In the Netherlands, there are over 1700 gyms with approximately 2.5 million members collectively. Unfortunately, not all of them are active athletes. Many gyms rely on sponsors, individuals who faithfully pay their membership fees each month but never set foot in the gym. These dormant members once took the step to sign up and make a change in their lives. Somewhere along the line, things went wrong. Read our 10 tips to get through life not as a sponsor, but as an athlete.
Tracking Progress
There’s nothing as motivating as seeing your own progress. Make it measurable and keep track of it for yourself. If you want to lose weight, measure where your weight was when you started and track the progress. If you want to gain muscle, measure your body fat percentage and track your weight. But also measure the size of your arms and legs using a tape measure.
Additionally, you can also track your progress with photos of yourself. There are various ways to do this. Find the best method that suits you and track your progress. It’s faster than you think.
Setting Goals
Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, said the Cat. I don’t much care where, said Alice. ‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.
Alice in Wonderland
Does this sound familiar? It’s a snippet from the movie Alice in Wonderland. The message is clear: if you don’t have a goal, then it doesn’t matter which direction you take. But it doesn’t end there. Make your goals SMART, meaning: Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, Realistic, and Time-bound. This way, with the end goal in mind, you create small intermediate goals to work towards. Each step enables you to get closer to that end goal.
Realistic and time-bound can initially be challenging if you have no idea what your body is capable of. However, start with them anyway and adjust if necessary if they prove unrealistic.
Learn About Nutrition
When you engage in fitness and strength training, it’s crucial to provide your body with the right tools to achieve the desired results. For example, if you want to gain muscle but don’t consume enough protein, you may miss out on results or take longer to achieve them.
On this site, you’ll find dozens of articles about nutrition. Complex, scientific, verbose? Yes, it can be. The subject matter is inherently complex despite the loud claims of self-proclaimed gurus who claim to have the simple solution. It may mean spending a few hours gaining information. However, is that much? Spending a few hours reading to get much better results from the gym where you spend 6 to 8 hours a week seems like a very good investment and ultimately saves time. The same applies to information about training methods.
A Realistic “Okay” Schedule is Better Than a “Perfect Schedule” That Isn’t Feasible
So, you’ve learned about nutrition and training methods and found or created the “perfect” nutrition plan and workout schedule. You plan to train 6 times a week, with two sessions on three days so you can do cardio in the morning and strength training in the evening. Every morning, your breakfast will include 8 egg whites, and you’ll eat a total of 8 meals per day, including salads with chicken and tuna. You manage to stick to this for three days until eggs and tuna make you literally sick on the fourth day. You’ve only lasted a week with your nutrition plan. The second week starts, and you’ve already given up on nutrition “because it’s already messed up.” You manage to keep up with your training a little longer, but after missing three workouts, the barrier to going to the gym gets higher.
You can quickly feel guilty if your self-imposed schedule isn’t met. This demotivates and raises the barrier to continue. Therefore, make sure you have a schedule that is truly achievable. Of course, you can demand something from yourself like more training and healthier eating, but don’t overdo it. You achieve much more with a schedule that is “Okay” and that you can maintain for years than a “perfect” schedule that you barely last three days or weeks with!
Don’t Forget to Vary
The human body is designed to adapt to specific situations and always seeks balance. This optimal balance is called homeostasis. This means that if you want to achieve muscle growth, you need to break this balance. You can achieve this by varying your activities. Variation can be applied in both cardio training and strength training. If you do half an hour of running, try to increase the intensity. When doing strength training, vary the number of sets, reps, and repetitions. You can also vary the types of exercises you perform.
Determine the Right Sequence
It goes without saying that you should always do a good warm-up. This way, you prevent injuries and can sustain exercising for a long time and achieve results. When doing strength training, it’s important to train the large muscle groups first before moving on to the specific smaller muscle groups. The main reason for doing this is because of the energy demand of the large muscle groups and often the compound nature involved in performing these exercises.
If you have a muscle group that lags behind the rest, do that muscle group first. A good example is Arnold Schwarzenegger. When he arrived in America, he had very small calves compared to the rest of his body. His way of dealing with this was quite peculiar but extremely effective. Arnold cut off his trouser legs to be confronted with his small calves every day. He would then start his workouts with his calves. He called this the priority principle.
Limit Cardio
Humans are not built to run marathons or to walk long distances. Our bodies are simply not built for that. If your goal is to lose weight, you can use cardio training as a supplement, but real weight loss happens in the kitchen. When you do excessive cardio training, your body can become hormonally imbalanced and store extra fat as reserves for the prolonged activities it’s subjected to. Limit your cardio training to short interval sessions and remember that you lose weight by creating a negative energy balance.
No Time? Do a Full Body Workout
In our busy society, time to exercise is very scarce. If you have little time and get the chance to go to the gym, train your entire body. This way, you keep the efforts on your muscle groups balanced and can make overall progress. To do this effectively, limit the number of sets you do. It’s important to give yourself enough rest when you’ve trained your entire body.
Train Together
As we mentioned in the introduction, many gyms have a large number of sponsors. The chance that you’ll become a sponsor of your gym is much smaller if you train with someone. Suppose you lack the motivation to drag yourself to the gym one day; your buddy will help you get there. And vice versa. Often, you’ll also benefit from having a training partner in the gym because you keep pushing each other’s limits. Your training partner might have stronger legs than you, or you might have a stronger back. By challenging each other in the gym, you both progress.
Get Adequate Rest
When you exercise a lot and eat well, there’s a third component that’s important, and that’s rest. Your muscles produce a lot of lactic acid, which leads to muscle soreness, and to recover from this, you need rest. You can promote this by taking a sauna. A sauna helps to increase your blood circulation and can flush out the lactic acid formed more quickly. Another way to flush out the lactic acid is to take a short walk the day after your training.
Also, make sure you get enough sleep and that the quality of your sleep is good. Muscles don’t grow in the gym but when you rest. Give the muscle group you’ve trained at least 48 hours of rest before (directly) stressing it again.
