The month of February is arguably the most important month of fitness. This is because more people than any other month start to taper off their regiment. This is mostly due to the fact that getting motivated around the New Year is easier than actually maintaining a fitness lifestyle long enough to actually start to experience results.
If you are one of those people who took a long hard look at yourself in the mirror around January 1st and decided “Now is the time to get into shape,” it is more important than ever to actually analyze the activity that maintains your regiment.
Are you eating right? The work that you do in the kitchen, so to speak, is just as important as the work you do in the gym. Do you have a nutrition plan that is keyed into your specific caloric needs? How are your proportions between carbohydrates, protein, and fat? When you have a cheat meal, are you gorging yourself due to your caloric intake being unsustainable during the days that you eat clean?
Are you targeting the right muscle groups? Many people spend a lot of time focusing on a few key areas, but pay little attention on their own to other areas that are just as significant. For example, building more muscles in your legs can help you burn more calories on a regular basis, even on those days between workouts.
Are you actually doing the RIGHT kind of workout to meet your goals? Are you leaning out currently? If so, are you making sure that your lifting regiment is high intensity and based around intervals? Are you keeping your heart rate high enough to maintain a solid burn of calories during that workout? If you are trying to bulk up, are you gearing your workouts around strength training with a focus on breaking apart those muscle groups during that set time of focus?
Wow. A lot of questions to ask and the answers aren’t always easy to find. In a month where everyone who made a New Year’s resolution may suddenly be looking for great impact in their life, there’s a surprising amount of analysis that needs to take place to ensure that what they are doing is actually moving towards their personal goals, and not away.
First, I encourage everyone to realize that “fitness” is not the end all for everyone. There is not one workout regiment that accomplishes every possible personal goal that someone would have. Your fitness regiment and nutrition plan should be geared towards a specific goal that you have in mind.
Secondly, know that you are not alone. There are fitness experts ready to answer your questions and help ensure that you are moving towards the goals that were so important to you a month ago. Contact me anytime you feel that you could benefit from getting answers to the many questions that exist for a forward moving fitness and health regiment.