Each of us at least once planned to finally start doing sports on Monday. And after a couple of weeks, we found ourselves on the couch instead of the gym. But enough of this! Trainer with nine years of experience Ivanna Idush tells how to start doing sports, get into training and learn to enjoy the process.
Find personal motivation to exercise
To avoid giving up on training, it is important to determine why you need it. For some people, long-term health benefits are important. After all, it has been proven that regular physical activity prolongs life, helps maintain a healthy weight, and reduces the risk of a number of chronic diseases.
For others, the immediate pleasure of exercise is more important: an improvement in mood after training, the opportunity to relax and prepare for rest, the pleasure of movement and communication with like-minded people.
Others like to set specific goals and achieve them. For example, doing the splits, mastering a tricky roller skate trick, or beating a coach at tennis.
Choose a sport that brings you pleasure
You won’t be able to exercise for a long time by force. Therefore, try to find the type of physical activity that you like. Some people like calm, thoughtful activities with deep body work: yoga, pilates, stretching. Others prefer competitive sports: tennis, football, volleyball. Still others like to try new things and do dancing, boxing, or swimming.
Any activity is good because it automatically pulls others along with it. For example, you decided to master rock climbing, but quickly realized that you lack strength and need to strengthen your muscles. So, for the sake of an interesting and inspiring sport, you will also take up less attractive strength training.
Make your workouts comfortable
Kelly McGonigal in her book Willpower says that will is a finite resource. She recommends not wasting it in vain, but saving it for the things that really matter. In sports, this means minimizing all the additional obstacles that may arise on the way to training.
If you plan to start doing sports outside the home, think about the logistics in advance. It should be easy to get to the club. If you drive, make sure there is parking nearby. Walk – choose a club near your home or office so as not to waste extra effort on the road.
For home workouts, organize the place in advance. Find a convenient space in your apartment and gather the necessary equipment to make home workouts comfortable. The less effort you need to put in to start training, the better.
Start small
When you are just getting into the training process and are full of enthusiasm, you want to train a lot and intensively. This is a mistake: suddenly throwing a large load on an unprepared body, you will quickly get tired. In addition, this can lead to injuries. Therefore, do not rush and start small, gradually get into training.
The acceptable level of physical activity depends on your level of fitness. Listen to your feelings – there should be no painful sensations in the body. If you doubt that you are doing everything correctly, contact a trainer. He will assess your fitness and help you create a reasonable exercise plan.
Pay for a large training package at once
You’ve probably noticed: the value of paid services immediately increases. For example, you can find a huge number of free educational videos on any topic on the Internet. Only everyone has enough motivation to watch them. But if you buy a paid course with limited deadlines for passing exams, you immediately find time and energy for studying. This also works with sports. Therefore, studying for money is often more effective than for free.
Don’t despair even if you missed a couple of workouts
It happens to everyone. According to American trainer Joe Fried, the worst thing you can do after missing a workout is to try to catch up and increase the intensity of the workout the next day. This will only harm your body, make you tired and even cause an injury.
If you haven’t worked out for just a few days, just continue training as usual. And if you’ve missed more than two weeks, start exercising with light workouts. Listen to your body and gradually return to your normal level of activity.
Study in company
Kelly McGonigal in her book Willpower says that habits can be contagious. And this applies to both good and bad ones. If your friends hang out in bars all weekend, then you are likely to follow their example. And if your company has a tradition of jogging in the morning, eating right and actively relaxing, a healthy lifestyle will become a habit for you too.
So try to find a partner to exercise with. It’s more fun to exercise together. You’ll be able to support each other and avoid breakdowns: it’s harder to skip a workout if you’ve agreed to exercise with a friend.
Buy beautiful sportswear and equipment
Of course, you can run in old worn-out sneakers and do yoga on the bare floor. But it is much more enjoyable to do sports if you have comfortable clothes and quality equipment. For training in the gym, it is enough to buy sportswear and shoes. For home training, a mat, yoga blocks, dumbbells or a set of rubber bands will come in handy.