You’d love to be one of those people who consistently wakes up at 4 am every morning to pump iron and run a few miles before starting your day, muscles bulging beneath your dress shirt as you stroll effortlessly into the office, the picture of athleticism (or something like that).
Reality check: there’s a reason (or several reasons) why most people fail to keep that up for very long. A lack of true purpose to your routine, reaching a plateau and failing to make more progress, getting bored out of your mind… Those are just a few things that come to mind.
So, before you dive into early mornings and short nights because you just can’t make it to bed on time (because Netflix), take a minute to consider why you’re training in the first place.
If you’re like most people, the first reason is about looks. You can tell yourself it’s about longevity and vitality as much as you like. To some extent, with time, that will become true. To get there, you first need to know it. Or know what it feels like to lack vitality. But the first reason you will start working out is because you don’t like what you see when you look in the mirror. Or you’re ashamed of being out of breath after climbing a flight of stairs.
So, before you sit down to create your exercise plan, take a minute to think what you really want out of it. If you’re not into spending hours in the gym while your friends are out having pizza, then you’re probably looking for something simple, relatively short, and effective.
To get you started, here are 10 areas of a fitness plan that you need to keep in mind when deciding what to do:
- Aerobic: for a healthy engine.
Aerobic exercise gets your heart pumping. Cardiovascular health and endurance improve. Things like walking, running, cycling, dancing, or skipping rope will help with this. In my experience, aerobic exercise is the one that gets you feeling light on your feet and happy to be alive. There’s something about breathing hard for a sustained period of time that just makes you feel great. However, you don’t need to be a marathon-runner to reap the benefits of aerobic exercise. A lot of the benefits can be achieved at a heartrate that still allows you to hold a conversation. And some simple changes to your everyday life can make a world of difference, like taking the stairs instead of the elevator.
Experts recommend at least 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity per week. That sounds like a lot, but it’s actually only a 30-minute walk every day from Monday to Friday.
2. Strength: building muscle.
Lifting heavy things is a part of the human experience. Your body was made to move. Strength exercise, I believe, should be about putting you in the position to do strenuous things, like moving house for example, without hurting yourself. Lifting weight, doing bodyweight exercises, or using resistance bands are examples of strength training. 2-3 sessions per week is the recommended number. If you’re just starting out, aim for exercises that engage the larger muscle groups, and focus on building a solid foundation. Don’t worry too much about all the minute details and exercising every single obscure muscle in your body just yet. Focus on strong, correct movements and getting the basics right.
3. Core: your center of power.
The core is a somewhat generic concept. In essence, it’s the muscles in your torso that stabilize your spine, improve your posture, and give you better balance. As you get more familiar with movement patterns, you will learn more about how all movements stem from a strong and stable core. Doing specific core work will help you stay strong and healthy in all other movements. Then again, if you have a weak core, you have no business doing any other kind of exercise at any level beyond mild.
So, aside from actually working on your core, whenever you are running, skipping, jumping, or lifting heavy things, be mindful of how your core moves or opposes movement, keeping you healthy and injury-free.
4. Balance: move like a young person.
If you don’t move a lot during your adult life, your balance deteriorates along with everything else, and you become more prone to falling—just when you’re most vulnerable.
Using your balance regularly will help maintain it over time. Yoga, tai-chi, and single-leg stands help maintain your agility and prevent unnecessary falls. Practice balance exercises for at least a few minutes every day.
Just like aerobic exercise, putting some balance challenges in your everyday routine, in the way you go about your daily activities, will go a long way to changing the way you move in the world and improving your balance and confidence.
5. Flexibility and Stretching: be more like the grass and less like the oak tree.
Flexibility is one of those things you take for granted when you are younger. But if you get into a serious exercise plan, involving powerful movements, and fail to incorporate stretching and mobility into your routine, you’ll soon notice the difference. Again, the aim is to keep moving like a youthful, healthy person. It doesn’t matter how much weight you can lift, if you can’t bend over you are fragile.
Eventually, a lack of flexibility or mobility will result in bad movement patterns and compensating for incorrect movements with the wrong muscles.
So, do some stretching. Make it simple but effective. Do some dynamic stretches before your workout and some static stretches after. Find something that works for you and that you enjoy enough that you won’t leave it out when you’re in a hurry.
6. Variety: keep it interesting
Even if you get to a point where you are in great shape and thoroughly enjoy the way your body moves and feels in the world, boredom will be your biggest enemy. Eventually, the monotony of doing the same movements day in and day out will wear down your resolve and your exercise habit will lose momentum. That is, of course, unless you work variety, interest, and motivation into your plan.
If you get bored with repetitive movements very easily, try mixing different exercises into the plan. This is why things like Cross Fit have become so popular. People were so incredibly bored of spending hours on a treadmill. They desperately needed some variety.
It’s up to you to keep things interesting, so come up with several alternatives for each area of your plan, and make sure you’re keeping it fun.
7. Progression: gradual improvement
Generic advice on progression is to slowly add difficulty, weight, etc. to improve your fitness and keep moving forward. The truth is that progression isn’t necessarily linear. Sometimes, taking a step back is, in fact, a step forward. The idea is for the general trend to be improving, while giving your body a chance to adapt without feeling permanently overworked.
As you plan progression into your exercise schedule, make sure you’re including weeks where you take a step back, while maintaining a generally improving trend. Think of waves. And listen to your body. Some days you just need to be gentler. Which leads me to the next point:
8. Rest and Recovery: give your body a chance to do its thing.
There’s a reason most people can’t hold a normal job and exercise like a professional athlete. Peak athletes need rest and recovery times that most “ordinary” people just don’t have access to. So, as you increase the demands on your body, especially if this is something new for you, make sure your body has enough time to rest and rebuild.
Sleep, and recovery in general, is just as important as exercise in your quest for a more youthful and longer-living body. So, give it the attention it deserves.
Just so it’s perfectly clear: this doesn’t apply only to sleep. Your mental fatigue also has a negative effect on your body. So, it’s essential to have days where you can detach from all the stress and strain of your workdays and exercise plan, unwind, and (deeply) relax.
9. Nutrition: you really are what you eat.
Considering that your body is made of what you feed it, this should be obvious. But we tend to forget it. The quality of your exercise and recovery, and the quality of your life in general, is highly dependent on the quality of your food and of your digestion.
Healthy eating may sound like a challenge, and depending on your situation it may be quite a big change. But it doesn’t have to be all rice cakes and plain water.
It’s all about the variety and quality of the foods in your diet. Read up on the Mediterranean diet, stick to whole grains and fresh food. Cook for yourself as much as you can. If you don’t usually cook at home, and you’re scared of the idea, just try it. You’ll see it doesn’t have to be as complicated as people make it sound, and it can add a layer of enjoyment to the experience that you wouldn’t expect.
Above all, enjoy your food. If it feels like an obligation and not a pleasure, you’re not going to stick to it. So, again, find that intersection between what you like and what works, and hang around there.
10. Mindset
Aside from the usual advice on staying positive and believing in yourself, it’s important to mention some other important changes to your mindset that will help you stick to your exercise plan.
In the beginning, it’s all about quick gains, losing weight, and feeling like you can move again. But time flies. Before you know it, you’ll be a relatively healthy person, with an equally busy adult life, and sometimes excuses get in the way.
Like most things, it helps if you see your exercise plan as a marathon rather than a sprint (I actually love sprints, but that’s another story). Throughout this article, I’ve recommended “finding what works for you”. The fact is that exercise fads and bouts of enthusiasm don’t work in the long run. They can be fun for a while, but they’ll eventually fade.
What remains, or should remain, is your dedication to health, movement, and wellbeing, as a lifelong pursuit. To get this right, you need to see it as practice, not a workout. Every day, you are practicing moving your body in certain ways, because if you don’t use it, you lose it. You don’t always have to be pushing the limits in what your body can do. As you become fitter and stronger, you will find what feels right for you and you’ll uncover weaknesses in your body that you can work on gradually over time. You’ll discover the pleasure of movement for the sake of movement itself, without being overly concerned about “gains” as the main goal.
You’ll fall in love with the human body—all human bodies—as perfect/imperfect individual expressions of form following function. You’ll enjoy the simple fact of letting your body move the way it’s supposed to. Like owning a great car and marveling at the engineering behind it.
In fact, the mindset is the one overarching element that should guide all the others. In exercise, as in any other area of your life, there is a golden rule:
Change your mind and you’ll change your life.
If you can achieve that, consistency will no longer be a chore, but rather a natural consequence of who you are.
PS: Just to be perfectly clear: I’m not an exercise professional. These are just some thoughts based on my personal experience. As with most of my posts, consider this information as food for thought, or encouragement to do your own research and make your own decisions.
References:
Grow Up With Dominic 
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