If you bought an expensive gym membership and stopped going after the first two weeks, you are not alone. So many people fail so often that gyms not only expect it but depend on it to make profits. Below is the mindset of gym goer!
Understand your motivation
Different people get into the gym for different reasons. Some want to look chiseled, some ask how to get six pack abs, some want to de-stress, some want to get over a breakup. No matter what your motivation, understand what your goal is. Knowing your motivation will help you every time you feel like giving up. If you go in with a fuzzy goal, you will be easily discouraged every time the sessions become tough. Don’t fail before you even start.
Set the right expectations
If you expect results within the first three to six months, you will be disappointed. The point of the first few months is to let your body get used to exercising, focus on right muscle proportion and make exercising the new normal for your life. If after a month of working out, you still consider going to the gym as a special part of your routine, you have failed already.
Focus on forming a habit
To survive the first six months of close to no visible results you must visit the gym as a matter of habit. Habit-forming occurs in the first two months when the urge to drop out of the routine is very high. Resist it. This is your goal as a beginner. Thankfully, a lot of research into human behavior has been done and we already know some super-helpful tricks that work:
Tell everyone about your goal
Tell your family. Post it on Facebook. Bring it up in conversations. Once your entire social circle knows about you working out, you will be held accountable for it. The fear of embarrassment is one of the most powerful motivators to keep you in the game.
Maintain a journal
The act of recording the exercises, sets and reps will do two things. First, the act of writing it down ensures you have a physical way of tracking your progress (or lack of it) over weeks. This is very important. Second, you will consciously be treating your routine as a part of a larger journey, instead of seeing it as something you do every day at 8am in the morning. It will make you patient, diligent and disciplined.
Be regular
Skipping a single day in your schedule does unbelievable damage to your ability to form a regular habit. Force yourself to go that extra mile. It always pays off.
You are what you eat
A common rookie mistake is to work-out like a champ in the gym and think that protein shakes are enough nutrition. They never are. A body is made in the kitchen. Some experts claim 70% of your success depends on your diet. Since building a body is essentially a biochemical effort, what goes inside you matters. The correct diet can be the difference between sustained, dependable gains and misguided, wasted effort.
You are unique
Apart from being a motivational mantra, this realization helps explain why you cannot compare your biceps to the guy next to you, no matter how equal your regimes are. Genetics and environmental factors play a large role in determining how your body responds to yours efforts. Knowing this will help you avoid getting disappointed and save you a lot of heartburn.
Gather your mental strength
Some people go into the gym expecting that they will “get used to it”. Working out will never get easy. That is the whole point. The moment your body gets used to the workouts, it will stop growing because it thinks you are ok the way you are. This is a journey of constantly pushing yourself outside your comfort zone. There is literally no gain without pain here. We all know about physical effects of stress as mental and physical strength are quite interlinked. So,working out is all about mental strength; physical strength is the goal, not the requirement.
Research
Despite what people might tell you, fitness and bodybuilding is an art, not a science. This means there is no list of rules that will set you on the path in one go. The internet makes it possible for you to quickly find high quality reading-material on the subject. Read it. There are more nuances to your body than you can imagine. Also, your body is unique (refer point 5). Working out with half-knowledge is useless or, in many cases, harmful. (A tip: Don’t over-read. There is nothing worse than being confused and not doing anything at all.)
It pays to start with something more than just enthusiasm. Be mindful of your journey and you are more likely to reach your destination. Best of luck!
