Happy New Year from Portside Personal Training.
With 2022 at a close and the New Year in full swing, we’ve a short blog with some tips on how you can take or even regain control of your fitness and make this year all about your personal development.
Read on to find out how these 5 tips can help you reach your best self and start the year with positive intentions, with or without a Personal Trainer. Just think where you could be 1 year from now!
Set realistic, attainable goals
Let's be honest, most of the time when people set new years goals or resolutions, they don't follow through with them or they seemingly fail quite early on. Most of the time, the reason for this is simple. The goal they set is too big and often out of reach. Starting off smaller and reviewing smaller goals often to reach the larger goal will prove more successful.
A great way of thinking about this is building strength, let's say you want to become stronger but aren't currently doing anything to do that, the goal becomes much more difficult to attain without a plan in place. Rather, your goal initially should just be to consistently get in the gym 3-4 days per week over a period of 3-6 months for example.
There will be other factors that affect how much strength you gain, but as personal trainers we know you'll gain more this way than just winging it and hoping for the best.
So, when setting goals, think about what it is you ultimately want, but then set the smaller and more realistic goals that will assist you in getting there. This will be a great way in helping you reach success.
Invest in a Personal Trainer or a solid Training Plan
As mentioned in the above tip, many people will join a gym and wing it. Endless hours on the treadmill, the crosstrainer or sitting on machines and not really knowing what they are doing, what muscles are working or what it is they really want to achieve. And with the number of gyms in Brighton & Hove we know there will be a huge amount of people doing this in this city alone!
If you know that you want to increase muscle tone, you want to gain strength, you want to increase aerobic capacity for a sporting event or you just want to get fitter and healthier. You have a rough idea of what you want to do and this will then dictate whether you would like the help of a personal trainer to take away the guesswork or you may like the idea of creating your own plan or investing in one you can trust.
Here at Portside, we create and tailor a bespoke plan for you and your goals, both for use with us in PT sessions and for use outside of sessions if you train at a gym outside of your sessions with your trainer. All done via an App which is super simple to use and is a way of ensuring guaranteed results with training efficiency.
Ultimately, you have to choose what best suits you and how serious you are or want to be about achieving your goals. But getting in the gym with a plan and following this consistently will be your best bet at achieving whatever goal you have set yourself.
Learn about Nutrition and how it can help you get results
Even if you do not have any interest in making changes, you will still need to understand food and how it works to perform at your best in any given scenario. Whether that be a general gym workout, sporting event or CrossFit type event for example. Food is fuel and it matters what you eat and drink.
A general rule of thumb we try to follow when taking nutrition seriously for our own goals is to try and keep breakfasts and lunches the same or similar each day for ease, dinners can be varied and to snack on protein rich foods throughout the day whilst not overeating.
Nutrition is different for everyone and we always advise to try and gain an understanding of it at first so you can take control of food and know what works for you. Here at Portside we give advice and can get onto a deeper level with food if necessary, but some things you can look into today are:
Macronutrients
Setting targets for body recomposition, strength and flexibility/mobility
Protein and weight training
Meal timing around training
The importance of hydration / water
Sleep, mindfulness and rest
Just by looking into these points alone, you will likely come across or read into other important aspects and start to understand a bit more about food and training. But ultimately our trainer truly believe that food is fuel, not just for your body but for your mind. So while we recommend limiting certain food types, it's very important to keep yourself topped up with enough macro and micro nutrients to take on the world around you!
Finally and most importantly, enjoy yourself!
I get it, exercise is not enjoyed by everyone, but it should be! If there are certain exercises you really do not enjoy doing, then don't do them! There are always progressions or regressions of exercises to keep things varied and fun.
If you don't enjoy what you do, you will not stick with it long-term. Training should be fun and something you look forward to, it should not feel like a household chore for example.
With this in mind, experiment with different exercises, exercise methods, gyms and class/1-1 type based environments to find what suits you and ultimately allows you to get the most enjoyment out of training.
That is not to say it should be easy, if it doesn't challenge you then it simply won't change you, but you will have a better time at progressing exercises you deem fun than those that you simply hate. The more you love it, the more you'll do it!
If you feel like you need help getting started on your health and fitness journey, come and chat with one of our Personal Trainers at our Hove studio to discuss how we can help you make a huge difference!
If you're just after a few ideas for healthy and wholesome meals to eat then feel free to download our recipe packs for free! You can use the code PSRECIPE to take 100% off the price of ALL our recipe packs!