LACK OF A FITNESS GUIDE?  FOLLOW ME.

You are that bank manager who walks into a gym after a busy day in office, that business lady who has been up and about  but remembers her workouts in the last hour  and decides to pop in at fitness hub. The instructor smiles at you like always and points to the treadmills. Same boring routine, right? 

Guess what, you are wrong. According to Kenya Center for Disease Control and Prevention, adults will need at least 150 minutes of moderate physical activity or 75 minutes of vigorous activity twice a week alongside strength training sessions. That’s just the survival limit.

But now looking at you, with fitness goals that require dedication and commitment, you will need more sessions to gain required effectiveness. Here is a breakdown on these routines.

CARDIAL ACTIVITIES

All exercises that  increase your heart rate and breathing are always a key component of your daily work out. Whether skipping ropes, treadmill, spin bike, session classes, cross trainer. The goal is to get moving each living day.

If your gym offers sessions each day, you may combine two routines. Maybe skip ropes before an aerobic session.

Fitness is a journey, and cardial benefits vary with your goals and targets.

But you eventually achieve.

STRENGTH TRAINING.

I once gave gave a lady a toning routine and she made it clear that she never wanted muscle bulk.

However, that’s a myth propagated in a lot of gyms. Strength training exercises build and tone muscles.

Cardial may reduce the weight, but toning gives you the desired shape. They go hand in hand.  These exercise are designed for specific body parts like chest, arms, back, thighs, butt, shoulders etc. it is important to include them in a fixed daily routine.

However, and I repeat, it is important not to work the same muscle groups back to back.

For example if you do dead lifts, it is so wrong to do one arm rowing exercise the next day.

Alternate your target muscle groups.

FLEXIBILITY

Very important fitness component. At the beginning of each work out, whether cardial or strength training, warm up your body with at least 10 minutes of light activity.

Like light spin session. After work out spend 5 minutes doing the same activity you warmed up with.

If there is a trainer around, let them stretch you slowly.

Each and every major muscle group.

MASSAGE

At one point, you have walked into a fitness station, asked about the charges then.. ‘How much without massage?’

There you go, while always minus massage?

Massage is known for its ability to help the mind and the body relax. That alone makes massage important.

Deep tissue massage makes it more advantageous because it focuses on deeper layers of muscles and the fascia. The therapist firms pressure into these key areas and gets them to release.

It offers stress relief, eases pain, it eases movement by repairing damaged muscles, ligaments or tendons often obtained from working out.

Most importantly also, it lowers heart rate and blood pressure.

So twice a week, it is recommended for you to walk into a massage room .

CONCLUSION.

With these basic components for your fitness routine, your week gets simple. However, it is good to balance between your muscle fatigue and strength portion.

Stay tuned for more fitness tips

Content : KEVINFITNESS

3 MAJOR BENEFITS OF A TAEKWONDO SESSION.

Taekwondo training means exercising

 

If you train in taekwondo you

....run

....and jump

....and leap.

…you kick and punch.

And you learn complicated patterns which test your coordination.

In short...

...You exercise your body.

And if that physical exercise sounds hard....don't panic. Anyone can get fit. We did!

After all no-one is fit when they are born.

Not even Bruce Lee!

Every single fit person has got that way....

....by exercising.

And the taekwondo benefits emerge gradually week by week. Training session by training session.

Taekwondo training develops physical strength

Taekwondo training develops a lean, strong physique.

One of the physical benefits of taekwondo training is that it strengthens our muscles, bones, joints, tendons and ligaments.

That's a lot of words that sound good but....

What does that really mean?

Well let's start with strong muscles.

Training in taekwondo strengthens all your muscles from top to toe. Strong muscles help to support your body. They help to hold your body upright keeping your spine in the right position.

If your muscles are strong, day to day tasks like gardening or carrying the groceries are easier. If your muscles are not strong and you try to lift something heavy, you are much more likely to tear something.

Ouch!

And what about strong bones?

Aren't bones strong anyway?

Well actually bones are a bit like muscles. They are living things.

Use them and they get stronger. Sit too much and they get weaker.

And weak bones break more easily.

For ladies it is especially important to try to keep your bones strong. This is because women often suffer with osteoporosis (weakening of the bones) as they get older.

One of the physical benefits of taekwondo is that all that leaping and jumping helps to make our bones stronger.

And what about tendons, ligaments and joints?

Why do you want these to be strong?

Well imagine you are walking along the street and you don't pay attention and your foot slips off the side of a step and your ankle turns sideways.

Ouch!

Now if you are not used to exercising. And your joints are weak. And the ligaments around your joints are weak. Watch out. It could be a really big Ouch!

And a long time on crutches!

But what if you train in taekwondo? And your ankle joint is strong and the ligaments around it are strong?

Chances are the Ouch! won't be anywhere near so bad!

Stress relief- one of the physical benefits of taekwondo

All that kicking and punching?

Why is that good?

Two words sum that up for us.

Stress Relief!

Stress relief is one of the huge physical benefits of taekwondo.

Kicking a target or punching a bag is amazingly good for letting stress and tension out of your body.

Sure it's hard work.

And you can be exhausted afterwards.

But you feel relaxed and calm.

In the days when we have stressful jobs. We often walk into taekwondo training sessions with our heads pounding after a difficult day.

Then we train.

And because taekwondo requires so much mental concentration we cannot think about anything else.

Or worry about our day.

And as we punch and kick the stress flows out of our bodies.

And by the time the training session is over,

we are transformed.

Peaceful.

Calm.

And in a better state to deal with our lives.

And for us the combination of physical tiredness and mental relaxation means a good night’s sleep!

Taekwondo helps with weight control

And lastly....

....we touch on something that many people battle.

Obesity.

Or being fat.

We all know that if we are overweight we are more likely to get diabetes, heart disease, liver disease....

The list goes on and on and on.

And controlling our weight is hard with so much fattening food around these days.

One of the physical benefits of taekwondo training is that while you are kicking and punching and running and jumping and having fun.

You are burning off fat.

So it's easier to keep control of your weight.

And you have a body that feels good.

And looks good too!

HOW TO NEVER MISS A GYM SESSION, EVEN WHEN YOU DON’T FEEL MOTIVATED TO ATTEND.

I have said it again and over in my previous blog, that if you want to become the kind of person who never misses their work outs, creating systems is the answer.

We have that parent with kids, the manager with job overload, the doctor, the lawyer, the nurse, the teacher. Let’s see how everyone can really make it to the gym at the end or beginning of a day despite every possible challenge.

In my Situation, how am I going to get to the gym?

That’s where systems come into play. Some days you just really, really don’t feel like it and systems make it simple, repeatable and essentially a no-brainer.

Your very successful system does this by taking all the decision-making OUT of the result.

E.g going to the gym 3x a week in the morning.

To achieve that, you really have to remove all the little decisions in the way of your goal.

Like if you plan to work out in the morning, take 10 minutes the night before to

Set your alarm for morning

Put a water bottle beside your alarm clock

Pack your gym clothes in a bag and put them by the bed

Put your gym shoes by the door

Put your car keys by the front door

Getting up becomes the hardest part, but you can always beat that by setting your alarm to snooze at 10 minutes interval.

So you are sure as long as you take 10 minutes to set up your system the night before, it’s highly probable that you will get into the gym the next morning.

Avoid being motivated

We all agree motivation is good.

But it’s dangerous to solely depend on motivation to attend workouts.

Motivation is like a flaky old friend that loves to drop in unannounced.

It can visit when you look in the mirror at the end of a work out, or get to the last hole on your belt.

But, as usual, it’s conveniently gone when you come home after a long day at work and need that extra push to get to the gym. Until next time.

So motivation is really unreliable.

When we plan our fitness goals, we think motivation will inspire us to get ready when the time comes. Wrong.

There is a simpler way to make your plans more powerful, and make it more likely that you will get to the gym when you say you will.

Obstacles.

There are those days that unexpected wrench gets thrown in the middle. Your kids may have an emergency, stay late for work, or get sick.

Sometimes when you perfect your system, it becomes easier to overcome the expected obstacles. Like a lack of motivation, feeling tired or simply being unprepared.

But for the unexpected obstacles, they get you down. You start worrying about the goals you set and how you won’t achieve them. I once said that in order to achieve your goals, set up extremely short term objectives and fit them in a system. Then completely forget about your goals and focus on your objectives.

You finally achieve.

When the big set-backs set in, you will overcome them within a short period of time.
Try that.

In short, build your own system by asking yourself these 4 questions.

1.       What is the result I want to accomplish?

2.       What are all the things I need to be able to do that thing?

3.       How can I prepare all those things ahead of time?

4.       What obstacles might I face-and how can I overcome them?

Then test it!