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Starting a fitness program may be one of the best things you can do for your health. Physical activity can reduce your risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer and even Alzheimer’s disease, improve your coordination, help you lose weight — and even improve your sleep habits and self-esteem. But, if you’re looking to get in shape and increase the amount of physical activity you do from day to day, it’s important to ease into these changes.
When you try to go from 0 to 100 too quickly, you might end up burning yourself out or even sustaining an injury. That’s clearly not what you want if your ultimate aim is to get fit. So here are some tips that’ll help you ease into a new routine carefully.
Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.
Michael Jordan
How to ease into a new fitness routine
Develop a Plan and Schedule
First of all, you’ll need to develop some sort of plan and schedule for how you’re going to push ahead. This will ensure that you’re not just playing things by ear and that you actually have some sort of routine that you want to stick to.
A schedule will help to keep you accountable when you’re getting started as well, which can be really important. As you’re putting your plan together, you may want to take account of your fitness goals, the time you have available and how to incorporate exercise into your daily routine.
Consider your fitness goals. Are you starting a fitness program to get the body of your dreams, to lose weight? Or do you have another motivation, such as preparing for a sports competition? Having clear goals will keep you motivated when the going gets tough.
Build activity into your daily routine. We all lead such busy lives, so that it can be difficult to find the time to exercise. But, if you are serious about your fitness routine, you need to schedule time to exercise in the same way as you would any appointment. Look at your diary for the week ahead and block out time for exercise. If you are struggling to block out time then build fitness into your every day routine: for example, walk to work, take the stairs instead of the elevator, walk on the treadmill while watching your favorite TV show.
Don’t Complicate Things when starting a new fitness routine
It’s important to keep things simple when you’re just starting out with a new routine of some kind. You don’t want to make things more complicated than they really need to be because that’s when you create unnecessary problems. Instead, try to stick to what matters most and don’t make the task of getting in shape any harder than it really needs to be.
Make it Social
If you want to make the task of working out and getting fit a bit more fun, you might want to get a friend involved. By turning your exercise into something of a social activity, you can stay on track, be held accountable more easily and simply enjoy the whole process more.
Choose activities that you enjoy and make sure to vary them.
If you don’t love the gym, then try dancing or aerobics. If you hate running, then go for a hike in nature. And try to vary your activities which will prevent you getting bored. Ideally, try to alternate among activities that work different parts of your body, such as walking, swimming and strength training.
Not everyone enjoys working out and that’s okay. You simply need to find ways to make it more enjoyable.
Use Gel Packs to Soothe Muscle Aches
When you start working out more often, one of the things that you might notice is that your muscles start aching and hurting more than they have done before. That’s just what happens when you use them and exercise them. In order to keep those aches and pains at bay though, you can use gel packs on them. You can find these at sites like accurategelpacks.com. If you have recently undergone surgery for an injury and are still having aches and pains, that cannot be explained by the exercise you’ve been doing, then now could be time to seek out a medical practice attorney. Read this post from Joseph Taraska if you want to learn more.
It’s also important to allow time for recovery between exercise sessions for your body to rest and recover.
Modify Things as You Go
Finally, you should remember that the plans you originally put in place don’t need to be concrete and unchangeable. There’s nothing wrong with modifying things as you go and improving your routines and schedules. That extra flexibility will be much better for you in the long run because it’ll be more sustainable and easier for you to stick to. And that’s always better than just throwing in the towel and leaving your plans behind.
Remember, it’s always best to be careful and to ease slowly into your new fitness routine. That doesn’t mean that you put these changes off or avoid making them; it just means that you switch to your new way of working out and being active in a way that’s going to be sustainable for you.
I hope you enjoyed this article about How to ease into a new fitness routine and have a look here for more of our fitness features.
I’m Julia, the Senior Managing Editor and I can’t wait to share some more articles with you again soon! In the meantime you can find more luxury style, lifestyle and travel inspiration on “The Velvet Runway” .
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