Avoid Negative Thinking

"If you want to change your circumstances, first change your thinking” – unknown

The only person who can stop you from achieving your fitness goals is you. However it’s important to have a support system to cheer you along the way. Friends, family and co-workers are usually your biggest supporters, offering words of encouragement and complementing you on your improvements. Conversely some will tell you that you’re dreaming and you’ll never accomplish your goals. This is usually because they themselves could never imagine themselves completing such a goal. These words of discouragement only become true when you believe them to be true.

While those around you may try to sabotage your success, your biggest supporter and your biggest enemy is yourself. When you tell yourself “I’m too tired to exercise”, or “working out is too hard”, or “I tried before and failed”, you’re impeding your own progress by acting as your worst enemy. The good news is you have a choice, and if you want to succeed choose positive thinking or negative thinking.

Learn to become your biggest supporter. If the thoughts that run through your head are mostly negative, your chances of accomplishing your goal are greatly reduced. By changing your thoughts to positive ones your chances of success greatly improve. Tell yourself you can, believe you can and you will accomplish what others may think is impossible. When negative thoughts enter your mind re-evaluate them and put a positive spin on them. If you tell yourself “I don’t have time to exercise” change your thinking to “I’ll reassess my priorities and make time for exercise”. Instead of saying “I’ve failed before and I can’t succeed” change your thinking to “I’m going to take small steps, follow my plan, and reach my fitness goals”.

In addition to changing your thinking, surround yourself with others who may have similar fitness goals and those who offer words encouragement, while spending less time with those who fill you mind with negative thoughts. Click here to get support carrying out your fitness goals.

Setting Fitness Goals

Did you set a fitness related goal this year? If so, are you on target to reach your goal? We are approximately ¾ of the way through this year. Are you ¾ of the way to reaching your goal? If not, don’t worry, it’s not too late to get back on track and make some major progress. Setting goals and staying focused are the two most important factors in sticking with a weight loss program, and the keys to success. Stop letting your goal slip away. Start by following these three simple steps:

Step 1: Set Reasonable Goals
First you need to define your goals. Figure out what it is you really want to accomplish. Are you trying to incorporate a regular exercise program into your lifestyle to reap the health benefits such as lowered cholesterol, lowered risk of hypertension and diabetes or lose weight and firm your muscles for the summer? Think long and hard about what it is you want to accomplish and why you want to accomplish it. Once you’ve done this commit your goals to paper so you can review them daily. Make sure to set a realistic time frame for achieving your goal or you’ll be telling yourself you want to get back to your playing weight for the rest of your life.

To avoid feeling overwhelmed, break your goal down into smaller micro goals. A four week period is big enough to show progress but small enough to handle. Trying to lose 30 pounds in the next four months may sound like a lot, but if you break it down to losing seven to eight pounds over the next four weeks, it becomes a little more doable and keeps you on track for your larger goal.

Step 2: Build Your Plan
After you have clearly defined your goal you need a plan to get from point A (where you are now) to point B (reaching your goal). If you want to lose weight you need to create a caloric deficit. One of the best ways to do this is to incorporate resistance training, interval training and slightly reducing your caloric consumption. Click here to get help building your plan.

Step 3: Stay Focused
Staying focused means reading your goals, exercising, and eating properly on a daily basis. On occasion you may miss a workout or deviate from eating proper, that’s okay. Put those lapses behind you regroup, refocus and follow your plan. Give yourself credit for each step of the way. Once you accomplish your four week goal reward yourself with something (a day trip, a night out, a pair of shoes, or whatever you’re into) for staying on track and then move on to the next four weeks.

Once you have a goal, the way to reach it is with baby steps. Follow your plan and get a little closer each day.

Burn Fat, Build Muscle, Get Results

A couple days ago I came across a woman doing tricep cable extensions followed by pec deck flys. Her form needed a little work so I offered my expertise. After talking to her I found out she was looking to lose weight. I recommended she include more compound exercises (exercises that use multiple joints and more muscles) in her routine to get faster results.

Whether you want to lose weight or gain lean muscle add more compound exercises in your workout to help you get the most bang for your buck and deliver faster results. While your diet, rep ranges and rest periods may change depending on your goals, the rule is the same, use more muscles per exercise and you’ll build more muscle and burn more fat.

Compound exercises aren’t only more effective they also save you time making your workout more efficient. Instead of doing a single joint exercise for your glutes, one for your quads and another for your calves, choose a squat. A squat will work the quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, calves, and your core all in one exercise. If you have a family, school, work or other activities on your plate, efficiency in your workouts is most likely in your best interest.

Compound exercises also transfer better to daily activities and sport performance. Not very often do you find yourself sitting and doing something that resembles a bicep curl. Our bodies are designed to work using multiple muscles simultaneously. Real activities require squatting, bending, pulling and pushing, which all resemble compound movements.

So compound exercises will help you achieve faster fat loss and build muscle quicker. They’ll save you time and improve daily function as well as sports performance.

Swap out some isolation exercises (single joint) for compound exercises (multiple joint) to add in to your routine include:

Leg Extension Squat or Bulgarian Split Squat
Leg Curl Romanian Deadlift
Lateral Raise Military Press
Pec Deck Flys Push Up or Bench Press
Bicep Curl Reverse Grip Pull down or Chin up
Tricep Extension Dip or Close Grip Push up

Burn Fat Fast

Your time is precious, and it’s important you get the most out of it. If you want to burn fat fast stop exercising longer than you have to? Instead of getting on a cardio machine for 30 to 60 minutes, performing steady state cardio (keeping the intensity the same the entire time), try a higher intensity program designed to maximize your time, giving you better results under 30 minutes, including warm up and cool downs.

Stop getting caught up on how many calories you burn during a workout. What’s more important is the amount of calories you burn after the workout is over. The extra calories you expend above your resting metabolism after a workout, is referred to as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption or EPOC. Because the intensity in a cardio workout has the greatest impact on EPOC, as exercise intensity increases, the magnitude and duration of EPOC increases as well. Therefore, when your perform high intensity workouts you will continue to burn more fat in the following hours than you will at a steady state low intensity program resulting in faster fat loss.

Use the Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) Scale to gauge your intensity while exercising

Level 1: Very, very, light

Level 2: Very light, Can maintain this pace all day long

Level 3: Light, but breathing a bit harder

Level 4: Starting to sweat a little, can carry on a conversation effortlessly

Level 5: Just above comfortable, sweating more and can still talk easily

Level 6: Can still talk, but slightly breathless

Level 7: Can still talk, but I don't really want to, sweating more

Level 8: harder, can only keep this pace for a short time period

Level 9: Very hard, want to stop

Level 10: very, very hard. An all out effort that requires every bit of energy you have.

This program can be done using any cardio machine. Each day can be done on a different machine. Choosing your favorite activities will increase adherence.

5 minute warm up – gradually build up from level 3 to 5

1 minute level 9

2 minutes level 6-7

Repeat 3 times (four sets total)

5 minute cool down – gradually from level 5 to 3

Total time 22 minutes

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Achieve Faster Fat Loss

You may know diet and exercise are the keys to weight loss. But what you may not know is what type of exercise yields the best result. Dieters usually turn to steady state cardio (cardio exercises performed at a steady pace) traditionally at a low to moderate intensity. If you want to lose body fat make sure you’re lifting weights. Several studies have shown weight training leads to greater fat loss when compared to steady state cardio training.

Canadian researchers compared two groups on the exact same diet with different training routines: a group that only did cardio exercises (1 hour a day, four days per week) and another group that only did strength training three days per week performing 10 exercises two to four sets of eight to 15 repetitions. After 12 weeks both groups equally increased their VO2 (the single best measure of cardiovascular fitness and maximal aerobic power). The cardio group lost lean body mass while the strength training group increased their lean body mass, lost significantly more fat and, increased their metabolism while the cardio group actually slowed their metabolism.

A similar study took three groups: a diet only group, a diet group that performed aerobic exercise three times per week and a group that performed aerobic exercise and weight training three times per week. After 12 weeks the diet only group lost just over 14 pounds, while the aerobic exercise group lost 15 ½ pounds (only 1 more pound). The group that performed weight training lost over 21 pounds (44% more than the diet only group and 35% more than the diet plus aerobic exercise group.

To get the most bang for your buck, a minimal time investment of three one hours sessions per week can do wonders for weight loss. You’ll not only achieve faster weight loss than you will doing cardio but you’ll also increase your lean body mass and improve cardiovascular fitness.Click here to get help building an effective workout program.

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