Sometimes when you get out of a routine, or have never even been in a good fitness routine before, it can be tough starting up something new. There are so many different options out there, and everyone says they’re the best gym, or their workouts are the best. In my opinion the best workout routines are the ones that work best for you, since everybody is a little different. Eventually everyone will plateau from a workout routine so switching it up and being versatile and well balanced is one of my biggest beliefs in the fitness industry.
At Empowered Body we will you give that versatility and muscle confusion so your body doesn’t get a chance to plateau. Having a group of friends and peers, as well as a great group trainer to help encourage you through a tough workout is one of a few easy motivational tools that will help keep you coming back for more. Sometimes with that new fitness routine some exercises will seem very difficult, even if you’ve done them in the past, and that gets discouraging. If you take a step back though, trust the trainers, and have patience, we can get you to your goals no matter what they are. That brings up another good motivational tool to keep you working hard and prevent you from falling off the wagon again, goal setting, or to be more specific SMART goal setting. You want to have a goal to strive for in everything you do, it makes your actions more purposeful, but if you have a goal it is also important to keep those goals organized and be SMART about it. You want those goals to be as specific as possible, so not just “lose some weight” or “gain some muscle” it should be specific like lose 10lbs of body fat, or gain 10lbs of muscle. Your goals also want to be measurable. If we stick with the same example you want to know where you started for your base weight so you can measure your changes to know if you actually did gain or lose your 10lbs like you set out to. Your goals should also be attainable and realistic meaning you don’t want to set an impossible goal for yourself that you will never achieve. If you don’t achieve your goal that will obviously be discouraging and it will make it that much easier to quit. Lastly, your goals want to have a timeline. So with your original example we can make our goal more specific by stating “I want to gain 10lbs of muscle by April 1, 2018.” One last goal setting strategy is to keep your long term goal in mind, but set short term goals to keep you working on that long term goal and make it seem more achievable. So one last example. My original goal is to gain 10lbs of muscle by April 1, 2018 but my short term goal could be to gain 5lbs of muscle by January 1, 2018. Both my short term and long term goals are SMART and it always keeps me working towards something, and then after your ACHIEVE YOUR GOAL set a new one, and if you need help we can help with that.
Another thing to keep in mind with our workouts here at Empowered Body is how we workout specifically. Most of our workouts are designed as HIIT Training or High Intensity Interval Training. What this means is that you are trying to push yourself to a high intensity (a couple steps above what you may feel is a comfortable intensity) for a short amount of time, followed by longer bursts of active recovery or low intensity exercise. This has been proven in many research studies to be one of the best ways to effectively burn more calories, and more fat, in a short amount of time, than standard steady state cardio…like going for a short run. Traditional HIIT training is always a great idea if you have less than an hour to work out and if you are like most people, life gets really busy so it can be tough getting to the gym for 1-2 hour a day 5-6 days a week. With 3-4 HIIT training sessions a week for 30-45min each session you can now burn off more calories than you would probably would with the low intensity workouts for 1-2 hours, and now you’ve saved a lot of time to spend doing other things you want/need to do. All our workouts at Empowered Body are designed to get you in and out of the studio is less than hour, push you to your max (past your comfort zone), then get you out the door before you know it. A 45 minute workout will fly by and it will seem like you were only in the studio for a few minutes. Come check us out, and be sure to ask us any questions you may have about goal setting or how to properly train to achieve all your goals!
