Fitness Tips

🎉Have Fun

Probably the best way to stay fit is to keep yourself busy doing things that are fun. Working out long hours at the gym isn't for everyone — and in fact we don't recommend it. Most fitness professionals recommend short sessions: an hour or so, maybe even half an hour. That's all you need, unless you're trying to become an absolute monster. Try to get to the gym more often, but leave sooner.

There are plenty of fun things to do. If you really can't think of anything you like, look on Meetup, Facebook, or your local rec center for weekly events and just sign up or show up. Almost anything beats sitting indoors.

🎯Motivation

Remind yourself why you're doing this. You need some sort of goals — people like working toward goals and achieving them. Your goal might be to look good, but that shouldn't be the only one. Try feeling good, and trying to live forever. You feel good by strengthening specific muscles to guard against injury, which also lets you keep doing the fun things you enjoy. If you can't do the things you enjoy, you'll go downhill fast.

Being competitive — including competing against yourself — helps too. Who doesn't like being the best at something? It's great to be better than others, but you can also just aim to be better than you were last month.

🎵Music

Listen to music while you work out — it does wonders for pushing past your own superficial limits.

🛑Don't Overdo It

It's easy to go overboard and overtrain, especially as a newbie. Don't. You will injure yourself. It's actually easy to cause a hernia if you get sharp pains and don't stop right away (e.g. overtraining abs) — and at that point, you're out of commission for two weeks or longer. You can't go stressing muscles like crazy that you're not used to using. If you do start to injure yourself, no big deal — but stop. You might have to take a week or two off to avoid turning it into a serious injury.

Just because you can do 100 lbs or whatever doesn't mean you should — yet. Work your way up over a number of weeks or months.

🐢Ease Into Anything New

If you're trying a new Exercise, ease into it for two weeks. Start off super easy, even if it seems like a waste of time. It's not.

🎽Form Over Weight

You don't have to lift huge amounts of weight for strength training to be effective. Use whatever weight lets you maintain perfect form. Anything more, and you risk (1) injury, (2) training the wrong muscles, (3) feeling like crap for 1–3 days for no reason.

🩹Respect Injuries

If you have a back injury or other injury, don't blindly do every back-related stretch and Exercise there is — chances are some of them are making it worse. Figure out exactly what the injury is and make sure you're not pinching that nerve or whatever it is.

📅Frequency

Train at least twice a week to maintain good health, and at least three times a week to make progress. Studies show that one huge workout per week is far from ideal: splitting a single long workout into two medium ones has been shown to grow muscle about 38% faster — and it feels far less miserable. Higher-frequency sessions optimize your protein-synthesis response throughout the week and let you perform higher-quality sets.

There's a ceiling as well as a floor. Pros can train every day with little side effect; everyone else needs more rest. In general, don't work out more than every other day — or at least, not the same muscles two days running. Pushing too hard nonstop may have little benefit, and being sore and miserable all the time is the fastest way to quit.

🔢Sets & Volume

Aim for 6–20 sets per muscle per week. The important thing is to do enough total volume — it doesn't matter much how you break it up across sessions.

🔗Pair Muscles Smartly

Pair muscles together sensibly to make workouts more efficient. Some people pair muscles that are anatomically close; others pair based on recovery time. Either approach works — just don't do too much of the same thing in one session.

⚡Be Efficient

Do compound exercises when you can, hitting multiple muscles at once. It saves time — and as a bonus, you get to check off several boxes on your Checklist at once. Certain stretches and exercises can also be combined (for example, heel raises on a stair while holding a heavy weight).

🔄Mix It Up

You're going to have favorite Exercises and stretches — cool, but it's important not to do the same things every day or week. Your body and brain get used to things and soon it won't be a challenge anymore, and the benefits will diminish.

🏠Home Gym vs Public Gym

A home gym is great if you have one — it's just harder to keep the variety up. Keep watching new fitness videos and researching ideas. It's a bit easier to stay varied at a public gym, with so much equipment on hand.

🛌Rest & Recovery

Rest is critical — it's when your muscles actually rebuild, so don't cut the process short. All you're doing while strength training is tearing up your muscles. That's only good if you give them time to heal and rebuild — otherwise you're just torturing yourself for no reason, making little or no progress, getting frustrated, and likely to stop.

Don't train muscles again while they're still sore. If they're not sore but noticeably weak when you go to train them, stop and do something else. Muscles should be fully recovered, or close to it, each time — otherwise your sets won't be as high-quality.

Larger muscles (like your legs) take longer to recover — usually at least 24 hours, and often 48 is better. Long sessions with heavy weight stretch that out badly: recovery starts taking 3–5 days instead of 1–2, or longer if you're flirting with injury. You basically want to wake each muscle up and remind it you need it to work hard sometimes — not wreck it.

A rest day doesn't mean you can't do anything. You can still do cardio, stretches, and so on — just don't work the same muscles hard.

🦴Protect Your Back

Your back has to be strong, whether you care about it or not. If you don't do anything — and especially if you skip the right sports, yoga, and so on — your back will get weaker and weaker, and it pretty much will lead to injury, possibly a serious one. This usually shows up later in life, by which point it's much harder to reverse.

🧘Stretching Is Only Half the Work

Based on widely conducted research, each stretch should be held for at least 30–40 seconds.

But holding it is only half of it. If you don't strengthen those muscles right after, you're getting very little long-term benefit. You'll feel good for a few hours, but the effects won't last. To get the full benefit you have to strengthen the muscles, especially if you're trying to increase range of motion. You have to convince your brain that you have adequate muscle to control what you just stretched, or it'll throttle you back down to what it knows is safe.

Your brain has so much more to do with stretching than you realize. You can't just stretch and exercise for hours like a zombie. It's all about teaching your brain, then backing it up. Prove to it you can do something enough times and it'll finally accept it. Yoga and similar disciplines are brilliantly designed around exactly this idea.

😴Sleep, Diet & Energy

Get a good amount of sleep — it matters for most people. Eat enough carbs throughout the day to fuel your activity, not just at meals. As long as you stay active, you're unlikely to gain unwanted weight. Burn off those carbs with a ride, a walk, or a gym session — ideally about 3 hours after eating for maximum benefit.

💧Diet & Hydration

You don't need extreme amounts of protein, but make sure you eat enough before and after working out — protein is what lets muscles repair and come back stronger. And drink tons of water, before, during, and after — otherwise you will be sore all over, especially as a newbie.

🏃It Doesn't Have to Be Separate

Fitness doesn't have to be a completely separate part of your day. If you're doing things right, it won't be — you won't even think about it. Just staying active with the right sports and activities will automatically check a lot of boxes.

If you've been really inactive for a long time, take some time to make a list of your favorite sports and hobbies, then a list of things you want to try. Find some weekly events, and get a friend or three to join you. The more fun you have, the less gym time you need.

🧹Turn Chores Into Workouts

Working out doesn't have to be a chore — or does it? Why not turn your everyday chores and activities into mini workouts and kill two birds with one stone?

• Don't spend five minutes hunting for the perfect parking spot near the door — park far away and get the steps in.
• Don't be a wimp carrying in groceries — grab a bunch of bags at once and turn it into a bicep curl, farmer's walk, or suitcase carry.
• Always take the stairs instead of the elevator. Stairs are one of the best Exercises around.
• Don't dread piled-up snow — push and lift it. Snow shoveling is great for strength and cardio. (Take it easy if you're older, though — heart attacks are real.)
• Shop without a cart sometimes. You'll spend less and get a workout carrying jugs and cases.
• If you have stairs at home, use them constantly. Carry things up or down one at a time on purpose — yesterday it looked inefficient, today it's a workout.
• Clean and reorganize your house often — all that bending and lifting is good exercise.
• Help friends, neighbors, or random people in parking lots with heavy lifting. You'll be a hero — and get a workout. They never have to know it was for you.