There are at least 100 good reasons to lift weights. Fat loss, muscle gain, sports specific training, powerlifting, general fat loss, and so much more. These are all great reasons to start weight training.
Have you ever thought there might be some bad reasons to lift weights? I was contemplating this while watching the New England Patriots stomp the Miami Dolphins yesterday, and I decided that the following 8 reasons to lift are probably ill conceived for the most part. What do you think?
 Overeating |
Initially, you thought fat people eat so much food because it gives them pleasure. Well guess what? You were wrong! In fact just the opposite is true.
Dopamine, a substance that makes us feel good, is one of the best-known neural chemicals. Though it is often thought of primarily as a manufactured substance it is actually produced naturally in the body. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that activates dopamine receptors, which makes us feel a sense of euphoria.
 Healthy Foods for Breakfast |
Check this out: in recent Consumer Reports news, we find out that some cereals have more sugar than a glazed Dunkin donut. The worst offenders are the sticky sweet cereals like Golden Crisp and Honey Smacks, and I tend to think that my beloved Cocoa Pebbles really aren’t that great either. I’ve mentioned time and again to stay away from food in boxes, especially sugary breakfast cereal.
So what are we to do? You know your kids are going to want something sweet and tasty for breakfast, and in all likelihood you probably don’t want to eat eggs, egg whites, or eggbeaters every day either. Here are some tips to make breakfast both tasty and healthy. I’m happy that I can promote another of my favorite cereals, Frosted Mini-Wheats… good stuff!
 The Dark Knight Joker |
The polls are in!
The overwhelming majority of Project Swole visitors chose Batman: The Dark Knight as the best superhero move ever.
The poll is still open though, so place your vote today.
51% of voters as of 9/9/08 voted for The Dark Knight. I actually did not choose The Dark Knight as the greatest superhero movie ever.
 Glycemic Index |
All carbohydrates are not created equal. A food’s glycemic index, or GI, describes this difference in the way carbs act in your body, by ranking them according to their immediate effect on blood glucose (blood sugar) levels.
Carbohydrates that breakdown quickly during digestion, causing a rapid blood sugar response, have the highest GI.
Carbohydrates that breakdown slowly, releasing glucose gradually into the blood stream, have a lower GI.
 |
A study conducted by the University Of Kansas School Of Medicine reveals that Alzheimer’s patients who exercise have larger brains than those who are out of shape.
Of the 121 people in the study, all were over 60 years of age, and 57% of them already had Alzheimer’s. The actual study itself involved fitness tests and brain scans. Each patient was evaluated using a treadmill to determine a level of physical fitness. Then each patient’s brain was scanned to determine a level of brain shrinkage.
When going to the gym to train, you can develop a tradition that will help you stay focused on your goals. By sticking to the same regimen each day you will also be assured that nothing is changing in your training or preparation. This will make it easier to diagnose a problem or to pin point the result of a specific planned change in your training, nutrition, or lifestyle.
Consistency is one of the prime factors in your training progress. Following the basic outline below will ensure that you have some consistency in the factors that surround your training. After that, it’s your responsibility to actually get to the gym and train. Now let’s investigate how we can maintain consistency around training.
Hey this is a blog right? Well here is a personal post for any who are interested. Over the course of the last month I have really stepped back and tried to examine all the bad habits in my lifestyle. One by one I have started to weed out such things as:
When you look into the mirror what do you see? Perhaps you see a cupcake. Perhaps you see a pear that can talk. An apple maybe? A watermelon? Or perhaps you see walking toothpick. No matter your aesthetic malady, if it can be fixed with diet and exercise.
So often I’ve seen folks try to diet by immersing themselves in fad diet strategies. They use Atkins, Weight Watchers, South Beach, The Zone, Hollywood diets, Low-Carb, Low-Fat, the list goes on and on. Read some reviews of a couple fad diets. The problem is that when dieters go off fad diets, 90% of them gain back whatever they lost and sometimes more! I want to address that issue and provide some tips on how you can generally eat healthier for the rest of your life, rather than abusing fad diet after fad diet.
Starting a new diet or exercise program should not be taken lightly. If you are severely overweight, severely underweight, and/or have any medical conditions, you should always consult your physician prior to drastically changing your eating habits and performing significant weight bearing tasks. Now I would like to outline a number of basic rules for building the foundation of your new dietary plan.
I avoided using “The Diet” as a subtitle of this section for a reason; this is not a diet. I repeat, we are NOT starting a new diet here. These are the permanent changes that need to be made to your lifestyle eating habits. From now on when I use the word “diet” I am referring to your lifestyle eating habits. For example, right now you might say that your diet consists of Coca-Cola, donuts, cheeseburgers, and ice cream. In the future you will say that your diet consists of Crystal Lite, beef jerky, lean beef and chicken, and a protein bar.
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After a 25 year increase, it seems that the percentage of obese or overweight children has plateaued. This news offers us some hope that perhaps the future of America will not be riddled with diabetes and heart disease.
One expert, Dr. David Ludwig, has commented that even though he is encouraged by these findings, “it is still too soon to know if this really means we’re beginning to make meaningful inroads into this epidemic. It may simply be a statistical fluke.” Another expert maintains that there is at least a small level of optimism about these results.
There are so many fad diets out there these days. When you want to lose a quick pound, it’s hard to know where to turn. This is just a short review of popular fad diets, and a solution to the fad diet problem.
Many diets promote certain principles that will make you fatter. Super restricted calorie diets will only slow down your metabolism so that when you start eating again you will balloon right back up. Liquid or juice diets tend to follow this idea. High carbohydrate diets will just bulk you up with carbs and will negatively impact your insulin resistance over a long period of time, possibly leading to adult onset type II diabetes. Zero carbohydrate diets will leave you with no energy and nasty protein bi-products floating around in your system. Plus when you go back to eating normal, the increased carbs will be stored as fat right away and you will balloon back up again.
From now on your diet refers to the way you eat on a daily basis. Instead of going on a diet, you will change your daily eating habits. You will increase your protein consumption, decrease your fat and carbohydrate consumption, eat 5 small meals, and drink a gallon of water a day. These four actions will inherently function to both reduce your daily caloric intake, increase the calories burned by the metabolic processes in your body, and control your cholesterol. It is your responsibility to exercise 3-5 times per week for 45 minutes, and eat fewer calories than your body uses in a day.
Medifast – Read a great review of the Medifast Diet at DietsInReview.com
Low Carb Diet – The basic concept of a low fat diet is to replace the simple carbohydrates in sugary and starchy foods, with high protein, high fat, complex carbohydrate foods. Low carb dieting forms the basis for most successful personalized weight loss diet strategies. A-
Atkins Diet – An extreme version of the low carb diet that sets a limit on the amount of carbs in a day to 20 grams coming only from fibrous sources. This is generally considered to be a moderately dangerous diet, which should only be followed for a month at a time. C+
Low Fat Diet – Since fat has significantly more calories than carbohydrates and protein, this diet aims to keep calories low and eliminate harmful trans fats and saturated fats from the diet, opting to eat mostly carbohydrates instead. The low fat diet craze is single handedly responsible for the rise in Type II diabetes in Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers. F
Zone Diet – (more…)
A recent study has determined that playing certain games really does boost intelligence, problem solving skills, and memory. These brain exercises are a fun way to keep our brains alert and capable. In the study, a Swiss-American research team reports on how they used a computer based brain-training method to improve general problem-solving ability.
Games like Sudoku, crossword puzzles, Scrabble, and memory games all result in improved memory and expanded vocabulary. The young an the elderly can benefit most from these types of games, while the rest of us can use this as a tool to stay sharp and articulate throughout the years.
Many psychologists had thought the only way to improve problem solving ability, was to actually practice the specific problem solving task you wanted to get better at. However, this theory is overturned in the work by Dr. Susanne Jaeggi, Dr. Martin Buschkühl and additional colleagues at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and University of Bern. These experts have determined that anyone can improve general problem solving by participating in unrelated mental exercises and puzzles.
In the experiment, the team gave 35 volunteers a series of mental training exercises designed to improve their working memory, while they also had 35 more subjects who did not undergo the exercises.
Those who underwent the tests were shown a sequence of squares appearing one after another on the computer screen every three seconds. The task was to decide whether a certain square was at the same position as another one previously seen in the sequence. At the same time, participants heard spoken letters and had to decide whether the currently heard letter was the same as one presented two or three steps earlier in the sequence.
If a participant did well the tasks became harder, while if they performed poorly it became easier. This experiment went on for between 8 and 19 days, after which participants’ problem solving ability was assessed and compared to the group who had not taken part in the exercises.
According to the results of the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group who took part in the puzzles had significantly improved their problem solving ability. In addition, the more the participants trained, the more problems they could solve.
Motivation appears to be an important factor in this exercise. The experts suggest that people have to be committed to mental exercise to reap the benefits. Haphazard gaming will not produce the same effects as ambitious mind training. This finding is no surprise considering the general rule that ‘practice makes perfect’. After all, you wouldn’t expect a couch potato to get up and run a 5k. Nor would a beginning weight trainee walk in the gym and squat 550 lbs. Nor would a football player step out into the national spotlight without daily, hardcore practice and training.
This study provides the first evidence that mental exercise improves intelligence and general problem solving ability. You can now take solace in time well-spent on crosswords, Sudoko, Scrabble, or any other thought intensive games.
Whew, I have been in a major slump due to income worries, work hours, family problems, and basically being WAY too stressed out. Well today I am taking a step forward by getting back into kickboxing after about 2 weeks off. It should be great!
I plan to be very tight and very slow. My lungs will probably feel close to bursting. Lactic acid just might shut my body down, especially if Roger has us doing duck walks. Oh, and my wrist hurts a bit from lugging around a 200 lb air conditioner whilst cleaning out my garage this weekend, so hitting the pads should be sweet!
Basically though, I have to get back into it. Once I go tonight, I will be psyched, and I will look forward to going back on Wednesday too.
Follow these five simple rules to turn garage clean-out into the best workout of the month.
Just remember that no matter how heavy anything is, you must lift with your legs, not with your back. This is key to being able to move the next day. My garage clean-out took all of Saturday and half of Sunday, and when I was finished I still had enough energy to scratch up 3 inches of dirt and lay down seed and fertilizer in half of my back yard and half of my front yard. So how do I feel today? A little sore, but my back, legs, and abs are perfectly healthy.
I dug out my Powerblocks, my ez curl bar, and all my nasty plastic weights during the garage clean-out. The bar is a bit rusty, but the Powerblocks are still nice. I intend to use them, and the rusty free weights, to ease myself back into weightlifting since I am so busy that I can’t really make time for kickboxing and going to the gym. Every time I attempt I do pull-ups lately I am able to add 1 rep. This weekend I knocked off a set of 8, which is up from 6 two weeks ago.
Man, if I could just get serious about the lifting and the dieting, it I could end up looking like I did in summer of 2006. This type of mindset is what Project Swole is all about; if I could just start making more money than I spend on bills every month, I would have much more free time in the morning and the night… I’d be golden.
I have been on hiatus from working out and from this blog, for a couple days. This is because my life is flipping upside down in front of my eyes and I have alot to deal with right now. Rest assured, I shall return shortly with more articles, a new workout plan, and a new question of the week. I have to focus on work and my family for a couple days until everything is under control. Until then, don’t forget to train to get swole and to eat with a purpose.
Steve
Since I am operating a healthy lifestyle blog here, I feel that it is important to address some life or death medical considerations at times. Therefore, today we talk about cholesterol. While circulating blood cholesterol is important to know about, you can also gauge increased cholesterol levels my examining the molecules that transport the cholesterol to the cells. An increase in the number of dense fat-transporting molecules surely means an increase in the risk of cardiovascular disease.
In order for cholesterol to travel through blood, it must attach itself to small fat-carrying proteins called lipoproteins. A lipoprotein is a biochemical assembly that contains both proteins and lipids. Many molecules in the blood, including enzymes, transporters, and structural proteins, are lipoproteins. The higher the proportion of protein to lipid in the lipoprotein, the greater is its density. The greater the density of the lipoprotein, the more cholesterol it is transporting around to your organs.
The least dense lipoproteins are the chylomicrons, which carry very little cholesterol.
Next, come the very low-density lipoproteins (VLDL), which roughly carry 15% of the circulating cholesterol.
Following the VLDL are the LDL which are the most notorious since they carry roughly 65% of all circulating cholesterol. High LDL levels are almost always a sure sign of atherosclerosis, a life-threatening heart condition. This means an unusually dangerous amount of cholesterol is present in your blood, and therefore arteries, at any given time. Chance are you will end up with major blockages at precarious locations.
Lastly comes the “good” cholesterol, high-density lipoproteins (HDL), which are the smallest and densest of the lipid-carriers. These actually carry cholesterol from the cells to the liver so that they can be processed as bile acids, excreted in the bile as cholesterol, or returned to the plasma as a component of VLDL. In other words, they dispose of the cholesterol.
There are several notable factors that can dramatically influence blood cholesterol levels.
According to reports from the American scientists at the diabetes association, approximately 7% of US population, about 20 million people, suffer from diabetes. By 2050 diagnosis of type 2 diabetes will be confirmed for about 48 million people in the United States. We always knew diabetes is a very serious disease as it causes loss of hearing, loss of sight, nervous system disorders, amputation of extremities, and now we find out that diabetes is responsible for hormonal imbalances including low testosterone.
A recent study of 69 men with type 1 diabetes and 580 men with type 2 diabetes has confirmed that low testosterone levels are directly related to the existence diabetes. Blood samples were taken from the groups initially and after a 6 month period. Both groups of men exhibited a lower level of total testosterone than the average male without diabetes.
Since men with low testosterone typically show signs of depression, loss of libido, impaired physical and mental performance, and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, this study confirms that men with diabetes to have a legitimate overall heath concern as they grow older.
Typically men over 30 begin to show signs of decreased testosterone levels and often benefit greatly from testosterone replacement therapy. Now these men will have a better understanding of what is happening to them and why, and they can procure proper medical treatment in order to continue to lead happy and healthy lives well into their 70s and 80s.
Men who think they have a legitimate problem with strength, mood, or performance now have a reason to seek testosterone replacement therapy, especially if they have diabetes or think they might be insulin resistant.
While the use of testosterone replacement therapy has not show significant promise when trying to reduce insulin resistance, this type of therapy has been directly responsible for bringing hope to the lives of men with low testosterone. Testosterone replacement therapy reverses the effects of hypogonadism, which is an impairment of the reproductive system that limits the testes effectiveness at producing natural healthy levels of testosterone.
Supplementing with additional testosterone helps to decrease body fat, increase muscle mass, improve mood, improve physical endurance and strength, and also combat the threat of cardiovascular disease. The only downside is that there are no long-term clinical trials to report on the long term side effects of testosterone replacement therapy. But we do know that the short term effects definitely improve the quality of life for those with low testosterone.
By now everyone knows that testosterone and other steroids are illegal. Even prohormones such as androstenedione and nor-androstenedione have been banned. So what do we have left?
Tribex Gold alone is a good supplement to stay on permanently, as is Carbolin 19. Alpha Male is a great supplement to boost your training for a couple months here or there. For those of you suffering with diabetes or insulin resistance, it looks like perhaps if you tried boosting your testosterone through natural means like this, you might feel a whole lot better.
If you wanted to go all out, I might recommend getting some Tribex Gold and Carbolin 19 in addition to your Alpha Male, and take the former two supplements when you are off Alpha Male, whether for 1 day or 1 month. No matter what, don’t forget to bust your ass training.
When I am in the gym or in the dojo, I make every attempt to bring maximum intensity and pure focus. Throughout my life this is the attitude that I have known to foster success. As an example, most of the local gyms tend to blast Britney Spears music or perhaps some Justin Timberlake. These folks rolls up into the speakers babbling about love and dancing with their crooning voices and loose hips. Well I am not training for love. I am not training to dance. I am training to either lift more weight than you can comprehend or to knock your head off if you threaten me.
Some inspiring lyrics from some rock groups that know how to bring it…
“Yeah! You push it! Yeah! You push it!”
– Static-X
“Heavy! I want it Heavy!”
– Disturbed
“DIG! Bury Me! Underneath!
Everything that I am!”
– Mudvayne
“Get this or die! Get this or die!!
Get this or DIE!!!”
– Slipknot
When you are training you need to be in The Zone. Not the Zone Diet, not the Phantom Zone, and definitely not the Game Zone. Too many folks saunter into the gym with Britney Spears’ intensity. They walk up to the dumbbells, sigh, and hit the same number of reps, sets, and weights they’ve been using for the last 5 years. These are the same folks that won’t squat because it hurts their back, they won’t run because it hurts their knees, they won’t use a barbell because it hurts their hands! I feel like saying, “pick a spot on the ceiling, focus on it, grab the bar, do your set, THEN worry about the condition of your fingers”. Your back hurts? Spend a couple minutes figuring out how to rehab that thing back into working condition… then squat! Knees hurt? Try interval sprints, try the elliptical, try kickboxing!
Late in the evening when I’m trying to finish up my super-set so that I can get in one more exercise before the gym closes, I have to listen to, “I like to exercise late because there isn’t really anyone here to watch me. Maybe if I was in a bit better shape I wouldn’t mind so much, you know?” NO! I don’t know, buddy! I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about! I like it when other people are working out around me. Guys like me start up unspoken competitions with other similar athletes. We watch intently to see if our rivals hit their deadlift max this week. We check out the shredded guy’s calves to see if ours are still bigger. But there’s one thing you don’t need to worry about: we do not, under any circumstances, watch YOU. In fact I don’t really care what you do because you add absolutely nothing to my training, but please move away from the decline bench so I can finish my last set of weighted decline sit ups!
If you want to make progress you need to DIG! You need to want it HEAVY! You need to PUSH IT!! Eat what you know you need to eat. If you don’t know what to eat, read and learn. Lift more weight every single workout no matter what. Kick harder today than you did yesterday. Jump higher! Do more situps! Get in that zone so you can block out the rest of your life, so that the only thing you see right now is that bar on the floor or the heavy bag, and you know that today, right now, you’re about to lift 5 lbs more on this exercise than you’ve ever lifted before, and hell if you can get an extra rep you’ll do that too. Know that you’re about to jump rope for 5 minute straight without it getting caught on your feet. Know that you are about to knock that heavy bag right off the damned ceiling! Get IN that zone, because it’s time to DIG!
– George Eliot
Welcome to Project Swole 2.0! This swell new layout goes right along with my new goals for Project Swole. I am still in love with powerlifting and strongman training, but I have found vacant spot in my heart for martial arts and conditioning.
Previously in my training career, it was all about size. I trained like a bodybuilder, in the 8-12 rep range, 5 workouts per week, keeping myself lean, with medium weight. Progress was acceptable. My muscles got slightly puffy and I looked OK naked. The downside was that I looked big when I was pumped up after a workout, but much smaller half a day later when the pump was gone. I wasn’t very strong either. My lifestyle was that of diet logs, egg whites, bodybuilding forums, and posing. This left something to be desired.
I learned the ‘secrets’ of The Westside Barbell Club and followed the writings of Louie Simmons, Christian Thibideau, and Dave Tate. My diet became much more liberal, my reps dropped down to 1-5, training frequency to 3-4 workouts a week with heavy weight, and my exercise scheme moved to a max effort, dynamic effort protocol. The results were good. I maintained my pumped up bodybuilding appearance full-time as my muscles became dense and strong. On the downside, my tendons and joints hurt at times, my cardiovascular health went out the window, and I bulked up to about 210-220 lbs. Over time I realized that 190-200 was the upper limit of a comfortable body weight for me.
On the upside, my efforts to learn all the best exercises really paid off:
The next phase of my lifting career saw me try to embrace olympic lifting and functional training in combination with powerlifting. I started training 2-3 times per week with full body workouts, and added an extra workout or two per week with olympic lifting complexes. This resulted in my staying strong, my cardiovascular system got healthy, my tendons and joints stayed strong, and my muscles stayed strong as I kept the powerlifting aspects as part of each workout. The downside is that I got bored. Each workout consisted of bench, squat, deadlift, overhead press, abs, and calves. On a bad day, I would push through the workout and it would take me over 60-75 minutes to get everything done. I limited myself to the most effective exercises only, and rarely tried anything new. For some folks who only care to lift weights, this IS the best form of training. For me, I still needed something else.
MMA, Jiu-Jitsu, Taekwondo, Judo, Karate, Kenpo, Kung Fu, Muay Thai, Jeet Kune Do… call it what you want, martial arts are great. Of course I learned and practiced by watching Bruce Lee and Jean Claude Van Damme in my teens and early twenties. Chuck Norris is the man, Bruce Lee is the king, we all know these things. But what could I learn by myself? I had always wanted to take martial arts classes, but had never had the time or resources to get involved. Recently I discovered a Thai Kickboxing class at my local Toykeo Joe’s karate school. Finally I could get in shape with serious conditioning, learn a martial art, possibly get involved with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu down the line… exercise was finally looking fun again.
I still hunger for powerlifting and olympic complexes, for strength and conditioning. On the other hand, I refuse to give up my newfound love for martial arts training. Thus my plan is as follows:
Join me in my quest to kick some ass, have emergency strength, stay healthy, and look good naked! Project Swole is a place where we can discuss these matters at length; where we can teach each other and learn from our mistakes. Motivate yourself to get Swole!
There are plenty of reasons why you should be exercising and exercising consistently. There is not a single person that cannot gain something from some level of physical activity, whether it is walking around the neighborhood or lifting heavy weights at the gym. Simply put, exercise is an integral part of the journey toward good health; weightlifting helps keep bones and muscles strong, while conditioning helps keep the cardiovascular system healthy. Literally everyone should exercise at least 3 days a week.
What kind of benefits should you come to expect from working out three days a week? Exercise can alleviate many problems that some of us may deal with regularly. For instance, regular exercise helps to lower excess blood sugar and improve circulation in order to help with diabetes. Exercise helps to lower bad cholesterol (LDL) and elevate good cholesterol (HDL). Most trainees that I have talk to over the years are in agreement that exercise also helps curb nasty eating habits, helps increase energy levels during the day, and helps them to fall asleep at night. Of course, exercise has noticeable effects on blood pressure, cholesterol, and, therefore, heart disease. Exercise effects all aspects of our lives.
For those that think that exercise might be too hard on your joints, exercise can not only strengthen the muscle around the faulty joint but strengthen the tendons and ligaments too so that discomfort is kept to a minimum. Consistency with exercise, especially resistance training, can also lead to higher bone density, which can help keep osteoporosis at bay. A good number of studies have now determined that senior citizens can actually peel the years back with exercise, not to mention strengthening those brittle bones too. Some cases have been so extreme that the most feeble of 85 year olds will begin exercising only to become as fit as an average 55 year old.
So, even if you feel like a lost cause, don’t give up! Now, everyone knows how good it is to be active, but what exactly should you be doing for exercise?
This could mean bodyweight, dumbbells, weight machines, or surgical tubing. I would recommend spending about 30 minutes at least three days a week performing total body workouts.
Make sure that the pace is challenging, the weight is not too heavy so that your technique deteriorates, or too light so that your workout wasn’t demanding enough. This takes trial and error.
I might suggest to a client or friend 4 simple movements that utilize a push, a pull, a leg exercise, and a functional core strengthener. To keep it simple I would recommend any combination of the following: pushups/bench press/dumbbell press, pulldowns/pull ups/rows, squats/deadlifts, and situps/weighted ab rotations/side bends. For these four movements, I would have them perform 20 repetitions for each movement, then 15 repetitions, then 10, and finally 5. This should be done with as few breaks as you feel you need and with as much passion as you feel you got. Once again, 3 times per week is the goal, but switch it up for each workout.
Cardio is best described as an exercise performed for extended periods of time. This could mean 30-45 minutes of biking at a moderate pace, jogging, elliptical, or stair-climbing. All of these options burn significant calories, but some prove to be more demanding on the joints for some people. It’s all personal preference. Many people choose to perform cardio on two days sandwiched between the three resistance training days.
Just remember that you exercise to make yourself stronger, not to make yourself comfortable. Also, stop reading this article about exercising and just go do it!
I want to address a real issue here today, and some of you may think I’m soft or catering to those will low self esteem and low willpower. The fact of the matter is this: your family and friends will not always be positive when they hear about your weight loss or fitness goals. They might even belittle you or belittle your dreams when you start to show progress. You need to prepare yourself for this in advance. The reality is that it is important that those closest to you serve as cheerleaders to motivate you and remind you that your hard work has paid off, but that you need to prepare yourself for the opposite.
We all like a little encouragement, especially when the weight loss plateaus or stalls temporarily. However, many of us are not so lucky and in fact might have to deal with hostility toward our weight loss. Maybe they think you are “better than them†by making such drastic changes, which is absurd. Whatever you do, don’t allow their negative energy to dampen your excitement. Plus, this negativity demonstrates that they are simply a poor excuse for a friend.
It is good to have a workout partner, or to have friends with the same fitness interests as yourself. Often times we can find people who share our goals online. Try searching for a popular form or blog, like Project Swole, and begin to post your comments and network with some of the members. This can be very motivating and the competitive aspect can be very good for progress. You could also try working with a personal trainer if you are just beginning, or if you need a supervised, motivational boost to your workouts.
In any case, remember that the weight won’t lift itself and the spare tire won’t get out there and run sprints. Get in the gym or out on the field and motivate YOURSELF to set new personal records today!
