As of July 1st, it will have been one year since I started lifting. At the end I’ll list all my numbers. If that’s why you’re here, skip to the end. I don’t want to write a post where I blather on about the struggle of being fat or being a grad student or whatever. No, I want to share some things I’ve learned They are not in any order.
1. When it comes to exercise, half the battle is just starting. If you can start, the odds you’ll continue are decent.
2. If you want to increase your odds of continuing to exercise, pick a training program. Most training programs, whether for conditioning, endurance, or strength, are better than none. Try it for a month. If you don’t see progress or you just don’t like it, try another out. There are tons of free training programs on the web. I recommend the novice strength training program, Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe.
3. Set goals. Set lots of goals. Set long-term and intermediate, determinate, short-term goals. If you have lofty fitness/health goals, it’s imperative you recognize that they are lofty.
4. Record everything you do in the gym (as much as can reasonably be tracked). Even if it’s just by memory after you get home, the more info you have about your training session, the better. Include obvious things like the exercises and warmups you did, but you might also consider how you felt. Was it particularly difficult or easy? Did you feel tired or fatigued? Were you under a lot of stress that day/week/month? I use a spreadsheet on my pc to record my numbers and leave myself notes, and it works pretty well, but you can use a notebook or your phone.
5. If, for whatever reason, you miss a workout, don’t sweat it. Regroup and assess your options. If you miss a workout, go the next day, or just skip that day. The point is to enrich, not constrain, your life.
6. If you miss a fitness goal, don’t sweat it. Regroup and assess your options. Was it a reasonable goal? Did you give yourself enough time? Were there mitigating factors you didn’t account for? What can you change about your training, diet, and lifestyle, if you need to change anything, to reach your goal? Remember: not hitting a goal in a specified amount of time doesn’t mean you can’t or won’t reach it.
7. If you get injured either in our outside the gym, training does not have to stop. With most injuries, though obviously not all, there are modifications you can make to your training program such that you can continue training. It may not be ideal, but it can be done.
8. Food and rest are your friends. Get lots of both. Your diet will vary according to your training goals, but eat plenty and often. However many hours you sleep to wake up well-rested, try to get that much sleep every night, or at least the night before going to the gym.
9. Unless you have very specific weight goals, don’t worry about the exact amount of calories you consume. Live a little! It’s great to know the exact calories you’re consuming, but if you have to devote limited mental energy anywhere, it’s better to devote it to life things, to relationships, to training, and to stress management than to calorie counting.
10. Training is about enriching your life and self-improvement. The moment training starts trending away from self-improvement, stop to consider and re-evaluate your desires and commitments.
11. Guilt and shame are inevitable for most people, but they are not very often conducive to progress. A more productive way to handle unmet expectations is to analyze the training and lifestyle data you’ve been collecting. Remember, training is about making your life better. If it causes you excessive guilt and shame, you can refuse it.
12. Focus on more immediate training goals--like increased functionality, increased strength, endurance in some activity--than abstract and ambitious goals like weight loss. The idea is to structure your training program and diet in service of long term goals such that you don’t have constantly track your progress toward some long term goal. So instead of trying to track your progress toward some long term goal, like weight loss, workout to workout, focus on hitting those more manageable intermediate goals. If, for example, you’re doing a strength training program, focus on increasing your squat 10 lbs, which for most novices is achievable in the course of a week, or increasing your bench press by 5 lbs.
I’ll add more as they come to me, but this seems like a pretty good start.
Bench Press: 3x5@135lbs --- 4RM@225lbs
Squat: 3x5@115lbs ------------- 6RM@355lbs/1RM@385lbs
Deadlift: 1x5@135lbs ---------- 5RM@405lbs/1RM@465lbs
Press: 3x5@80lbs -------------- 1RM@190lbs
Pendlay Row: 5x3@65lbs ---- 5RM@225lbs
Body Mass: 400 lbs ------------ 370 lbs