Fitness

Actionable Steps To Make Your Fitness Goals More Attainable

October 8, 2020 By lyndsinreallife 1 Comment

Are you struggling to reach the next level in your training sessions, or do you feel like your progress has stalled? If you’re on a mission to achieve fitness goals, here are some actionable steps you can take to make your targets more attainable.

Image credit: https://www.pexels.com/photo/rope-jumping-ropes-human-training-28080/

Targeted exercises and activities

There are myriad activities and exercises you can engage in to get fit nowadays. While it’s beneficial to vary your workouts and make training fun, it is also advantageous to tailor your training regime to match your objectives. Think about what you want to achieve. If you have a clear goal, for example, to get fitter, to build muscle, to tone up or to improve your endurance and stamina, you can follow a plan aligned to these targets. If your main aim is to run a marathon, it makes sense to focus on exercises that increase endurance. If you want to burn fat and increase muscle mass, combining cardio and weight and resistance training will help you reach your goal.

Working with a trainer

Sometimes, it can be difficult to reach peak levels of performance without encouragement, guidance or a little healthy competition. If you’re struggling to get to where you want to be, it’s worth thinking about taking part in group sessions to introduce a competitive element, training with a buddy or hiring a personal trainer. When you feel like the tank is empty, a good trainer will be able to squeeze that extra 5 or 10 percent out of you and they can push you to do better without putting you at risk of injury or burnout. Working with a trainer can also motivate you if you feel like you’ve run out of ideas for your training program, or you’ve lost confidence in being able to reach the next milestone.

Diet

Exercise is incredibly beneficial for your body and mind, but it’s not the only element of good health. To perform in the gym or on the sports field, you need to make sure that your body has sufficient fuel and that you take essential vitamins, minerals and nutrients on board. If you’re training with a specific goal in mind, you may also want to consider using supplements, but it’s important to seek advice from your trainer or doctor first. Sometimes, people try to increase exercise at the same time as reducing calorie intake and portion sizes to lose weight. It’s crucial to get the balance right if this is your target. Often, making changes to your diet will enable you to eat more without putting on weight because you’re eating nutritious foods that have a lower calorie content.

Rest

It’s understandable to assume that the more you train, the closer you’ll get to your goal, but there is such a thing as overtraining. Allow your body to rest and recover to prevent injuries and enhance performance. You can take the odd day off or use rest days to enjoy low-intensity exercise, such as swimming or going for a walk.

If you’re struggling to reach your fitness goals, don’t give up! Take these tips on board to make your objectives more attainable.

Thank you for reading!

Working My Way Toward Wellness with Stretch Therapy – Week One

September 19, 2020 By lyndsinreallife 1 Comment

I’ve been experiencing some kind of chronic pain for at least 5 years. My worst pain is in my low back, followed by hip pain (in both hips, but mainly my right hip), and as of the last year, my right neck/shoulder (thanks to surgery and at least one wonky nerve).

In Las Vegas (Summerlin specifically), there’s a stretch therapy studio called Kika Stretch Studios. I think it might be my saving grace!

At this studio, a highly trained Kika therapist gently assists the client with stretching. I’d say Kika stretch therapy is a mash up of yoga, Pilates, physical therapy, and massage therapy (4 of my favorite things!). The stretch sessions are designed to relieve the body of muscle pain, tension, and fatigue.

“Revive your body and ease your mind. The Kika Method© is meant for anyone who wants to move and feel the natural way that you were designed to.”
Kika Studios Website

I’m starting a 5-week wellness journey where I’ll participate in a Kika stretch therapy session every Friday (after the busy work week and before the relaxing weekend!). The stretch therapist I’ll be working with is Tamara.

I’m really excited and can’t wait to share all about my experience and progress – I hope you choose to follow along with me! I’ll be posting here on my blog, as well as my Instagram and Facebook pages.

Be on the lookout for a “first session” post in a couple days!

Fitness

How To Find A Worthwhile Fitness Community

August 18, 2020 By lyndsinreallife Leave a Comment

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Social support is one of the biggest motivators for a wide range of reasons. Think about it this way. You know you need to change and start working out to get healthier. A friend agrees with you, they’re in the same predicament. You decide that it would be better to work out together, to help one another push past the limits you might otherwise artificially place on yourselves.

You set the date. You’ll attend the gym at 8am on a Thursday. When Thursday morning rolls around, and you feel tired, what will you do? Call it off? But you’ve been waiting all week for it. No, you choose to push through so as not to let your friend down. They decide to do the same. Repeat this five times, and you have a habit. Repeat this ten times, and now dropping out becomes even harder. Repeat this thirty times, and you have a close friend and workout buddy you can measure results together with.

Community is powerful like that. It can help you become your best self. But how can we find the best community, in all manner of fitness considerations? With the following advice:

Try Reddit

Reddit is a golden resource for many reasons. If you have a particular plan or program that you follow, from Couch 2 5k to weightlifting in general, you will meet people there who are more than interested in seeing what you have to offer. Reddit offers people young and old, beginner or advanced, to share tips and come together with an understanding of what is most appropriate. From diet advice (keto, intermittent fasting etc) to simply finding motivation, this can be a golden resource in your journey.

Stick Within Your Program

Sticking within your program can also be a fantastic means of meeting new people. Let’s say you’re beginning with Stronglifts or Starting Strength. You can BET that the people interested in those programmes will be more than able to help you out with them. From figuring out how to spend your deload week, to the best supplements to take, to helping convince you that you never need overbearing fitness gear to perform well, sticking within your program can help you become a fan of it, and it helps you excel within that space.

Find Classes & Leadership Sessions

There are many excellent leadership classes and sessions out there that help you connect to more people who share your mindset. Fitness is a way of life, but so is business growth, and so is making the best out of your leadership skills. If you can combine those things together and surround yourself with people who are positive, forward-thinking, and also members of the Fiesta app, you’ll no doubt combine your output together and become fit in not only health, but in the mindset it takes to live a life like this. That can only be a positive route forward.

With this advice, we hope you can more easily find your community, and share success in achievement of your goals.

Thank you for reading!

Fitness Health

4 Ways to Treat Sports Injuries

August 6, 2020 By lyndsinreallife Leave a Comment

Sports injuries can occur while playing a sport or while training, and they can occur at whatever age and fitness level. Anyone who has had a sports injury in the past will understand just how annoying it is – one minute you’re doing the activity you love, the next you have to go to the doctors for treatment. Often, sports injuries are a result of causing damage to ligaments, stretching them or even tearing them. While it can be a frustrating time, there are a lot of things you can do to help heal your injury and increase your chances of getting active again.

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Quick Response

No matter what the injury – sprains, strains, muscle swelling – a rapid response can make all the difference. Use the common treatment of RICE, which stands for:

Rest
Ice
Compress
Elevate

This treatment is most useful for those with mild injuries and is most effective in the first 24-48 hours of an injury. If you see no improvement in the injury after 36 hours of RICE, contact a medical professional.

Rest Up

Perhaps the most annoying part of a sports injury is that rest is often crucial. For a sporty person, this can be really, really difficult. So, keeping your mind active and positive can be as much a treatment than the rest prescribed by a doctor. Consider taking up some helpful daily practices, like meditation or yoga. There are a number of apps and programs that can help guide you.

Cutting-Edge Therapies

If you have a chronic injury that you’re struggling with, it may be time to consider some cutting-edge therapy to help the healing. There are several options, such as regenerative medicine, which repairs damaged tissues with healthy tissue. By doing so, it stimulates tissue repair naturally, without surgery. Practitioners of regenerative medicine can offer platelet-rich therapy – which increases blood flow – and amniotic cell to promote tissue repair.

Complementary Treatments

If you’ve suffered from a sports injury recently, or you’re struggling with one that’s recurrent, finding yourself a physiotherapist may be one of the best things you can do. They will be able to guide you through treatment and help you recover. Additionally, alternative therapies such as osteopathy and acupuncture can effectively treat many sports injuries, in non-invasive ways.

Prevention is Better Than a Cure

Some sports injuries are beyond control and will happen no matter how many precautions you take. However, some injuries can be prevented by taking specific steps, like always warming up your muscles before strenuous activity. By warming up, you increase blood flow to the muscles, and they become more flexible. This is particularly important after you’re recovering from an injury – light activity will help you get ready for the sport, and it will also allow you to test the muscle or joint for pain before you start.

While sports injuries can be painful and downright annoying, there are a number of ways to treat sports injuries that can speed up your recovery.

Thank you for reading!

Fitness

8 Things That Could Be Holding Back Your Progress In The Gym

July 17, 2020 By lyndsinreallife 1 Comment

After months under lockdown, many of us are feeling less than confident in dressing for the summer. While you may already have booked appointments with your favorite nail technician, hair stylist, or beautician, you’ve also reached the limits of what working out from home can do for you. You know that it’s time to (safely) hit the gym again. As more and more gyms reopen their doors, you’ve likely already started getting back into the swing of things, pumping iron and pounding rubber on the treadmill.

Image by Skeeze via Pixabay

But for a lot of us, returning to the gym also means returning to familiar frustrations and roadblocks. You may have hit a plateau both in terms of your motivation and your progress. You feel that something, somehow is holding you back… but you can’t put your finger on it. You’re showing up to the gym regularly. You’re steering clear of the tempting fatty, sugary and salty treats when you go shopping. You’re trying to make healthy choices. Yet, you can’t help feeling that you’re going nowhere.

Hitting a Wall? Or Self-Sabotaging?

First up, it’s important to know you’ve hit a wall rather than thinking you’ve hit one. Our perception is the lens through which we view our reality, after all, and when tel, ourselves we’re not taking progress our bodies start to reflect our internal expectations. This is why it’s so important to weigh, measure and take photos of yourself regularly. These activities (while they may be uncomfortable for you) will give you hard data against which you can measure your subjective experiences. So you can know for sure whether you’re hitting a wall or just listening to the self-saboteur (who we all have living in our minds) that keeps telling you to give up, hit the sofa and order pizza.

If, on the other hand, your progress at the gym has begun to stagnate, you need to ask yourself some serious questions about what’s really holding back your progress. It could be one of these 8 common culprits!

Two Little Words… “I Can’t!”

It’s easy to underestimate the power that the mind has over the body. But the Mind Muscle Connection is something that’s been validated by scientific study. The more we concentrate on engaging our muscles during our workouts, the more likely we are to push through performance barriers and see the gains we want in our health and appearance. Be honest with yourself, now. How often have you actually been thinking about engaging your glutes when you dip into a squat? Or thinking hard about what your biceps are doing when you curl a dumbbell? If you’re not thinking about what you’re doing and engaging your mind as well as your body, you may find that you’re coasting your way through your exercises.

Worse still, your mind can start actively working against you. Especially when it utters those dread words to you… “I can’t”! The mind will always give up before the body. And achieving great results often means drawing on the little reserve of energy and willpower that you never knew you had to push past your limitations and keep going.

Your Competitive Streak

That said, you can go too far the other way; pushing yourself a little too hard in all the wrong ways. The most common and egregious example of this is when your competitive streak stops providing you with motivation and actually starts to harm your progress. Yes, a little healthy competition can bring out the best in us. But if we focus too much on what other people are doing (whether it’s our friends posting their achievements on social media or comparing ourselves to the person working out next to us in the gym) we can do ourselves a huge disservice.

When you get too competitive, you stop thinking about your own goals and it all becomes about appearances. You want to appear to be lifting more or running further than everyone else. And this inevitably means you take shortcuts. Of which, sloppy technique and poor form when lifting weights are the most common. You pile on the weight and invariably sacrifice technique for the sake of appearances. Not only will this fail to engage the muscles properly allowing them to develop, it can also put you at risk of injury. Never lift so much weight that you can’t perform the full motion necessary in a controlled way.

Your Clothing

Speaking of range of motion, it’s absolutely essential that your clothing allows you to move freely so that you can carry out the movements necessary for all your exercises. This may mean that you wear different clothes depending on what you have planned for each workout. Yet all-too-often we choose our clothing based on its appearance.

Don’t let your desire to look good at the gym inadvertently hold you back in your workouts. Choose clothing that give you flexibility and breathability, so you can walk the fine line between form and function.

Your Diet

It’s been said time and time again… you can’t out-exercise a bad diet. Nor is a gruelling workout a good enough reason to treat yourself to a big bowl of ice cream or a bacon double cheeseburger. Yes, cheat meals are a thing. No, you shouldn’t chastise yourself for falling off the waggon every once in a while. Nonetheless, you need to remain disciplined in your dietary habits if you hope to see the progress that matches your efforts in the gym.

Of course, in an age where there’s so much advice on dieting (most of which is just thinly veiled advertorial advocating a specific product or fad diet) it can be hard to know what constitutes healthy eating. Especially when there are so many foods that are marketed as healthy yet contain all kinds of hidden sugars and artificial ingredients that do our bodies way more harm than good.

But if you’re looking for a good rule of thumb:

Eat food (not processed food-like substances)
Don’t eat too much
Eat mostly plants
And don’t forget to keep your body hydrated

While you may need to change your macronutrient intake in line with your changing goals, the above is good advice for everyone.

Image by Pixabay via Pexels

Your Insomnia

A good diet and regular exercise are cornerstones of good overall health. But in your zeal to lead a healthy lifestyle, don’t forget the importance of rest. Sleep is extremely important, not just for exercise, but in maintaining a healthy mind and body. While you’re asleep your body is hard at work carrying out countless repairs inside and outside. Including rebuilding muscle and other tissues damaged in exercise so that they can grow back stronger.

Without a good night’s sleep, your gains may be limited. And you’re also much less likely to feel energized and motivated to work out. If you’re struggling to sleep, there are numerous natural ways in which you can help yourself to nod off without resorting to sleeping pills.

Your Independence

You’ve always been fiercely independent and a true autodidact. Why rely on someone to help you, when you can teach yourself to do virtually anything. But while this may have stood you in good stead throughout your life and career, trying to do it all on your own may be self-defeating.

If you’ve plateaued when exercising on your own, maybe you need the advice, support, expertise and motivation of a personal trainer. They may be able to identify where you’ve been going wrong, help you to better plan for success and make you more accountable for your own progress. If your budget won’t extend to PT sessions, however, enlisting a friend or colleague to act as your gym buddy can help by making you more accountable.

Boredom

If you’ve been sticking to the same exercise regimen week in and week out for the past 6 months, there’s a good chance that your workouts have become boring. And while you may think that you’re getting stronger and fitter (because they’re so much easier now) the reality is that you’re just coasting through your exercise regimen. It’s time to shake things up and try something new. Will it be uncomfortable? Yes. Will you be sore? Maybe. But it’s the best way to prevent yourself from lagging in motivation and progress.

Your… Discipline?

No, that’s not a type, dear reader. In your efforts to be disciplined in your diet, don’t lose sight of the fact that food is supposed to be enjoyable. There’s no point preparing perfectly nutritionally balanced meals if you have to choke them down. You’ll find yourself gorging on fast food within a fortnight. Instead, work on finding the balance between food that excites you and food that nourishes your body. And don’t be afraid to throw the odd cheat meal in there.

It might provide just the kick your metabolism needs.

Thank you for reading!

Fitness Health

5 Import Reasons To Incorporate Stretching Into Your Daily Routine

July 6, 2020 By lyndsinreallife 3 Comments

While people rave about the many benefits of yoga and meditation (and rightly so), stretching tends to be forgotten about and is often an overlooked part of many people’s fitness routines. Even if you aren’t a professional athlete and are new to exercise, stretching should be a part of everyone’s daily routine due to the many short and long-term benefits. These include improved flexibility, posture and a reduction in body aches and stress, to name but a few. Here are 5 reasons why you should incorporate a 5-10 minute stretching routine into your day.

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Greater Flexibility

Improved flexibility is probably one of the things that stretching is most famous for and one of the first things that come to mind. Lots of research has been done into stretching, confirming that it can help to improve flexibility significantly as well as the range of motion of the joints and can even help to delay reduced mobility that comes with aging. Stretching increases blood circulation to the muscles, decreasing the risk of injury when exercising, and improving the performance of physical activities as the muscles work more effectively. Improved flexibility and healthier muscles also improve balance, but it’s essential to ensure that all stretches are done safely and using correct techniques to avoid injuries.

Improves Posture

If a typical day for you includes being hunched over a laptop for hours on end, you are not alone with sedentary jobs having increased up to 83% since 1950. Sitting for so many hours a day isn’t only detrimental to our fitness, but also our postures. Nine times out of ten, most of us are sitting incorrectly, slouching, and hunching over, leading to weakened and shortened back, core, neck, and shoulder muscles. Over time our bodies start to adapt to these poor postures, leading to potentially significant health problems, not only with our physical form but impacting blood circulation and how the body produces hormones. Once we have gotten into the bad habit of slouching, it’s tough to get out of. With just five to ten minutes of stretching a day, you can strengthen your back muscles, improving postures and encouraging proper alignment. Not only will you feel better and stronger physically, but you’ll also appear taller.

Relieves Stress

We all know that stress has a significant negative impact on our bodies and general health. Long periods of stress can contribute to problems including high blood pressure and a weakened immune system as well as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

When experiencing stress, no matter the level, your muscles’ response is to tense up. Stretching is, therefore, a great stress reliever, helping you to release much-needed tensions in areas prone to holding stress such as the neck and upper back. Stress also causes your breathing to be narrow and short but can be combated by a few daily stretches. These relax the body, encourage you to be calm, and help you get a better night’s sleep – and the benefits are often immediate.

Reduces Pain After Exercise

If you’ve ever experienced stiffness and soreness after a workout, to the point where it hurts to walk or even move, you’ll know just how painful delayed onset muscle soreness can be. This is especially true if you’ve been applying the muscle mind link when weightlifting or practicing Calisthenics. Even though it is necessary to break the muscles down to repair themselves stronger than before, the immediate after-effects can cause tiredness and affect coordination, which isn’t always ideal in our daily lives. The key to reducing delayed onset muscle soreness is to prepare your body through performing dynamic stretching before you exercise rather than after. This makes it easier to deal with any pain you might experience afterwards and helps to prepare your muscles for physical activity. It is also recommended to stretch after a workout when warming down; however, if you have pulled a muscle or are incredibly sore, then you should stop. Remember that stretching doesn’t actually heal your muscles post-exercise, but just like with stress, it is a great way to release any tension or tightness that you might be feeling.

Calms the Mind

Much like meditation, stretching regularly has a calming effect on the mind, providing a mental break for the stresses of everyday life. The production of stress hormones is slowed down as stretching stimulates the nervous system’s receptors while improving the circulation and flow of blood throughout the body. Combine stretching with meditation techniques and exercising to recharge your batteries and feel calmer.

•Do you stretch? Share your routine below!

Thank you for reading!

Fitness

Fun Lockdown Workouts To Keep You Motivated

June 18, 2020 By lyndsinreallife Leave a Comment

Working out at home is one of the ways you can stay fit while social distancing is happening. Exercise is always important, but even more so now. It helps keep you healthy, keeps your mental health in check, and gives you something to do to give some structure to your day.

But one of the issues with exercising at home is finding the motivation to do it. It can be hard to make workouts fun and to get yourself psyched up to sweat each day.

So what can you do to make working out at home more enjoyable? Here are some fun lockdown workouts to keep you motivated!

Image Credit: Unsplash under Creative Commons

Challenge yourself with a HIIT workout

HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) workouts are a fantastic way to exercise. They’re short, sharp and super high-energy – not something for the faint-hearted. But that’s all part of the fun! HIIT workouts provide a fast-paced, challenging session that will help you tone up while losing fat, plus help to improve your cardio health. They’re difficult, but full of some fun moves to keep you busy. Check out some of the best HIIT workouts on YouTube and start pushing yourself.

Get yourself a rebounder

If you’re looking for a great way to exercise, get yourself a rebounder. But what is rebounding on a trampoline? Rebounding is an effective form of exercise, while also having the benefit of being a lot of fun. While many people have trampolines in their backyards for the kids, this is a type of equipment that’s more suited to the adults in the family. With so many great exercises you can do on a rebounder, it’ll certainly liven up your fitness routine.

Try partner exercises

Working out with someone else is a great way to stay motivated, so why not give some partner exercises a try? There are some great partner exercises you can do with a resistance band, as well as bodyweight moves. Partner workouts can be fun, challenging and could even bring you closer together – making for one highly effective way of working out!

Join a group workout with friends

Video calls have become a part of people’s daily routines, with both work and social lives taking place on applications like Zoom. But have you thought about doing a group workout with friends online? A video workout can be a fun way of spending time together and help you look forward to a workout. You could follow another video together, or task someone to design the workout each time! This is an ideal solution for those who miss going to classes and want a bit of company when they work out.

Staying motivated to exercise is never easy, but there are a lot of things you can try while in quarantine to stay on top of your fitness. Check out some more fun ways to workout at home to help you stay strong and healthy and keep on top of your fitness goals!

•What have you been doing to stay on top of your workout routine?

Thank you for reading!

Fitness Health

Five Easy Ways To Shed Some Weight

June 2, 2020 By lyndsinreallife Leave a Comment

Is there anything worse than unintentionally gaining weight and being unable to shed it again? Nope! And you’re not alone in feeling that, either. Plenty of us want a quick fix for weight issues; we imagine ourselves the slim, healthy individuals we want to be. The thing is, weight loss isn’t an instant thing. If you find a solution that makes you drop the weight too quickly, you will not learn anything about what to eat and how much you need to eat. This is where the cycle continues of eating your weight back on again and not knowing much about what you are consuming.

It’s possible to lose weight quickly initially, whether that’s with the HCG Diet Info here that you can read about or another dieting method. The initial losses are down to water weight, but shifting the fat when your body fat content is high? Well, that takes a little more time. Weight loss comes down to two very simple things: a calorie deficit, and movement. Of course, there are a number of diets out there to try, and all of them have a calorie deficit in common. So, if you are looking for an easy fix to get rid of some weight before an event, we’ve got five easy ways for you to shed weight for it. Let’s take a look!

Image Source: Pexels

Intermittent Fasting

As we said, the biggest key to losing weight is in reducing calories. However, most people don’t want to calorie count – they find it time consuming. With intermittent fasting, you don’t calorie count, you instead reduce the time you eat. Some people choose an 8 hour window in their day and only eat food within those times. 12pm – 8pm is very popular, and instead of three meals and snacks, people eat lunch, dinner and a snack. This instantly reduces their calories and weight loss follows as a result.

2. Lift, Lift, Lift

Exercise is the next tip we mentioned, but it’s not all running yourself ragged with cardio. Instead, learn to lift weights. You don’t even need to use dumbbells when you first get started; use your own body weight with a TRX system at home and a carefully laid out plan for exercise. You break down the muscles with lifting and then they repair themselves far stronger. Your body needs energy to do this, so it uses the fat supply to keep the muscles repairing themselves well. Strength training offers you higher lean muscle mass, making you look leaner, too.

3. Get Moving

You don’t have to carve out time to go to the gym, but you need to get your movement up. Get a shiny Fitbit and track your steps, aiming for 10k a day. You don’t even have to go anywhere, walking around the house can do the job!

4. Hydrate

Often, not drinking enough water can hinder your weight loss. Dropping your water retention is a big key to dropping a few pounds, so try eating fewer salty foods and consuming more magnesium.

5. Up Your Protein

Upping your protein to feel more satiated through the day is important, but it doesn’t mean it has to be all you eat. If you make sure that you have a balanced diet with good levels of protein, you’re going to be successful!

Protein provides the building blocks of our bodies and it is crucial that we eat enough of it every day to stay healthy and strong. There are plenty of different protein sources you can bring into your diet, and all of them will work together to repair tissue, keep your bones strong, and help you grow muscle.

Using the Clarity Health App you can test what protein sources will work best for you as well as avoid anything you may be intolerant to.

These are some of the best sources of protein you should add into your diet this week:

Red meat – red meats such as beef are packed with protein to keep your body healthy and strong. However, red meat is also quite fatty; so try to reduce your portions of red meat to 1-2 times per week for a healthy and lean diet.
Chicken – chicken is one of the most versatile foods you can add into your diet. Full of protein and lean fat, it is the ideal choice for every day lunches and hearty evening meals.
Fish – fish is not everyone’s taste, however it provides a huge volume of lean protein as well as omega fatty acids to help digestion. Oily fish such as salmon can be a particularly good choice for you this year
Nuts – for a healthy afternoon snack, a handful of nuts pack a protein punch, but be careful with quantity because nuts are highly calorific!

Thank you reading!

Fitness

4 Tips For People That Feel Self Conscious About Exercising

May 5, 2020 By lyndsinreallife 1 Comment

We all know that exercise is important, but if you are an anxious person and you haven’t exercised much in the past, you may be feeling self conscious about it (example: me). Many people find the idea of working out in a busy gym or running in public quite scary, so they put it off. But it’s important that you find a way to overcome these fears so you can stay fit and healthy. These are some of the best tips for people that feel self conscious about exercising!

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Buy Stylish Workout Clothes

When you wear nice clothes that you like, it gives you a confidence boost and that is true for a lot of people when they exercise as well. If you spend some time picking out some nice workout clothes, like these stars and stripes leggings, for example, you will feel a bit better about yourself. This isn’t going to solve the problem completely, but it can help you when your confidence is low and you are worried about working out. Investing in good quality workout clothes will also help you to stay motivated as well.

Start At Home

Many people are worried that they will be judged by others at the gym because they are beginners and their workouts are not advanced. It’s daunting to go into a gym and start lifting small weights right next to somebody that is more advanced, but it’s important to remember that everybody is there for themselves and they are not paying attention to what you are doing. However, if you are still worried about it, why not start working out at home first? You can build your fitness up and get a bit of confidence before you start working out in public, and that will help a lot. There are some great online workout videos that you can follow to get started. When you do feel confident enough, look for some beginner workout classes where everybody will be in the same boat as you.

Workout With A Friend

Having a friend with you when you workout can help a lot if you are feeling self conscious. You can focus on what you are doing and a bit of moral support goes a long way to boosting your confidence. Most people find that their workout sessions are more effective when they have somebody else there to motivate them as well, so you will get more out of it.

Pick The Right Gym

When you feel comfortable about going into a gym, it’s important that you look at a few different options and pick one that works for you. For example, many women feel a lot more comfortable working out in a gym that has a women-only section. When you look around a gym, go at the time that you would normally exercise so you can see how busy it is. If you can find one that will be relatively quiet when you are there, that will help a lot.

If you feel self conscious about exercising, follow these tips and you will be able to build up your confidence!

Thank you for reading!

Fitness

Ways To Motivate Your Sports Team

April 17, 2020 By lyndsinreallife 1 Comment

When it comes to a sports team, the word team is the main focus. Without a team, you won’t have the same success as you would by simply focusing on one or two members of that group. There are several elements that contribute to a team that respects and builds up one another. Here are some ways to motivate your sports team!

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Get A Personalized Kit

Professionalism is important because you’re taken more seriously when you look and sound professional. When you’re trying to motivate your team, looking good can make a huge difference, and therefore, you might want to look at companies that make football uniforms or sports uniforms that can be personalized with your team’s name and colors. Having consistency and uniformity is essential, and it can tell your opposers that you mean business. A personalized kit makes your team feel part of something special, and that’s a big factor in helping them be inspired to do better and perform better.

Provide Leadership

Leadership is an essential part of motivating your sports team because, in times of hardship, where your team might be losing a game or not on particular form that day, they look to a leader for support. That could be a specific team member, but you also want to have a trainer outside of competitions that provides some direction and is the overall leader of the team. By providing this leadership, you help those individuals who find that they prefer being led rather than being in the position of making decisions.

Create A Safe & Supportive Environment

Creating a safe and supportive environment is important, and the less time spent improving this, the more demotivated your team can become as a result. You might also lose team members for the lack of support they feel from other team members or those in charge. Just like a business with employees, a sports team needs to be listened to. Their concerns are important to take on board and address. Making a safe environment that they can escape daily life from is important to have too. That’s what makes a great sports team in that they care for one another beyond the sport itself. Everyone should be supportive and friendly with one another, even if they don’t necessarily click outside of the sports environment. That’s okay, as long as they have a connection in terms of the love that they have for the sport they play.

Keep It Fun

And finally, whether the sports team is a professional one or simply plays in local competitions, you want to keep it fun. Try to find new ways of how you could motivate your team that makes training or the events engaging. You could do socials where the sports team goes out for drinks or for dinner every month. These small elements can help contribute to the happiness of the team.

So if you’re looking at motivating your sports team, use these tips to help improve the happiness and environment that this team is in!

Thank you for reading!