Today, this post is for those of you who have thought for a long time about starting a workout routine and either joining a gym or hiring a personal trainer.
Here are 7 key points to make sure you are familiar with before beginning your fitness journey.
- Make sure you check with your physician before joining a gym or hiring a trainer. This is to make sure that you don't have an challenges that may prevent you from training. Also, any trainer worth their salt will do whats called a PAR-Q questionnaire in Canada to make sure that you are healthy enough to train.
- When joining a gym or hiring a trainer it is a great idea to make sure that it is either close to your home or on the way to or from your work. This means it is convenient for you to go and doesn't become one of the many excuses to skip training sessions.
- Take advantage of any offers that the trainer or gym is offering such as 1 free week or FREE sessions and make sure that the gym atmosphere or trainer's personality works for you.
- Always remember that we all started out as rookies so do not let the "buff" people at the gym scare you. At one time they were rookies as well and you will find that most of these people are very approachable and more than willing to give you tips and advice. (sometimes unwanted and unsolicited ;)
- Don't do the "I will wait until I look a certain way (20lbs lighter) before I join a gym or hire a trainer." I am not sure how this makes sense but it happens all of the time and people end up letting weeks, months and sometimes years go by with little or no change. In this time you could have hit your goal 2 or 3 times over.
- Get into a routine of days and times that you train try not to let anything get in the way of this "YOU" time. One of the ways I found I could really keep my workouts on schedule was going over my lunch break when I was in a corporate office. This broke up the day and really, what were you going to do over your lunch hour anyway? Probably work through right?
- Set specific, achievable goals and if they are lofty then break them into smaller bite sized chunks. For example if you want to lose 100lbs, you may look at this and feel a little overwhelmed but what if you break it into 10lbs per month over 10 months? This doesn't sound so bad does it?
You only get one body might as well take care of it!
Cheers,
Bouncelife