Lately at the gym, I’ve had several encounters with people who were relatively new to working out. They come up to me wanting to know a bit about my fitness journey up to this point, as well as if I have any advice and insights for beginners that could help them out. This really got me thinking about what key pieces of information I would’ve benefited from the most when I first started going to the gym.
In truth, there are lots of things I’d like to share when it comes to achieving success with a fitness routine. However, that could be quite overwhelming and difficult to comprehend for someone who’s just starting out. Therefore, after much thought, I’ve compiled the three best workout tips that, in my opinion, would be the most valuable for helping beginners build the robust foundation they need to flourish in the gym.
1. Value Consistency over Anything Else
Often times, when people first begin going to the gym, they immediately try to dive into specifics about their routine. They’re worried about their optimizing their exercise selection and perfecting their technique. They’re concerned with finding the right amount of cardio to do and the right amount of protein to consume.
While these are all important elements of your fitness routine that you should start to think about, don’t burden yourself with trying to get it all perfect right away. Instead, what you should be spending the bulk of your energy on is simply trying to develop and maintain consistency with your workouts. If you want real results and permanent improvements to your health, fitness, and physique, that doesn’t come with sporadic exercise for a few days, weeks, or even months at a time. Not being able to sustain an exercise routine is perhaps the biggest reason why so many people have such a difficult time achieving their fitness goals, so if you don’t want that to happen to you, then it’s something you must address and overcome as quickly as you can.
That being said, how do you overcome it? The key to long-term success in the gym isn’t to make working out something you look forward to everyday, but to make it something you do simply out of habit and routine. At that point, everything will essentially be running on autopilot and won’t rely on your ability to motivate and convince yourself to exercise every day. Reaching that point will take deliberate effort and discipline, but the good news is that there are many resources out there, including several other posts that I’ve written, that can help you generate consistency with working out and form a habit out of going to the gym.
If you’re able to stick around for the long-run, then you’ll have plenty of time later on to figure out everything else related to your training, diet, and recovery.
2. Focus on the Journey, Not the Result
Within the fitness community, there’s always discussion, including by myself, about using exercise to achieve specific fitness goals. Having measurable goals, such as having a certain amount of strength or looking a certain way, can definitely help you stay focused and motivated with your workouts, but true success in the gym isn’t about reaching an end result.
Instead, adhering to a fitness routine is about choosing to embark on a journey of continuous self-improvement. This might sound a bit cheesy, but the real benefit of working out doesn’t lie in attaining a particular state, but in what you discover on your way there. It’s a process of constantly learning about how to get your body and mind closer to your ideal self. Through this, you’ll pick up principles and behaviors that’ll lead you to being healthier and happier for the rest of your life.
Goals, on the other hand, should just be checkpoints along the way to make sure you stay on the right path. If you’re learning how to properly train your muscles, manage your calorie intake, and implement healthy daily habits, then it’s only a matter of time before you see the muscle growth, weight loss, or any other kind of transformation you might’ve initially set as a goal for yourself. More importantly, you’ll know what it takes to continue progressing from there, or at least maintain what you’ve achieved, because after all, you can’t just come to a full stop once you’ve hit your goals if you don’t want to lose everything you’ve worked for.
Let your goals guide you, but don’t let them consume you. Embrace everything that comes your way, take forward whatever you learn in the process, and remember that the most crucial part of the journey is the journey itself.
3. Don’t Believe Everything You See
Now that you’re getting into the world of fitness, you might begin to see all kinds of fitness content on your social media feeds and other places on the Internet. The Internet can be a terrific resource for learning new exercises and gaining new insights to help you improve the effectiveness of your fitness routine. However, while I encourage you to seek videos, blogs, and pages that can help you progress more quickly, I should also caution you about what you might come across in your browsing.
As you likely know, not everything you find online is necessarily true, and this can especially be the case when it comes to the health and fitness industry. Whether it’s an ad for a supplement or workout program, or an influencer trying to show you the next best exercise routine, you should always take these with some skepticism. Sometimes, what you see might not be telling the entire story, and other times, it might just be completely false.
It would be naive to think that everyone on the Internet is looking out for your best interest. While some people do, many others are simply trying to gain a follower or customer. They promote products they don’t actually use, or the results they claim to have achieved with a particular program or routine are actually heavily amplified through steroids, surgery, or other enhancers.
The best way to avoid falling for scams and misinformation is to never rely on just one source. Whether you’re looking for something concrete like a new exercise or protein powder, or simply seeking general training and dieting advice, gather information from a wide variety of places. Find common themes, principles, and points among them, as these are likely to be what you can actually trust. If a particular brand of protein powder is commonly recommended, that’s probably a good sign that it’s genuinely worth trying. Likewise, you can trust in the concept of progressive overload because it’s basically universally accepted as the best way to build muscle and strength.
Even as you read this or any of my other posts, I wouldn’t assume that you’d take everything I say at face value. As much as I try to give my honest thoughts and opinions, I’d still expect and encourage you to review additional sources to verify the information you come across here.
Be Set for Success from Day One
Like I said at the start, there’s a lot more I could easily dive into when it comes to workout tips for beginners. However, I really tried to take a step back and focus on the most critical and high-level information one would need in order to develop an effective and everlasting fitness routine that will benefit them for the rest of their life.
Finding success in the gym starts with crafting a process that works for you, and the tips I’ve shared in this post will hopefully help you out a lot with that. First and foremost, this process must be something you can stick to and maintain consistency with. In addition, it’ll be a process through which you understand how to continue learning from and improving upon past experiences, and only in trusted ways that’ll lead to real results. Your process is your foundation, and the stronger it is, the more rewarding your fitness journey will be.
