You have one life so why not build your dream body? Working out is one of, if not the best thing you can do for yourself. It teaches you discipline and builds you a great habit/lifestyle to have. If you are not disciplined and need help getting started, why not hire a personal trainer? Think you can do it yourself? There’s plenty of information out there on YouTube for free. For now, here is some advice on how to get started.
Do the hard work, especially when you don’t feel like it. Once you start building a routine, there will be days you will feel too tired, or just don’t feel like working out. Those are the most important days. If you skip one day, that’s fine. Your body might not be used to working out yet and it might just need the rest. However, you cannot make this a habit. The days you don’t feel like working out are the days you need to train your mind to go anyway. Build habits because once that’s done, it will become part of your lifestyle and built into your daily routine.
‘Cardio or strength training?’ Why not both. You can mix those together into your workout routine or keep them separate entirely. Do one in the morning and one at night. There are great benefits to both…it depends on what you want. Cardio really helps build athleticism, while strength training increases muscle size and strength.
‘Bulk or cut?’ It depends on your body type. If you’re skinny you’d want to bulk, which involves eating in a calorie surplus. If you’re overweight you’d want to cut by eating in a calorie deficit. It’s pretty straight forward, just remember to maintain high amounts of protein and you should be good. This can be done through drinking protein shakes or eating protein bars. There’s tons of different kinds of protein powder out there and it can get really confusing. If you just started hitting the gym it’s probably best that you don’t take any of that stuff. You should really just test yourself and see how far you can get without shakes and creatine.
After a few months or so, you can start implementing protein shakes to really boost your protein in-take. If you workout in the morning, take the shake 10-20 minutes before you start as a preworkout. And if you workout at night, take it soon after you finish; you don’t really need to take it before because you’ve most likely had 2-3 meals during the day.
‘Should I take creatine?’ Creatine is not something you necessarily need. Like protein powder, see how far you can get without it. After around 1-2 years you can implement it into your diet. 5 grams (1 scoop) a day is the recommended amount you should take. Drink it with water or any other kind of drink. When taking creatine you need to drink a lot of water so it can really do its thing. A gallon of water is what’s recommended.
‘Should I do high reps with light weight, or low reps with heavy weights?’ A mix of both is best. High reps with low weight help build strength and muscle memory. Just don’t use a weight that’s too light. 10-12 reps is ideal for this. Low reps with heavy weight increases the size of the muscle and really tests your strength. You want to maintain strong form when doing either to avoid injury.
‘How should I track PR’s?’ Make two lists of all the exercises you want to track. One will be heavy PRs, 1-2 reps. The other will be rep PRs, 10-12. Focus mostly on the rep PRs during your workouts and every few weeks or so spend the week on hitting heavy PRs. You can do the last week of the month as your PR week to help keep it consistent (basically every 3-4 weeks). This is good because it’s a great way to track your progress. The high reps will build the strength you need to hit those heavy PRs.
‘I’ve been working out for a long time, but I’m not getting bigger or stronger.’ That most likely comes down to you simply not eating enough and having a poor diet. It could also mean you do not train hard enough. If you’ve been working out for a solid year and seeing very few results, you’re probably doing something wrong. Compare what you were lifting 2 months ago to now. Is it the same or different? If it’s the same, you need to up the weight, even if it’s 5 lbs. Your body also needs lots of calories to build muscle so simply just increase your calorie intake and you should be good. For example, if you have 1 serving of pasta for dinner just have another.
That’s basically all you need to know about this. There’s plenty of more information out there to further get into. This is the best habit to have and adding it to your lifestyle will turn your life around for the better. Now it’s up to you to become your best self. Good luck.
