"What are your true goals?"
I see it all the time, people in the gym jumping from machine to machine without an obvious direction. That's a mistake.
I'm not saying you have to have every move in your routine mapped out, but you do have to have a general focus. You need to know what your goals are and why you're working out.
Are you trying to lose weight? Tone up? Build mass? Achieve sport-specific perfection? These all require a specific approach with different exercises, sets, reps and weight.
If you're heading to the fitness center for weight loss, you need a balanced approach, including cardiovascular and resistance training. A great way to incorporate both is resistance circuit training; like a boot-camp style workout. Building lean muscle and burning calories is a great way to keep your metabolism high.
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Weight training for a lean, toned look needs to focus on low weights and high repetitions. This approach helps develop long, athletic muscles. Hit each muscle group with three or four sets at 15-20 repetitions for best results.
For increased muscle size, you should use the opposite approach; high weight, low reps. Use the highest weight you can and work in the 6-8 repetition range. When you hit the last rep, you shouldn't be able to lift another; lift with enough weight that you experience complete muscle fatigue on the last rep.
Sports-specific exercises obviously vary from sport to sport. For example, if you're a football lineman, you should work on lower body strength; high weight squats and lunges would be a perfect exercise. But if you're a soccer player, you need to build a high-level aerobic capacity for bursts of speed; a series of sprints works well for this purpose. And if you're working on your volleyball game, you need to build lower body, fast-twitch muscles; box jumps and jump squats would fit nicely in your routine.
The point is to have a specific fitness direction when you walk into the facility. If you walk through the doors not knowing what you want to accomplish, you will do just that: accomplish nothing.
Easy fit recipe
For this week's easy fit mini recipe, I want to share something my son invented a while back. It's not exactly my cup of tea, but he sure is proud of it. It all started when he came home from his grandparents' house one day and told me about a new "concoction" he created.
Grandma let him pick his own breakfast and he decided he wanted scrambled eggs topped with peanut butter and jelly. Now it's his absolute favorite. So I decided, in honor of Tyler, I'd share the healthier version of this strange recipe. Start by scrambling up three egg whites and top with low fat, natural peanut butter and sugar free jelly. If you're brave enough to try it, you may as well make it healthy. Enjoy.
