Hi guys,  Kris from Custom Fitness here, your Amarillo personal trainer. Today we’re going to be talking about 5 misconceptions about working out. This is part two in our three part series, so be on the lookout for part three coming soon. And if you have any questions about today’s blog, then please give us a call at (806)-322-3188

All right. So misconception number three is that you have to work out every single day. In order to reach your goals, you’re going to have to work out every day, and this time of year, I can tell you that feels daunting, right? You get the kids back in school. That’s great. You got a little bit of free time. That free time’s now for what? Going to work, getting laundry done, fixing meals, prepping for the next day, getting everybody’s lunches packed, all that kind of stuff. So finding an extra hour for yourself, 30 minutes for yourself, sometimes can be difficult.

So as we start to do that, we need to know that if our goal is weight loss, general health, muscle tone, our goal for exercise is about three to five days a week. Even at five days a week, we still got a couple of days of what I like to call active rest where you’re not necessarily working out as intensely, but you’re still being active. Maybe you’re doing yard work, you’re playing with the kids, you’re doing housework, whatever it may be. So you’ve got that active rest in there.

Three days a week, really, you’re going to … If you’re looking for weight loss, you really want between four to five. If you’re looking for maintaining where you’re at, three is perfect, three to four would be good, and then just being active on those other days, starting to have more fun, finding some active things that you can do with your family, with your friends, with your coworkers, whatever it may be.

All right, so misconception number four is that pain is good. I’ve never understood this one. I’m just not a big proponent of pain. So the no pain, no gain thing, we threw that out the window years ago. Okay? If you have discomfort, that’s one thing, where you’re kind of feeling the burn, you’re feeling things working, and you’re like, “Oh, I don’t know if I can do many more of these.” That’s one thing. Whenever you have absolute pain, where it stops you from doing it or you feel like you have to push through that pain, you’re going to end up causing yourself more worry and trouble than what you went into that workout asking for.

So we’re going to make sure that we don’t push through pain, but rather we give our body time to rest and recover, we have any issues checked out by a physician, those kinds of things to make sure that we’re doing things safely and that we’re building our body up rather than breaking it down. So we want to make sure that whatever we’re doing is going to be good for us in the future, not just good for us in the moment, so you do not need to be in pain during your workouts. You should not push through pain, but rather should obviously have moments of some discomfort because obviously doing exercise is not always the most comfortable thing, but definitely no pain.

All right, so misconception number five is that I should just be able to get results by showing up, right? That’s kind of what the gym sells us on. So where we go to those big box gyms and they’re like, “Yeah, if you come here, you’re going to get in the best shape of your life. Here’s your key tag. It’s going to be great.” The problem is that you show up, all they’ve done is rent you a bunch of equipment and a space to go do it at, right? Maybe some classes.

So classes are great. They burn a lot of calories. They do build your muscle tone over time and things like that, but not every class is right for every person. So there are some classes that you may have noticed that you go to and you just don’t ever get results, and it’s because you may be doing the wrong class for your goal set or you may be doing the wrong class for your body type. Your body needs to dictate what it is that you need.

So no, showing up is not enough to get results. Yes, you do actually have to go and workout, and yes, you should have some sort of precise program for this moment in your life. So whatever you did 10 years ago to get in shape may not work today. Whatever you did back in college or high school, it may not be appropriate.

I know a lot of athletes who come in, in their 30s typically is usually about the time that they’ve just given up all hope, and it’s because they were athletes in high school, they might’ve been athletes in college, but either way, whenever they stopped being athletes, all they knew was conditioning. So they knew how to strength train for their sport, they knew how to condition for their sport, so they kept doing the same workout over and over again. The problem was, they weren’t playing their sport anymore. So now we have a bunch of 30-somethings that don’t know what to do, don’t know how to stay in shape because that’s all that they were trained on, was how to perform for their sport, which obviously was very important at the time.

So i’m going to end part two here. In part two we’re going to be talking more about misconceptions about working out.

If can’t wait for part three, or you want to know more about Custom Fitness and what we do here, then please give us a call. If you’re wanting the accountability and help with creating an action plan to see results, or are wanting to someone to help create a workout plan to push you to your greatest potential, then that’s what we’re here for. Our trainers are here to look out for you and make sure that you are meeting your goals in a safe way.

At Custom Fitness, we customize a plan for you. We sit down with you and find out what your needs are and then build a health and fitness plan around that. We have an entire team of dedicated professionals to help you with your health and fitness goals. To get your consultation set up, give us a call at 806-322-3188 or email us at info@customfitness.biz At Custom Fitness, we are YOUR personal trainers in Amarillo, Texas. Have a great day.