If you’re new, welcome! And welcome back to repeat viewers. Today’s post is about the first health & fitness advice I give to people when they ask.

Thanks for taking the time for today’s post. I write and create everything myself so you’ll find things very straightforward and to-the-point here. Hope you enjoy!

Best health and fitness advice you’ve ever been given

First: Nutrition is more than 3x more important than workouts. Here’s the reason why: simple math. Three meals a day, times seven days in a week = 21. Workouts in the same week...might be 7, 6, 5, 4...1 or zero. Nutrition is 3x (or more) impactful than training because it happens 3x (or more) times per day.

Second: What you don't do might be more impactful than what you do. Taking away a negative behavior/action/habit can be more valuable (and usually easier) than adding a positive behavior/action/habit. Example: removing foods that are unhealthy is easier than adding unfamiliar healthy foods. Another example: removing an hour of bad posture or desk time per day is smarter than trying to add an hour of posture work or stretching/mobility.

How to start / restart with fitness?

Sometimes it can feel like there’s too much to know or do. Or if you don’t do ALL of the right stuff then you shouldn’t even bother at all.

And it’s all relative. What someone considers a victor might be only a ‘small step’ according to someone else. Your starting point might be someone else’s goal. Seriously.

So sometimes I try to take a step back and compare my situation with the scope of the rest of the world. It helps me to realize I'm working on big stuff or small stuff.

Example: If I went to a person in a developing country and explained to him/her that I was struggling to make it to a 60-minute workout in an air-conditioned building....while he/she works all day in the high temperatures just to make a rough living...

Well just thinking about those two different situations makes me realize that I'm making too big a deal out of going to the gym. It's not THAT hard, not hard like the person who works ALL DAY in the heat for pennies.

I say this to myself frequently just to remember how much worse/tougher things could be. After that I feel a boost because now I'm actually volunteering to do something uncomfortable. Deciding to do it when you could easily live without doing it. There's a power in that kind of thinking.

At the same time, I don't want to diminish anyone else's efforts. Because the effort that you are undertaking puts you ahead of effort that others should be doing but aren't. As soon as you're trying you are ahead of people who are not trying or who are not aware they should be trying. Or who don't even know how to start.

Quality of movement over speed.

Control the downward movement. Strength comes from muscle tension, so don't drop down quickly (in any movement) or you'll miss out on muscle tension.

Pay attention to your body. You know that feeling you get when you're about to sneeze? That's your body giving you a preview of the future. If you feel a 'bad' or 'wrong' feeling in your body, heed that warning. Always go home with a little left over rather than over-do it and get injured.

Nothing will derail your progress like a joint injury.

Nothing will derail your progress like a joint injury! (repeated on purpose)

Control weights first. Do every rep well. Then look to go faster.

Work harder by getting more done. Do this by minimizing rest time, not by speeding up movement. If you do a large or medium-sized group good reps in a row, that will always be better for you than doing small groups of quick crappy reps. Work, breath, work again. Don't waste time getting your gear ready, straightening your bar, picking a song, chalking your hands, etc. Either be working or be resting & breathing.

Mentality

The mental tip that will override all others: Don't act like your suffering.

The workouts will be uncomfortable, of course. But if your brain is thinking 'poor me, this is so hard', you will always be operating at less than your potential. Remember that you 'volunteered' to undertake this effort and there is a serious power in that volunteering. If you can celebrate the fact you're choosing to make your body (yourself) do this high level of work, then the work feels less horrible. Making yourself go when all you want to do is stop is the ultimate strength to develop. Knowing you have that strength will last forever. The discomfort of the workout is temporary. Be obsessed and focused on how happy you are that you could make yourself do ____ amount of workout in _____ minutes--not on how uncomfortable it was while it was happening.

You should be thoroughly hydrated before participating in any workout or challenging physical activity. Drink more water than you think you need until you have had about 1/2 your body weight in ounces of water. For example, a 200 lbs person would need about 100 oz of water. Also, it is smart to have a little protein and a little carbohydrate about 45 to 60 minutes before you work out so that your body has adequate fuel during the workout session.

Make sure that you always maintain good posture during exercise movements. Stand with your feet underneath your hips, toes pointed mostly forward, knees slightly bent, while squeezing your abs and your butt about half as hard as you can. Also, squeeze your shoulder blades together behind you and keep tension in the muscles of your upper back in order to keep your shoulder blades in that position while doing other motions. This is called retraction and it is very important for the health and safety of your shoulders.

Focus on keeping your breathing rhythmic and ensuring that you take breath fully in and exhale carbon dioxide fully out. It is usually best to breathe in between repetitions rather than during the motion itself. This is because of the effect that your lung volume has on your internal body pressure and stability from your abs.

Remember that it's the challenge that brings the change but if you overdo it you can really get hurt. If you get tired during the workout, take the shortest rest that you can handle and then get back to it.

Warm-ups should never be skipped, compressed, or done without focus. Warm up time is your preparation time, where you make your body ready to execute movement at the level of intensity needed in order to create change. Remember, training is the act of slightly overwhelming your body's current capacity in order to stimulate your body to become slightly better. If you are going to operate at a level that will slightly overwhelm your current capacity, you need to prepare before you go that fast. The warm-up time a.k.a. your preparation time is crucial to a safe and effective workout. Spend at least five minutes on some cardio method like jumping rope, using a treadmill, and exercise bike, or an elliptical. This should be general cardiovascular exercise at a very medium pace that serves to get your blood flowing to all portions of your body, increase your internal body temperature, increase your heart rate, and how fast you are breathing. Almost more importantly though, this should be the uninterrupted period of near-meditation about your work out. Clear your mind of all the stuff that has happened already that day, or all the stuff that has to happen, and instead just focus on what you were doing for the next 60 to 90 minutes.

Remember that all reps you do TEACH your body to move that way. So if you do sloppy reps, you're programming your body to be sloppy automatically. In college coaching we would always stop the sprinter’s practice when they tired out and slowed down because we only wanted them to practice running FAST!, and when they got too tired, we were just teaching their bodies slow movement.

So teach your body to have great movement automatically by always insisting on great movement during your workouts--even when tired. And try to work as hard as you can during each rep--engage max muscles--rather than trying to be efficient. Squeeze your abs as tightly as you can during the planks, not just as tightly as you need to in order to stay in the position. It's harder but it's better because the point of working out is working.

How a good job engaging your muscles

‘Engaging’ your muscles means to activate and contract those muscles. This is a skill that takes time to develop.

Flexing is anatomy term for closing the joint angle, AKA making the angle smaller. So when someone says to flex your biceps what they should technically be saying is to ‘flex your elbow’ which requires a bicep contraction.

So to recap, engaging means contracting the muscles while flexing means to close the joint.

Example: If you were standing straight up with both feet on the floor and you lift your knee towards your chest you are flexing your hip (closing the joint angle) by Contracting your hip muscles.

A great way to practice Contracting a specific muscle so that you can, later on, utilize it to your advantage in the workout is to use isometric exercises. These are non-moving exercises like a squat hold, hollow body hold, pull up hang Etc.

One thing that helps me immensely in this is to visualize The path of the muscle from where it starts to where it ends. Then I imagine what would happen if those two points were drawn closer to each other. Almost as though they have a rope or string connecting them together and someone is pulling from the middle of the Rope drawing both and towards the center. Usually, your muscles work just like this with a few exceptions of muscles that are connected to large portions of your body like the trunk. When those muscles contract they generally move the limb towards the trunk rather than the trunk towards the limb.

If you’re interested in this, I highly recommend you check out a great book called Strength Training Anatomy Illustrated. Definitely worth it if you're serious about getting the most result out of the effort you put into the gym.

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