the exact muscle you are training and affecting with that repetition. Be accountable to your own vision and program. Take regular photographs, perhaps once a week, and keep these photographs where you can refer back to them.

Take your body weight regularly and record this number, but use the same scale every day and weigh yourself first thing in the morning on an empty stomach so that as much as possible your reading is accurate and you’re recordings are as uniform as possible.

Do not get discouraged if the number on the scale does not always move in the right direction, because many factors could be involved, for instance you may have put on a little bit of muscle weight along with losing some fat. Maybe you weren’t as tight with your eating habits for that particular week.

The important thing is that you keep these regular measurements, and that means the bathroom scale, the mirror, and using a tape measure to see if you gotten smaller in the areas of the body that you want to become smaller, or if hypertrophy (muscle building) is your goal, then measure to see if your arms have gotten bigger, etc.  Look at yourself in the mirror. Are you looking more toned, tighter, and/or has your midsection gotten smaller? 

Most importantly

Do not be discouraged if you have a week where your measurements weren’t what you wanted or expected. You may just need to make some small adjustments. And that is something that you have the power to do. Never let anything get in the way of your vision. Whenever possible, take the time to watch motivational videos, or read motivational material, just to reinforce your vision. Watch motivational movies, and watch or read about the stories of the incredible transformations that people have made.

Do whatever it takes to stay motivated. With your vision, picture yourself inside your goal body. Live as if you are already at your dream weight, or wearing the clothes that you wanted to fit into. Hold on to this vision at all times. This vision is something that you OWN.  It BELONGS to you.  It is a true POSSESSION that no one can take away from you.

CONSISTENCY:

As I mentioned earlier, we are all going to face challenges of time, work, family, illness, travel, and unfortunately the unexpected mishap or bump in the road. Sometimes events present themselves that we can do nothing about, so we must prepare for those times. We need to make sure that when these difficult times come to an end we resume our program immediately. The body will forgive you.

Do not allow one day to make you give up on your program. Remember, aside from family and career, fitness truly IS the most important thing. All the success in the world means nothing if you are not healthy enough to enjoy it. So be consistent with your workouts, you’re eating habits, and yes, your mental state of readiness, willingness, and drive.

PLAN:

Because anything worth doing is worth putting all your effort into, you need to plan for your success. This includes planning on when you’re going to do your exercise, and very importantly, when and what you will eat, and that you eat the proper foods.  Planning on which foods to eat and how, is paramount.

Do not leave your eating up to chance. If you are serious about your goal, you must plan on what you are going to eat, when you’re going to eat it, and how you will prepare it. Yes, it can be a little lonely at times, this process of eating properly, because you may need to discipline yourself away from going to restaurants, especially fast food restaurants, especially before you reach your goal.  

The best way to eat properly is to prepare your food in advance. You may want to prepare four or five meal servings at one time so that as I said earlier you can “grab-and-go.”.

One way I like to do this is to get several identical and stackable Tupperware containers and portion out several different servings of a meal at the same time. This way you can just pack the meal and have it ready to go for when you’re at work or traveling, and you are not leaving anything up to chance.

When you are serious about getting in shape, you need to know exactly what went into this food and how it was prepared. Was there oil and salt in there? Is this a low fat cut of meat? What was added do this food? You need to know, and the best way to know is to prepare the food yourself.

NO PHONES:

I’ve seen a lot of changes since I began in fitness many years ago, and the worst change I’ve seen is the use of smartphones in the gym. The only reason to use a phone in the gym is to make a quick call, or to take a photograph of your progress. Other than that that phone should remain on the side. The people that are checking their social media during the workout are working so far beneath their potential, and they’re cutting their productivity in half.

Also, during your workout, there should be no reason to stop and have conversations. Sure, it’s fine to say “Looking good Tom,” or something like that, but if you stop and have conversations you’re letting your heart rate drop and just slowing your progress. Remember you are in the gym to do a JOB for yourself. Don’t let anything get in the way of this.

The first 30 days:

This may be just my own approach, but I find it extremely effective. When I take on a client I encourage them to follow the program to as close to 100% strictness as they possibly can. The reason I choose 30 days as a marker, is because I know that the program works. And to clarify, ” The Program,” simply means eating correctly, doing the exercises, and to maintain consistency.

The purpose of this 30-day guideline, is so that you can see results FAST.  The faster you see results, which by the way can be as much as 15 lbs in that 30 days, then the more motivated you will become to continue on with the program, because you will prove to yourself that it actually works. This will help you to stay positive and on course.

Above all, believe in yourself.  Believe in your vision, believe this journey is WORTH IT, and above all NEVER GIVE UP!

Best in Health,
Bill Covert
Fitness/Nutrition Coach

Follow us @neighborhoodtrainer