Tag: habits
Habits of Successful and Motivated Fit People
What Successful and Motivated Fitness Enthusiasts Do Differently
Only the people with the right habits can be successful in building muscle mass, losing weight and reaching their physique goals. It should be no surprise that most successful gym-goers have similar habits.
Many people join a gym but only a few of them stick to the fit lifestyle while the others drop out after not seeing much progress and losing motivation. The article will help you in joining the former group and sticking to your goals.
Start With A Goal
Most people start working out with an end goal (building muscle or losing weight) in mind. They soon start feeling overwhelmed by it and start wasting their time in the gym. While the end goal is crucial, the importance of short-term goals in your fitness journey is indispensable.
If your end goal is to step on a bodybuilding stage after a year, have monthly and weekly goals which help you get closer to the end goal. Checking off these smaller milestones will also help in keeping you motivated.
Prepare and Stick to a Schedule
Some people think that bodybuilders have no other job than working out. While the truth is, people with great physiques are successful in time management and maintaining harmony in their work-training-life.
Devise a schedule which compliments all the three aspects. You shouldn’t be drained out after a workout before you reach office or your family. Your training should fuel your work-life balance and vice-versa.
Be Disciplined
Discipline towards the fit lifestyle is what separates the fit people from the quitters. You need to have a military-like discipline towards your training, diet and recovery program if you want to transform your physique.
It could mean skipping a hang-out with friends because you need to hit the gym. Reaching the gym at the same time every day and following the process day in and day out isn’t easy but will surely get you results in the long run.
Plan in Advance
It’s rightly said, “people who fail to plan, plan to fail.” You aren’t going to be successful in transforming your body if you’re always firefighting. You need to plan your training, diet, meals, and recovery in advance to get the most out of them.
Planning can be easy but sticking to your plans is what matters. You’ll be in situations where you’ll be tempted to make “one exception” and that will soon turn into two and more. Plant your foot down and go with your plan in such scenarios. You’ll thank yourself for it later.
Expand Your Knowledge
To constantly evolve your physique, you need to be on the lookout for new methods and techniques. In bodybuilding, if you’re not going forward, you’re sure to go back in reverse gear.
Once you’ve mastered a training technique or a diet plan, learn a new one. With the advancement in research in training and nutrition science, there are new concepts coming out regularly. Staying up to date with them can keep you motivated to stay ahead of the curve.
What according to you are the other habits of successful gym-goers? Let us know in the comments below. Also, be sure to follow Generation Iron on Facebook and Twitter.
6 Things Bodybuilding Pros Do Every Day
These Are The Habits Of The Pro Bodybuilders and Athletes
Becoming a pro at anything takes years of practice and work. What if you didn’t have so much time on your hands? What if you could straighten the learning curve to speed up your gains?
We sat down to analyze the behaviors and habits of the professional bodybuilders which could explain their success at the sport, and we’re happy to tell you we managed to find a pattern that sets them apart from the rookies.
Set Goals
By not setting goals, many people fail at the first step in achieving their goals. As someone rightly said, “If you’re failing to plan, you’re planning to fail.” You must step into the gym with a game plan or you’ll end up laboring away your time.
You also need to streamline your goals and make them actionable. Having a goal as simple as “gain muscle mass” isn’t going to cut it. Be more specific. “Add 10lbs of muscle mass in 12 weeks” is a goal that will push you to do your best.
Consistency
One of the biggest factors of mastery in a field is consistency. If you give in to the resistance and don’t practice what you want to get better at regularly with full devotion, you’re going to fail at it.
There will be days when you’ll want to take a day off or you’ll be tempted to go out with friends and family instead of training, but it’s days like these that will show your mettle and set you apart from the crowd.
Follow A Holistic Approach
Bodybuilding, like any other art, doesn’t work in isolation. To get better at the sport you’ll need to learn about biomechanics, nutrition, recovery techniques, supplementation along with going all-out in the gym.
You might start your training career with lifting big weights and solely focusing on getting huge, but after some time (and injuries), you’ll earn some wisdom and find ways to take a holistic approach.
Journal
Journaling is one of the most undervalued practices in bodybuilding, especially if you are an amateur. In the beginning, it might be a little intimidating to remember the names of the exercises, let alone the amount of weight you used, the number of sets and reps you performed in your workouts.
Having a record of all your workouts can help you set PR goals for your future workouts. You shouldn’t limit yourself to the numbers, you should write about your thought process in and outside the gym to have better clarity.
Invest In Yourself
The day you stop expanding your knowledge and limit yourself to what you already know, the same day you’ll hit a plateau. You should always be on the lookout to learn new techniques and ways of getting better at your craft.
Never hold yourself back from investing in yourself by applying for classes, seminars, conferences, webinars, reading books, etc. You should treat your education like the job it is meant to be.
Be Your Biggest Critique
The first point in this article is to set very specific goals. You also need to follow up and review your progress periodically. If you’re on the right path, keep going. Re-route and get on track if you think you’ve strayed off.
Don’t take the criticism or appraisals of others too seriously but be ruthless while judging your self. You should maintain a record of your physique with body measurements and pictures and take account of any injury or movement issues. Set standards for each and then evaluate yourself on the same.
Who is your favorite bodybuilder? Let us know in the comments below. Also, be sure to follow Generation Iron on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Header image courtesy of Envato Elements
6 Habits Which Will Make You Fat
Avoid Doing These Six Things If You Want To Lose Body Fat
Contrary to what most people believe, they didn’t put on body fat because of their genetics or heavy bones. The accumulation of fat is a result of the habits they have been following for years.
While there are many lifestyle choices which lead to obesity, we are listing down the top six. The objective of this article is to point out a few habits which make people fat so they can avoid them.
Not Following A Schedule
Most people don’t follow an eating schedule. They eat when they want to eat, what they want to eat and however much they want to eat. It’s a blunder when it comes to staying healthy and in shape.
Following a diet accustoms your body to an eating pattern, and your metabolism stays in top shape. A good metabolism rate ensures that you are burning fat even when you’re sitting ideal. You should be eating 5-6 meals a day to keep your metabolism rate soaring.
Becoming A Couch Potato
With the increase in desk jobs, the time people spend sitting has gone through the roof. It’s no secret that sitting for a prolonged duration can result in obesity. Becoming a couch potato can also lead to diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes, etc.
If you have a desk job, you need to incorporate NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) in your schedule. NEAT encourages you to add walking, standing to your routine so that you are constantly burning calories.
Eating Too Close To Bedtime
While we can understand having dinner and hitting the sack right after it can be very convenient, it’s also one of the worst things you can do to your health. By eating too close to your bedtime, you don’t give your body enough time to burn off the extra calories.
If you can’t space your dinner and bedtime appropriately, you should add a cardio session between them to boost your metabolism. Letting the digestive process start before you go to sleep is essential in making sure you don’t build up fat reserves.
Not Drinking Enough Water
You should set a goal of drinking 8-12 glasses of water every day. Drinking water only when you’re thirsty can lead to an increase in fat deposits in the body. Headaches, acne, digestive problems are some of the problems which can be caused by a lack of drinking ample amount of water.
Staying hydrated will not only help you in fighting body fat but will also allow the body to flush out toxins, excess fat, promote skin health, and improve brain and memory function. If counting the number of glasses sounds hard, carry a one-gallon water bottle with you to work.
Stress
Stress is one of the most common reasons why many people put on weight and body fat. Studies have shown that an increase in stress can raise your cortisol levels which can lead to hypertension, heart diseases, diabetes, and a bulging waistline.
A rise in cortisol levels can also result in the lowering of the male sex hormone – testosterone. Testosterone is the hormone responsible for building muscles mass and all the characteristics associated with puberty in men.
Skipping Breakfast
The first thing many people do when they want to lose weight is to stop eating their breakfast. The breakfast is probably the most important meal of the day as you’re coming off an 8-hour fast (sleeping time).
Depriving your body of the essential calories and macros which you get through the breakfast can result in fat storage in your body. You need to make sure you never hit the starvation phase as it can do more harm than good if you want to lose body fat.
Header image courtesy of Envato Elements
What is your current body fat percentage?
Let us know in the comments below. Also, be sure to follow Generation Iron on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
7 Fitness Habits You Need To Break Today
7 Fitness Habits You Need To Break Today
Human nature pushes us to figure out the easiest way of doing a task. We form routines around them that make us work in an “overdrive” mode. Fitness habits are no different. Many people try to find the easiest way of milking the fitness cow as soon as they step inside a gym.
You might even have come across a quote that is widely attributed to Bill Gates:
“I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”
Sadly, this hack will not get you anywhere in the gym.
Pain, exhaustion, and sweat are a few indicators that tell you if you’re doing the right things in the gym. When most people join a gym, they follow their friendly neighborhood gym bro’s advice without questioning the status quo.
A pro fitness athlete would tell you that gym bros aren’t the best place to get your advice from. Performing hundreds of repetitions of the wrong advice can reinforce habits that will take a lot of time to fix. Luckily, habits can change, whether the habit is biting your nails or decrying your genetics when you can’t seem to make any gains.
Worst Fitness Habits That You Need To Fix
1. Believing Everything You Hear
Almost every person who has ever stepped foot inside a gym forms strong opinions about lifting weights. Before handing out fitness advice, some people even discount the fact that they have only been to a gym once in their life.
And then there are people on the other end of the spectrum who take advice from just about anyone. The latter group of people becomes soft targets for the gym bros.
Interestingly, most of the advice that does the rounds in the fitness circles is nothing more than folklore. Some of the most common fitness myths are:
a) Working out on an empty stomach will help burn fat.
Research has found that while training in a fasted state could burn more calories from fat, it could also cause the body to break down muscle tissues to burn protein as fuel.
b) Women will get bulky if they lift weights.
This is one myth that refuses to die even after several studies have proven that women don’t produce enough testosterone to build as much muscle mass as their male counterparts.
2. Over Keen
Every gym has a group of people who are too eager to achieve their dream physique. For them, the amount of time they spend in the iron paradise is directly proportional to the gains they can make in a single day.
Switching programs too often, trying new advanced training principles, and making unhealthy changes to their diet program to speed up their transformation are trademarks of impatient lifters. If you make drastic changes to your lifestyle in the first week of joining a gym, you are setting yourself up for failure. Your goal should be to slowly build fitness habits that will help you successfully implement lifestyle changes.
3. Zero Accountability
Fitness is turning from an individual’s sport into a team sport. Most people fail in their transformation journey because they are not accountable to anyone. Failing in secrecy makes no difference as there are no consequences because no one will know any different.
Gone are the days when people used to work in dark and gloomy gyms.
The rise of Instagram and YouTube has made sharing transformation progress cool. By sharing your fitness online, you’ll not only be keeping yourself accountable, but you might also inspire others to join you.
Even if you don’t want to share your goals and progress online, you should share them with your friends and family so that you’re at least answerable to someone. It might feel like a small ask, but the psychological benefits of this approach alone will pay dividends in the long run.
4. Skipping Warm-Ups
Many people reach for the dumbbells as soon as they step inside a weight room. They consider warming up a waste of time and prefer lifting lighter weights for the first couple of sets as an alternative warm-up.
Although you might be saving 10-15 minutes by skipping the warm-up, dodging the pre-workout warm-up increases the chances of an injury during an intense workout. A warm-up routine should either consist of 5-10 minutes of cardio or some form of dynamic stretching.
5. No Game Plan
If you don’t have a detailed plan of how you’re going to achieve your dream physique, your odds of failing are relatively high. Vague goals like “I want to get fit”, “I want to lose weight”, or “I want to put on muscle mass” do not cut it.
You need to set a timeline for yourself. The next step after designing a transformation program is to devise a tracking and feedback mechanism. You should have weekly reviews to assess your progress and make necessary changes if and when needed.
A solid game plan has the following things built in:
Tweaking training and nutrition programs when the effort to reward proportion turns unfavorable. If you’re getting too comfortable with your training routine, it’s a sign you need to switch things up.
Staying away from vanilla training programs. Don’t bother following what is working for other people because everyone’s body is different and what might be working for them might not do the trick for you.
Plan all your workouts in advance. Everything from the exercises you will be doing, weights you will be lifting to the clothes you will be wearing should be dialed in.
Know your limits. You don’t want to spread yourself too thin by trying to do more than you’re capable of.
6. Not Using Gear
No, not that gear. Please put the syringes away.
Most people leave gains on the table by not using lifting accessories. Accessories like weightlifting belts, straps, wrist wraps can take your workouts to the next level.
Not only do the training accessories help in better recruitment of the muscles, but they also reduce the probability of injuries when working with heavier weights. Leave lifting raw to the powerlifting pros and speed up your transformation by using lifting accessories.
7. Recovery? What’s That?
No matter how hard you work in the gym, you will not see results until you give your muscles ample time to recover after your workouts. Remember: you break down muscle tissues in the gym. They grow back bigger and stronger when you’re following a good nutrition and recovery program.
You should be sleeping anywhere between 7-8 hours every night for optimal recovery. Some fitness habits to speed up recovery include:
Drinking at least a gallon of water every day.
Eating a high-protein post-workout snack.
Cooling-down after workouts.
Self-myofascial release.
Cold showers.
Are you a victim to any of these bad fitness habits? Let us know in the comments below. Also, be sure to follow Generation Iron on Facebook and Twitter.
5 Gym Habits You Should Follow Post COVID
Gym Hygiene Habits To Live By
As much as it might sting, the fact is COVID-19 is here to stay. We should make peace with it and develop healthy habits to combat it. If you think you’re safe from the deadly disease because you’ve got the shots, think again. The effectiveness of the vaccines lasts for a year at max.
The novel coronavirus has permanently changed personal hygiene and how we interact with each other. We’ll soon see the vaccine shots taking the form of antibiotics and face masks becoming a norm.
On top of that, gyms aren’t the most hygienic places. It’s not uncommon to see a sweaty bro covering the benches and equipment with his bodily juices. It has also been found that viruses like corona can spread through the air. The proximity of people in the gyms and ample respiratory droplets in the air make it a fertile breeding ground for the virus.
5 Gym Habits You Should Follow Post COVID
Carry a Towel
If you weren’t carrying a towel already, you are a part of the problem. After the pandemic, you should ideally carry two towels to the gym. One for your face and the other for wiping down the gym equipment.
A very common mistake that most people make is that they keep their towels at random places while they’re doing their set. You don’t want other people touching and handling your wipes. If a single person has touched your towel, it beats the purpose of carrying it in the first place.
Also, for the love of God, stop using your t-shirt to wipe your face. Your t-shirt is full of germs by the end of the day, and then you wear it to the gym and use your sleeve to wipe off the sweat. If you’re so keen on getting an infection, you should rather ask someone to sneeze in your face.
Don’t Use The Gym’s Waterbottles
Many gyms provide you with water bottles and hand towels when you walk in for your workout. Although these gyms might be following the safety precautions, you shouldn’t push your luck too hard.
You should also avoid using your gym’s water cooler, toilets, saunas, and spas. Hit the gym for weight training and leave at the earliest. While you’re on your way out, make sure you don’t stop at the gym’s cafe.
A study conducted by Nature found that gyms are among the four riskiest places for transmission. They acted as “super-spreading” sites for COVID-19 transmission last spring, accounting for the majority of new infections in large U.S. cities. Good luck getting this out of your head the next time you step inside a gym.
Sanitize
Sanitization is the name of the game when it comes to keeping your hands clean of any viruses and bacteria. You should train at a gym that has dedicated staff for sanitizing the equipment every time someone uses it.
Carrying a hand sanitizer to the gym is also a good idea. If your gym doesn’t have staff for sanitizing the equipment, limit your workouts to a minimum of equipment and do the dirty work of cleaning the machines yourself.
Many people have a habit of touching their faces and wiping off sweat with the back of their hands. You should make sure you don’t touch your face without sanitizing your hands. After you’re done with your workouts, wash your hands thoroughly for at least one minute without fail.
Wear Masks
Wearing masks can be irritating, we know, but nothing is more effective at blocking contagious viruses, and it should definitely be a part of your gym habits. There are many kinds of masks in the market these days – designer, artistic, and whatnot but the most effective ones are surgical and N95s.
Surgical masks are a great fit for the gym as they are light and stretchable. On the other hand, working out in N95s can give you the experience of training in an elevation mask.
Many people have the habit of wearing the same masks for weeks. Once their mask gets visibly dirty, they wash it and start wearing it again. You should use a new mask every day. Surgical masks are great for this cause because they are budget-friendly and effective.
Select Your Gym Timings Wisely
You don’t want to be hitting the gym at the peak hours which usually are 5-9 am and 6-10 pm. If your schedule allows, ask your gym management when the iron paradise is the least crowded and book a training session at that time.
Another benefit of training at a ‘quiet’ time is that your workouts will be shorter as you won’t have to wait for your turn at the busy machines. Plus, you don’t have to worry about making sweat babies with the “corona is a scam” guy.
If you go to the gym just for cardio, you should probably explore other options like hitting the track or buying cardio equipment for home. Considering the current situation, if you can do something out in the open, you don’t want to be doing the same thing in a room full of 50 people.
Bonus: Choose Your Gym Carefully
Covid-19 has changed how you should choose a gym. Except for the usual machines, equipment, free weights, you should now also check if the gym has proper ventilation and if they have air purification systems installed at the facility.
We saw a rise in the pod-gym culture after the gyms started opening up after coronavirus. Expect this to become a new standard in one form or the other. Boutique franchises that offer classes to a fixed number of people at a time like Rise Nation, DanceBody, SoulCycle will be big beneficiaries of this culture.
You should opt for the gym which avoids cross-contamination with the right capacity, cleaning, and ventilation. A gym that makes temperature checks, wearing masks, using sanitizers mandatory, and requires you to pre-book your workout time slot should be preferred.
Do you follow any of the gym habits mentioned above? Let us know in the comments below. Also, be sure to follow Generation Iron on Facebook and Twitter.