It's the end of another year, which means it's time to appraise our fitness successes over the last 12 months and make any changes that might be needed to ensure even greater improvements in 2014.
To provide a solid head start, here is a review of the top 10 best fitness tips from 2013.
10. Avoid Workout Ruts: Without changing your workouts regularly, you'll quickly become bored and it will become difficult to make measurable progress. Instead, give yourself frequent jump starts by adding new exercises to your workout and regularly changing the cardio exercises you perform.
9. Don't Over-Snack: Healthy snacks between meals are important, but mindless munching can sabotage your fitness goals. Replace your weakness foods with similar-tasting alternatives, like a handful of unsalted cashews instead of a greasy bag of chips, or dried fruit instead of sugary candy.
8. Get Enough Sleep: A lack of regular deep sleep leads to decreased immune function, increased heat rate variability, difficulty concentrating, and impaired physical coordination. So be sure to get your Zs and you'll feel more energized and better motivated to lead an active lifestyle.
7. Focus on Proper Technique: By performing your exercises without proper technique, you will fail to isolate the intended muscles and increase the risk of joint injury. To avoid this, focus on performing each movement slowly and smoothly with no sudden swinging or jerking.
6. Don't Focus on Weight: Traditional scales can help monitor progress, but since muscle weighs more than fat, you can easily gain weight while becoming more fit.
Instead, have your body fat tested regularly by a qualified professional or buy a digital body composition scale for a more accurate indication of your fitness level.
5. Avoid Fad Diets: While crash diets will surely help you lose weight fast, you'll almost definitely gain it back. Prolonged extreme calorie depravation dieting, also called starvation, is even more unhealthy and impractical. True healthy living means balanced eating, minimal splurging, and performing a wide variety of exercise.
4. Make Exercise Fun: Find physical activities you look forward to and it will be easier to maintain consistent effort. It's best to pick something that works your core stabilizers while engaging the rest of your body, too. Examples include yoga, pilates, swimming, skating, snowboarding and wakeboarding. The possibilities are nearly endless.
3. Perform Regular Cardio: You don't need to perform endless hours of cardio to get great results. In fact, that might even be counterproductive. Instead, try including 20 minutes of cardio into every hour spent at the gym and focus on keeping your heart rate up during your strength routine. Then add one other 45-minute cardio session each week, and voila!
2. Plan Your Meals: You're much more likely to grab a couple pizza slices at the food court if you're in a rush. Instead, pack your lunch the night before when you'll have more time to consider what you're eating. Perhaps better still, consider planning a whole week of meals at once.
1. Set Realistic Goals: If you've been sedentary for a while, or have been doing sporadic highintensity workouts, you should ease into a new 2014 fitness regimen that builds progressively in intensity and frequency, while always maintaining your consistency.
A successful routine should also include structured and attainable short-term goals.
Shaun Karp is a certified personal trainer and the owner of Karp Fitness and Rehabilitation. 604-420-7800 karpfitness.com
