Gym Starters

I have been asked to give tips on gym starters. First of all, I consider myself new to working out. Secondly, I can only give you tips that was suitable for me. Thirdly, I am no means of a professional and I did not study Sports Science or ... anything that's related to fitness. However, I will share with you my journey on working out. Gosh, I sound so lame.

I started working out 2 years ago. I started with cardio work out. So these are treadmill, cycling, ellipticals. Out of the 3, I only like treadmill and that's what I have been doing. I recommend you to do cardio minimum 10 minutes and maximum 30 minutes. You want to get your heart rate up. Why? When you work out and your heart rate is higher than usual, you are burning calories and building muscles :) Due to being a newbie, I seeked professional help and had a personal trainer. My first personal trainer was a female. Compared to my current personal trainer, I enjoy having a male trainer more. Not because he's good looking or what ever you may think. My trainer has many experiences on personal training. So he knows the bulk of sports science. Every time I train, he would explain to me which muscles I'm building, the benefits for it and other useful information. This is one point that I truly like from my personal trainer. You don't want to work out without you knowing what the work outs are for, which muscles you are building and all that important infos.

If you want to do weight training. I suggest you seek a professional help. Firstly, you will have to adjust the weight of the equipments to the maximum weight you can handle. Once that is done, technique is very VERY important. You don't want to be doing weights and thinking you're doing the right thing, when really, you are just hurting yourself. There is no harm on asking people how to do it. I ask people how to do certain work outs that my trainer has not showed me. Once your technique is right, you build up the weights by doing sets. So for me, 1 equipment work out is 3 sets, 15 each.

You want to understand your body. My trainer is very good in this. I have trained with him for 4 weeks and I could feel and see results. My body is more toned and I'm so much stronger than before. It also depends on how motivated you are to work out. I work out 4-5x a week. Now that is excessive for some of you, but once you are used to it, it is like second nature :) My trainer explained to me that my type of body is endomorphic. What that is, I gain muscles very easily yet fast but I gain weight very easily. This is useful for me because then I know what kind of work out I have to do in order to reach my aims, which are to tone my body and lose weight. Research on these kind of infos, it is very useful for you :)

Motivation. This is the key to all work out routines. If you are highly motivated, you will end up like me, going to the gym a lot hahaha :) If you are just starting out, 2-3 times is the maximum that I recommend. You don't want to shock your body.

Food. If you want to work out in the morning, you may have your breakfast. However, my trainer have told me that if you are only doing cardio, don't eat. By doing cardio, you are actually burning calories from your fat storage. However, if you are doing combination of cardio and weight like me, it is fine to have breakfast. I usually eat a slice of bread and water. Today, I had slice of bread and an energy drink and that was approximately 144 calories. 1 hour of cardio is about 100 calories, depending on how fast you are on cardio :) However, if you want to work out in the afternoon, have you meal 2 hours before you work out. It takes approximately 2 hours for the food to be digested :)

Water. Stay hydrated at all times. When I work out, I drink about 5-6 bottles of water.

On top of that, eating healthy food plays a major role as well. I eat a lot of vegetables but, I can't eat excessively only because it will clot the blood. But, do eat lots of vegetables. Make chicken salad or salmon salad. Substitute your snacks with vegetables. If you want to tone your body, WALK. This actually burns your calories more than you think.

That's basically my tips for people who wants to start at the gym. I hope my infos have been some what useful. Until my next post! Stay healthy!

God bless :)