Knowing why we exercise and how it affects our body’s composition is just as important as seeing and feeling the benefits exercise provides. By pushing ourselves and making exercise part of our daily lives we can see better results and have a better chance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Here are our 10 top tips to getting the most out of your training:

1. Up the ante

Intensity is the most underrated variable, aim to train outside of your comfort zone at least once a week. This doesn’t mean crazy training like a paratrooper, but if you allow your body to adapt to a training regime and never push it a little it will cease to have to compensate by improving its overall ‘fitness’.

2. Don’t stick to what you know

The definition of fitness encompasses muscular strength, agility, flexibility, cardiovascular capacity and muscle-to-fat ratio. By finding enjoyable ways that suit you, and which address all these aspects of fitness, you will keep your mind fresh and your body in good shape. Address only one or two, and soon you may become bored, injured or unmotivated.

3. Rest

You don’t ‘get fit’ working out, you gain fitness resting. The body needs some downtime to adapt (aka ‘get fit’) to the work you have asked it to perform on the ‘road’ or in the gym/pool.

4. Create a routine

Motivation has to be worked on as much as any other aspect of your fitness. Find a reason that will allow you to make ‘fitness’ a part of your everyday life, not a chore. Once this occurs, you don’t need to find motivation, just somewhere to enjoy your physical fitness regime.

5. Make the most of weight training

Unless you are lifting more than around 60% of what you could totally lift once (1 repetition maximum) when you are weight training, you will not build muscle. Lifting light weights at high repetitions is just a form of cardio, so why not go for a run instead? Or lift proper weights and enjoy the many benefits of lean muscle.

6. Learn how exercise affects your body

Take some time to learn about what the type of training you undertake is actually doing to your body. Would you eat a food you knew was not going to help you meet a fitness goal? Probably not, so why work out in ignorance?

7. Don’t binge exercise

Binge exercising is bad for your body and motivation. By binge exercise we mean that burst of motivation you may experience where you head out every day for a week on long runs or for epic sessions of group exercise, only to collapse in a burnt out heap after 5 days. Ease your body into a routine that is sustainable and enjoyable, but which still involves a high intensity session regularly.

8. Don’t jump into ‘fitness fads’

If it sounds too good to be true and costs a lot of money, it is probably not going to be something that works and will be unsustainable as a long term part of a healthy, sustainable workout program. Keep it simple. The habit of enjoyable exercise will be something you wonder how you did without.

9. Make your life more active

If weight loss or body composition is part of your fitness and health goals keep in mind that we live in a society that is structured to make us unhealthy! We have labour-saving devices and sedentary jobs that remove much of the day to day calorie burning that kept our parents and grandparents lean. Our food is processed and packaged to make it taste the same, but with little goodness. Find ways to get those calorie burning activities back into your life and taste real food again.

10. Keep it fun

A combination of determination and fun habits will lead to a healthy body and lifestyle; don’t worry if you don’t end up looking like the plastic people in ads on TV. They are probably digitally enhanced, airbrushed and full of dietary supplements that make them look and feel unhealthy anyway. So forget the oompa loompa tan, shiny skin and make up when you workout and go have some fun!


Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikebaird/482031103/