Should You Exercise Every Day?

If you read the bible, even God took a day to rest, so you should too, right? But here’s the thing; exercise is a lifestyle choice that takes a lot of hard work and dedication to turn into a habit. While conventional wisdom may dictate that your body needs some time to rest and recover in order to grow stronger, we’d like to put forth a different theory: You should exercise every single day. Now let’s set some ground rules.

Rest and recovery are important. Your body and your muscles do in fact need time to recover, but odds are you won’t be working the same muscle groups every day. Really want big biceps? That’s great, but you probably shouldn’t be working them more than 2-3 times a week, and you can work other body parts in the meantime.

You don’t always have to exercise to the point of exhaustion. Even bodybuilders can’t give it their max 7 days a week. Exercise doesn’t necessarily mean working your muscles to the point of failure, it can mean a light jog, a fun swim, or even a long walk. The point is to favor activity over time spent on the couch snacking on chips or candy.

Listen to your body. If your legs are sore, it may be a sign to reschedule leg day, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get some quality time in with the rowing machine or on the bench press. Adapting your routine to what your body is telling you that day is an important part of preventing injuries, and it’ll go a long way in making daily exercise a sustainable practice.

Looking for some fitness related reads? Visit our online library at www.fitrena.com for a wide variety of ebooks, audiobooks, music, and more. Accessible anytime, anywhere, from your favorite devices.

The Keys to Staying Focused While Training

It’s not always easy to stay focused when you’re training, but here are four tips that may help.

Set your goals. It’s easy to lose focus when you haven’t set specific goals. Everyone wants to be in better shape, but when you set a goal with measurable results your training will feel much more rewarding when you attain those results! Want to lose weight? Set yourself a 5 or 10 pound weight loss within a given time. Want to get stronger? Set your sights on being able to lift a set amount of weight.

Make your goals realistic. You can’t be muscle bound in minutes, you won’t have a beach body by your first session, and you won’t drop a lot of weight right away. Goals take time to achieve, and setting realistic goals will go a long way in staying motivated, whereas unrealistic goals will often lead to giving up.

Develop a routine. Once you have your goals set, form a plan on how you’ll achieve them, and stick to that plan. Planning on going to the gym? Set a dedicated time each day and stick to that time, you’ll find that making it a routine will be the best way to stick to it in the long run.

Acknowledge that there will be bumps in the road. No plan is perfect, and sometimes life gets in the way of even the best of plans. You might get sick or injured, you might have a busy week, or something else may pop up to stop you from training. Don’t worry, these things happen, and it’s important to get right back to it as soon as you can when they do.

Looking for some fitness related reads? Visit our online library at www.fitrena.com for a wide variety of ebooks, audiobooks, music, and more. Accessible anytime, anywhere, from your favorite devices.

Sometimes You’ll Fail

The hardest days at the gym may just be the ones that matter the most. We all have our hard days as well, and while for some it may be a matter of a lackluster workout, for others it can be as severe as an injury. For those occasions, here are three lessons to learn from the toughest days at the gym.

Injuries define limits. Injuries are preventable, and hopefully any that do occur will be minor and will heal quickly, but those that occur are learning opportunities. Our journeys to physical fitness involve learning our limits, which is an essential step to preventing any future injuries. Limits and boundaries can be pushed, but...

It takes time. Rome wasn’t built in a day, to quote an old cliche. Fitness is not a short term goal, it’s a lifestyle practice with goals along the way. Those goals, however, take time to achieve, as does anything in life that’s worthwhile. Working toward our goals requires dedication, even when we find ourselves short on motivation, because...

Anything is better than nothing. Injuries can be motivational setbacks, from the day they occur until long after they heal. Sometimes a physical injury heals only to make way for a mental or motivational barrier. Those barriers need to be broken, and even the act of making it to the gym is a step in the right direction.

Looking for some great fitness content? Visit our online library at www.fitrena.com for a wide variety of ebooks, audiobooks, music, and more. Accessible anytime from you favorite devices, and sure to get you moving!

“Fitness Breaks” For When There’s no Time for a Workout

We get it, you’re a busy person with a lot on your plate, and you don’t always have time to make it to the gym for a full workout. That said, you know exercise is important, that it will help you look and feel your best, and you’d still like to find a way to work it into your busy schedule. The answer may be “fitness breaks,” short bursts of high intensity exercise multiple times throughout the day. A recent study has shown that fitness breaks may just be enough to improve overall fitness levels and offer health benefits. Here are three ways you can incorporate fitness breaks into your daily routine.

Climb the stairs. If you work in an office building or from a home with multiple levels, 60 seconds of stair climbing may be enough if done at high enough intensity at multiple times throughout the day.

Push-ups. With no exercise equipment necessary, you can drop and do some push-ups just about anywhere. It may be slow going at first, and you may need to start on your knees rather than in a full plank, but you’ll build up strength and endurance before you know it!

Run around the block. No kidding. What may have once been suggested dismissively could actually be an effective way so stay in shape. If at all possible, get outside and take a run around the block a few times a day to help get the exercise you need.

Looking for more fitness fun? Visit our online library at www.fitrena.com for a wide variety of ebooks, audiobooks, music, and more. Accessible anytime from your favorite devices, and sure to get you moving!