Aug 13, 2020
How You Can Exercise Daily
A bear, however hard he tries, grows tubby without exercise
Working out daily is a ritual that works on the simple principle of the compound effect. The results are seen after considerable effort over the course of a minimum of 2–3 months. Rigorous exercise is disciplined brain training. Daily exercise can be a dose of daily self-improvement as well if you choose to look at it that way.
Jacob Ballon, MD, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, relates exercise to the work done in therapy. “We think about it as being a microcosm for the rest of [a patient’s] life,” he says. “That which happens in therapy tends to repeat itself outside of therapy.” Exercise every day is not easy work; it becomes difficult after a point of time when you feel that your results have plateaued.
The reason people quit when this happens is that they feel that all the hard work they put in is vain. Think about this: all your life you have been told you get what you put in. When your employer says that if you work for 10 hours, you’ll get a certain amount of money at the end of the day, this is fair, you work and you get paid for it, tit for tat. However, in working out much like entrepreneurship, it does not quite work like this, the results show only after a certain amount of time. You need to stay consistent and train properly, eat the right foods, and put unfamiliar importance on sleep.
The beginning needs to be light; this will help you later when you want to do progressive overloading. People behave in a monkey see, monkey do manner when they enter a gym for the first time and start pumping iron way above the weight that their body can handle. Beginners often follow other people who have been working out for years if not months and don’t realize how it can injure their bodies. So, when I started going to the gym, I used only the barbell to do compound lifts until I had gotten perfect in my movements. Then enhancing weights and loading was easier for me than other people I worked out with.
Sleep long and deep. Having a solid 8–9-hour sleep is essential for growing your muscles and reinvigorating your body. Most Olympic athletes sleep 10–11 hours a day, and it has been reported that recovery is the most important and the most difficult part of a good performance come game day. If your mind is not clear and fresh, then you can never be fully in the game. A good workout in the morning always begins the night before and the quality of your energy and dedication towards pushing yourself physically and mentally depends on how refreshed and driven you to feel.
Diet is much more about regulating the process, instead of using willpower to prevent yourself from eating processed food or junk. Regulating your diet means putting less pressure on the limited reserves of your willpower and more on the planning aspect of it. Meal prepping on the weekends can save you a ton in the financial department as well as keep you grounded by providing you with a systemized plan for what you’re going to eat in the next 4–5 days. To implement this, I’ve allowed myself junk food for one meal a week, in order to keep things simpler. This decision also comes from the belief that diet can have a lot of effect on your mental state besides just boosting the intensity of your workouts, so I would suggest that you stick to the basics like nuts, berries, a ton of veggies, and whole grains. Beans, lentils, and chickpeas are the best possible foods for energy and vitality, eating them consistently will always lead to better health outcomes.
Keep track of your daily progress by photo montage, click a picture of your body after every workout, after a couple of months, look at the montage, and see how far you’ve come. Let this be the motivation when you don’t feel like continuing your habit, feel the momentum that you’ve built and close your eyes and see how good you feel about yourself after completing a hellish workout even though you barely have enough energy left to stand.
The only trick is persistence and consistency, set reminders in your calendar, or get a trainer/gym buddy who keeps you accountable.
Do all these things and I’m pretty much certain that you can transform your body in the next year.
Cheers
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