15 Lessons I learnt about fitness

Today I complete 8 years in my fitness journey.I still remember coming back from the Doctor after a health checkup with very bad lipid profile and Doctor asking me to start some lifestyle medicines immediately. I didn’t want to get into medicines so approached my neighbour who is an athlete and had played for Indian Boxing team in Commonwealth and Asian games to guide me and help in improving my health – the fitness way. For next two months he made sure I never missed any workout. He would wake me up and take me to the park and then gym. In these two months I started seeing some results. I felt energetic, lost a few kgs and that kicked in the motivation. Always remember = Action -> Result ->Motivation. I was sleeping well. My stress levels were down. I was calm. And I was looking better. It became a habit there after. A lifestyle. In less than a year I got my tests done again and I had much better health reports. That motivated me more. In couple of years I had the absolute normal heath reports on everything. This prompted me to read a lot on fitness, watch and listen to hours of broadcast. Except for few changes in eating habits like reducing sugar and processed food, I eat almost everything. I never diet or go into those fad food and supplements etc. If I am deficit of something, I take it as medicine. I don’t recommend vitamin pills for the sake of taking pills because I have crossed certain age. I realised strength training is very important and just going for a walk will not help. Your regimen should be a mix of Strength training, mobility and cardio. I give four days to strength training and two days to mobility and cardio.

Here I have compiled 15 rules that I learnt about training from my own experiences.

1) Do less and do it better. By default we tend to do more if we are not seeing results. Don’t overtrain.

2) Do more free weight and compound exercises. They give u more bang for your buck. Machines are great and helps u to lift heavier but free weights use stabiliser muscles to engage. Prefer dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells over machines.

3. Prefer compound exercises more than isolation ones.

4. Set a goal – you should be aware if u want to gain size or endurance.

5. Set a schedule – Aim to work 4-5 days in a week. Time is not important, quality and composition of exercises is. CONSISTENCY IS THE KEY

6. Don’t train the same muscle group on simultaneous days. Recovery is very important.

7. Proper form is must. Make sure u r doing your training in a proper form.

8. Get yourself a mentor. Ask questions. Read. Understand. And if possible find a partner. There is nothing like someone along in your journey.

9. Cardio should be integral part of your training. Don’t mix cardio and strength training together in a day. Low impact cardio like cycling, swimming etc works best but if u love high intensity like running, avoid it after leg day.

10. Keep your sessions max at 60 mins.

11. Warm up. Do dynamic stretching to warm up. Don’t just get up on a treadmill to warm up.

12. Breathe always nasal. Mouth is to eat not breathe.

13. Give 10 mins to mobility at least twice a week.

14. If you have to stretch keep it at least 2 mins each stretch or else it’s no use.

15. Keep ur phone away to avoid distraction. Start your session. Get into groove. Train hard. Keep duration less than 60 mins. Exit happy and energetic. Always trains smart. Train pain free.