Health knowledge made personal
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The following is a guest post and does not necessarily reflect the views of exercisebasics.
If you're into your first week of
exercising regularly, you might have heard of the dreaded wall. Thankfully,
for any keen runners, the wall isn't physical. It exists as a mental
barrier which usually halts you in your tracks after 14-20 days of keeping fit.
Tiredness and fatigue usually bring down the wall, but boredom and
repetition will also prize you of crucial motivation. This is why you
need to incorporate variety into your exercise plan to give yourself the best
chance of success.
The problem is that
people identify a form of exercise or sport they can use to keep
fit and stick religiously to it. If you've found yourself in this situation,
you'll notice that the hunger to compete or set new goals will start
to wane within the first two weeks. The trick is to participate in two or
three sports or exercises and change elements of your plan whenever
you're getting bored of the same curls, lifts and cardio workouts.
As you linger on the edge of giving up
altogether, here's how you pull yourself back from the brink…
Change the game-plan
Breaking out of your routine is key. If
you're only lifting weights, you should look into using some of the other
pieces of equipment at your gym. Exercise bikes and rowing machines are perfect
alternatives as they test other areas of your body and allow you to build up
your reserves. For example, rowing still requires you to continuously pull a
weighted handle, but the movement also gives you an ab crunch at the same time.
It might also be that the setting is
sapping precious ounces of drive out of your system. Should this be the
case, work 20-30 minute jogs into your week to supplement the gym sessions, or
sign up to a football team at the weekend. You'll then find yourself
concentrating on new surroundings and using different muscles, which in turn is
likely to give you more complete results when you look in the mirror.
Recover
The only cure for fatigue is rest, but
a two to three day break is unlikely to revitalise you if you've been
preparing incorrectly. After your workout, allocate 10 minutes to stretching
and lightly walking off your exercise. Following this, you could perhaps take
on bodybuilding supplements like protein shakes, which contain vital nutrients to
aid muscle growth and repair.
Change the tune
Most gym-goers use music to summon
their inner-beast. An mp3 player could prove to be a useful tool for you over
time, but it needs to be full to the brim with fresh sounds to maintain its
worth. There's nothing worse than flicking through the first 10 tracks just to
find something that takes your fancy. A selection should be found within the
first few clicks if you've built up a strong library - allowing you to focus on
your workout .
Every week, pull up your list of tracks and decide which can stay and
which can go.
Of course, this is hard when you've got
a player with over 2000 tracks loaded onto it. In this case, construct
playlists featuring suitable gym music rather than hitting the shuffle
function. You'll then always have something else to concentrate on while
you push for the burn.
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