The above image shows a mind map. This will help you to follow a journey. Learn from this article and create your own mind map.
A mind map is important because firstly it creates an outline of the journey you have to start and gives you a clear idea. Moreover writing things down has proven that it will lead to a more chance that you will start and take the necessary action.
The Mind map talks about:
What do people think Fitness is. If I may ask you what is fitness the first thing that will come to your mind is that it is either going to the gym and running on a treadmill for as much time as you can until you get tired and stopping at a point where you can’t even take one more step. Or you can go to the gym and sit on machines and take a selfie or put it on social media (This is just a joke). Everyone workout at their own pace and taking progress pictures is also a part of progress. But don’t be that person who just keeps sitting and chatting.
You can watch my video regarding the same
Moving to the myth busters for what actually fitness is.
Exercising is not everything you have to do for your body’s goals. It is actually on 20% of the whole process.
The rest 80% includes diet (not the word which tells you to do fasting) and sleep.
Exercising
Exercising includes proper workout plans. It is not like that you hit the gym and start doing sets on the very machine you see irrespective of which muscle group those are. Proper workout plans include the muscle you have to hit, the exercise will do and the number of reps for each exercise. It is basically the small mind map of your workout routine. And as I said before a mind map helps to do the work more efficiently, so your workout will be systematic and much more efficient and effective.
The effectiveness of your workout is necessary no matter the duration of the workout be as less as 40-45 minutes.
A 30 min walk at the end of the day before sleeping is also very effective to help muscle recovery fast.
Movement is the key.
As you can see I marked each day for a different muscle group. You can also customize accordingly like how are you feeling that week and if you are injured you can put rehabilitation exercises. If you want to move light this week, you can decrease weight on bars and vice versa. If you only want cardio you can increase the reps and decrease the rest time in between sets.
Each type of workout has its own importance like cardio helps to enhance the endurance of your body as well as burn the extra calories if you ate many cheat meals. Calisthenics helps to maintain balance in the body. And many more types of workouts are there. You can choose any of them on terms which you like to follow.
Rehab days are important as if you are injured they help in muscle recovery and if you have a heavyweight on the bar week, you must give one or two days to your body to recover so that you can lift with the same energy next time.
Doing everything is necessary but you can’t do all things on the same day, that’s why planning is important.
Diet
Diet is the 80% part of your whole workout so ignoring it is not a good option. If you are not watching what you are eating and also eating random things you see, then my friend it is impossible to get that 6 pack abs you always dream of. So, watching what you are eating and counting the number of calories you are consuming and burning will help you to get an idea of the amount of food you need to eat. This might get somewhat technical. In simple words, you need to burn more calories than you are eating. Moreover, you need to eat the quality calories i.e. if you are eating only a burger as the meal for the day then you still not gonna benefit from that even though you are eating fewer calories than before.
The point is to balance the nutrients. You will get to know more about the macro and micronutrients once you start moving in the journey. In beginning, you can start by reducing sugar products and eating more green veggies.
I am not saying that you should completely abandon the junk food, you can eat but you need to eat that in limit like once in 15 days. These meals are also necessary as these give a change to the regular food you eat and give new energy to follow the path again. It works as a reward. But remember to shed off the extra calories. 🙂
Sleep and Meditation
If you are doing all the things mentioned above and still wondering why are you don’t getting any things. Maybe it is time to think that if you are giving your body the rest it needs to recover.
If you are only sleeping 5-6 hours per day, not many impressive results you will see.
So, sleep is also a necessary part to move toward your fitness goals. Being sleep-deprived is only going to decrease your performance in the coming weeks only.
But if your mind is in chaos, you cannot do much even if your body is looking and moving beautifully. So, you should read some books and or listen to some podcasts from the people who have followed the same path.
Reading and listening to them helps to stand up and keep moving during the days when you don’t feel like doing much.
I hope this article gives you an idea of what mistakes you should avoid while starting your journey not only in fitness but on any path you choose to follow.
I hope it will be helpful for you and you will like it.
Thank You
Cheers