Hey, so working out is a good idea, right? Before joining a gym and collecting gym tips online, it’s good to think about why you wanna go there — to serve as a booster. There are many reasons to go to the gym — it helps those of us who want to lose weight, those of us who want to gain muscles, those who need to move more for health-related issues, or just to give you a boost of serotonin.
The fact of going to the gym in itself, though? I know some people genuinely enjoy it all by itself, but most people I’ve met kind of really don’t. Some don’t want to spend the money on it, some don’t like the feeling of obligation that comes with a membership, but most… just get incredibly bored in there.
Honestly, I cannot blame them. I’ve been going to the gym dedicatedly regularly for a year and I still tend to sometimes hear a whine in the back of my mind, calling out to my thoughts and putting images of the infinitely more exciting things I could have been doing instead into my head.
That doesn’t mean it’s unsolvable. So here goes — some gym tips I’ve come up with/discovered in my quest to make going to the gym a habit. (It worked!)
Gym buddies are a blessing, and one of the best gym tips to follow up on. Think about it — on the one hand, you’re helping a friend keep their shape up; on the other, they help you stay in shape because when you’ve already agreed on going to the gym with someone, canceling and procrastinating becomes nigh impossible unless you’re exceptionally impudent.
On top of it all, though, all gym sessions become wildly more entertaining: there’s always someone to talk to and laugh with, there’s someone to take badass pictures of you (don’t you sometimes wish someone was there to do so? No? Not even when you see how good your arm muscles look when you’re doing a specific exer—okay, never mind), there’s someone to laugh at when they fail. In a friendly way, of course, simply because it’s funny, not because you’re making fun of them!
Some places even offer some sort of a discount — or a small bonus — when you bring a friend in, so get on it.
My favorite thing to do when I can physically allow myself to is to watch things. Out of all the gym tips, this one popped into my mind all by itself — simply because I absolutely adore watching stuff, from movies to anime, to YouTube videos.
Get onto a treadmill/bike/leg weights machine, take your phone into your hand or prop it against the machine itself and turn something on. Regardless if it’s something new you haven’t watched yet or something old that happens to be a favorite of yours — what’s important is that it captures your attention.
Not only does it make the workout incredibly more entertaining, but it also actually helps you focus more on the content you’re consuming rather than the difficulty of the exercise you’re performing, thus helping you do it more efficiently.
It helps with setting goals, too. “I’m not getting off the treadmill until this episode of Stranger Things is at least halfway through” kind of thing.
Come on, I know that ‘Make A Dope Playlist’ is at the top of most gym tips listicles. While that is, definitely, helpful, and helps to pump yourself up, almost making you feel like an action-movie hero sometimes (have you ever worked out to the ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ soundtrack? Dude) there are more things to listen to than just music, and they can be times more enthralling.
Anything from podcasts to audiobooks is a) captivating, b) a good thing to pick up and only listen to during gym sessions so that it becomes almost a ritual and motivates you to go back to the gym, and c) sometimes difficult to focus on otherwise, but here? There’s not much else to focus on, if you’re working out by yourself, so.
Even if you’re going to the gym for one purpose only — say, to make your butt more Juicy, to lose weight or to level your endurance up, for example, whichever it is — there’s always a number of means to the same goal.
Different machines and types of exercise can help you with training your butt, just like there’s an incredible number of different cardio workouts to aid on your weight loss journeys.
It’s super important to not stick to the one same exercise; not only for the points of impact to vary and to reduce the risk of injuring yourself and having to drop working out altogether, but also to not turn it into a boring routine.
Which sounds more entertaining: thirty straight minutes on an adductor machine, or some time on the adductor, sometimes squatting some time—you name it? That’s right — staying at the one single machine for too long can get dreadfully boring, and changing up my routine was one of the best gym tips I’d ever gotten.
Here are some gym tips for motivation: set some goals and challenges, and do your best to beat them.
The thing with setting some goals for yourself will aid you in a couple of things. First and foremost, most importantly to the topic of this article, it will help make working out more fun. It’s almost like trying to get a new high score in your favorite video game: the challenge is what keeps you there, the achievement is what makes you feel good.
Besides that, however, trying to beat your previous records is always a good way to work towards improvement, instead of getting stuck at the same point, and a good reminder that you’ve come a long way.
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