5 Ways to Be Active
Incorporating exercise into your daily routine can be tough with busy schedules, but it's essential for a healthy lifestyle. Luckily, there are many ways to prioritize physical activity, like taking a leisurely stroll, using stairs instead of elevators, parking further from your destination, doing household chores, or joining fitness classes. These small adjustments can have a significant impact on your overall well-being. By incorporating these tips into your daily routine, you can optimize your physical activity and enhance your health. So, why not start prioritizing exercise in your daily routine today?
5 Ways I Stay Motivated
Starting and staying motivated to achieve health and fitness goals can be challenging. Whether you want to lose weight, build muscle, or live a healthier lifestyle, committing to these goals is not easy.
Motivation comes and goes. You cannot always rely on having the motivation to work toward your fitness goals. However, a few things can help you stay on track.
First, get started. Sometimes, the hardest part is taking that first step. Once you do, it becomes easier to keep going.
Another key is to set a routine and stick to it. This can help you build momentum and make progress towards your goals.
Also, remember why you started in the first place. Whether it's to improve your health or feel more confident, keeping this motivation in mind can help you stay on track.
Finally, remember that the effort you put in today will benefit your future self. Make healthy choices a part of your daily routine to consistently achieve your health and fitness goals.
Why Diet Is More Important Than Exercise
Maintaining a healthy lifestyle involves more than just hitting the gym. Your diet plays a crucial role in achieving overall fitness goals. Even if you spend hours at the gym, a poor diet can undo all your hard work. To maintain a healthy weight, boost energy levels, and reduce the risk of chronic diseases, it is crucial to consume a diet rich in nutrients and low in processed foods. Relying on exercise alone to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight can be challenging and unsustainable in the long run. Therefore, prioritizing a balanced and healthy diet over the time spent in the gym is essential for optimal health and fitness.
Mobility and Stretching
Mobility and stretching are so important. Not only can it make workouts and everyday life that much better, but stretching and mobility exercises such as yoga can increase lifelong longevity for mobility. If you are like I have been in the past, and you jump into your workout, then go home, you may need to rethink your approach.
Fitness Foundation
The issue with the strategy of growing strength right from the start was that I never felt like I was getting stronger. I was just getting fatigued quicker. I still had postural struggles, and my gym sessions just did not feel very effective. I started to lose motivation because I felt like I was doing everything right, but I felt like I was getting nowhere. So I decided to break down what poor postural habits I have, and I realized I have poor muscular endurance. So when I train, I am doing so with the intention to improve muscular endurance before building muscle. Thinking about the posterior chain muscles helped me determine where I needed to start.
How to Set Healthy Fitness Goals
Have you ever intended to start a fitness journey? Then not long after you began, you decide to stop because you don’t see results? The first step is to set goals, so knowing how to set healthy fitness goals is extremely important to achieve your goals. I LOVE setting goals. It helps me stay motivated to work towards what I am trying to achieve. By setting mini-goals to achieve milestones that will ultimately achieve my long-term goals, I can have mini celebrations along the way and enjoy the journey rather than only looking towards the end goal.
How to Begin Your Fitness Journey
As we enter the new year, we set new goals for the year. We aim to be better versions of ourselves and set new fitness goals. We are super excited to get to the new version of ourselves, but then we quit after a month. Why? Because we set our sights too high and take on too much too fast to achieve those fitness goals. Then we get discouraged and give up. Trust me; I've been there. But over time, I've learned that starting small is key to beginning any fitness journey. Here are some tips for beginning your fitness journey for successfully creating healthy and active lifestyle habits.
How Creating a Workout Schedule Can Help You Lose Weight
What are your fitness goals? There are many kinds of fitness goals that people try to achieve. Whether it’s building muscle, reducing stress or losing weight, having some kind of workout schedule can help you achieve those goals quickly.
Benefits of Hiking
I love hiking, especially in the Rocky Mountains of the areas surrounding Durango, CO. It is such a rewarding activity and I LOVE being outdoors, in the sun and seeing all of the plants and wildlife. It just makes me so happy to be outdoors exploring the wilderness. Not only is it a rewarding experience, there are many benefits of hiking as well.
HIIT - What is it?
We’ve all heard of HIIT, or High Intensity Interval Training, right? But what comes to mind when you hear it? Burpees? Anyone? Sweaty quick movements? Yeah, those were my basic thoughts about HIIT. Like, just because you do HIIT workouts you’re going to get quick results, lose all the weight and then you’ll be shredded. Well, let me tell you that is wrong. While HIIT is a great workout to get a great effective workout done in a short amount of time, there is so much more than burpees to this style of training,
How I Stay Active, Even When I Don’t Want To (Updated 2023)
Like anyone, I always have days where I want to sit and binge the latest shows on various streaming platforms or scroll TikTok. But I know my body and mind like it much better when I am active. If I am sedentary for too long, I fall asleep more than I need to, or I get restless, and my mind starts to wander into negative headspace. Physical activity helps with this, probably more than I realized….
My Fitness Journey
Fitness journeys are never linear. There will always be ups and downs. My journey is no exception. I have not been feeling very productive and on my fitness game this past month, and that’s okay. I let it be for a short time, and then I work towards returning to my routine.
It is okay to fall off of your regular routine, but if it’s something you want to maintain, it is something you will want to return as soon as possible.
I have always been on and off of my fitness routine, and I am working hard toward maintaining that routine as much as possible. So, even though I did not do any strength training the past month, I got some runs in. Sometimes, something is better than nothing.
The Importance of Cardiovascular Training
The cardiovascular system consists of the heart and blood vessels in the body. The primary function of the cardiovascular system is to transport oxygen throughout the body. Two additional functions are creating blood clots for wounds and regulating body temperature.
Your lungs are part of the respiratory system, which primarily intake oxygen from the air around and expel carbon dioxide. The respiratory and cardiovascular systems determine your cardiovascular endurance or aerobic fitness levels. In other words, how well your body can take in oxygen and pump it through it via blood.
The Importance of Stability Training
Have you gone to the gym and not sure where to start? Many of us live sedentary lives, so jumping straight into cardio and/or weight training may not be the best option for someone beginning their fitness journey. So where do you start?
Beginning with a solid foundation with functional training and stability training can help develop and strengthen the supporter muscles that provide everyday movements. The core also plays a massive role in creating overall stability in the body.
The whole body is connected in ways that we don’t realize. One body part, such as your feet, affect your low back. Stability, flexibility, and mobility training are essential to incorporate into your workout routine, regardless of your fitness levels.
Importance of Core Strength
Most of us sit a good amount of the day, decreasing the time the core is activated. As I sit here and write this, I can feel my shoulders and my back begin to round as my core fatigues and then deactivates.
It happens while I am standing and even driving. I slowly feel my head move forward as my shoulders round away from the seat. It is wild that as important as our core strength is to overall body movements, our core muscles have become lazy as a society. In this post, I will discuss the core, why it is essential, and how you can strengthen your core strength.
Three Underrated Workouts
Have you seen all the fancy, crazy workouts that require a total gym on social media? Yeah, me too. While some of those workouts have their time and place, they are not always necessary to create an active lifestyle.
Going back to basics is often critical to starting any fitness journey. Below I will discuss the three underrated workouts you can do from anywhere with little to no equipment. I love adding these to my daily routines, even with my strength training days.
These are my favorite workouts when I feel like I need a little more activity in my day as I work at a desk all day. Now, if you have more movement in your everyday life, adding any additional activity may not be necessary. It is entirely up to you based on your current fitness level.
I recommend trying these exercises if you need to add an extra activity or are just beginning your fitness journey. It is a great way to begin building healthy habits for moving your body throughout the day.
Full-Body Workouts For Beginners
Are you a beginner at working out? Full-body workouts may be a great option for you to get started. By utilizing a workout routine that allows you to ease into working out and creating healthy habits, you have the ability to increase your likelihood of sticking to these new healthy habits.
How to Create a Workout Split
Work out split, is it just more buzz words surrounding the fitness community? Do you head to the gym and randomly pick your workouts at the moment? Do you struggle with having a strategy for creating workouts that maximize your workouts? Creating a workout split may be beneficial to achieving your fitness goals.
4 Tips to Navigating Injury
Have you ever felt like your fitness goals are derailed due to injury? Same. I have had an ongoing injury in my low back. I had to take a week off recently to allow it to heal. I hated that I had to do that. It felt like the end of the world. But I decided to shift my mindset about it so that one day, I can try to prevent further injuries. Note: I am not a medical professional.
6 Common Mobility Exercises
In this post, I will describe the top six mobility exercises I like to incorporate after every workout. These are only a few mobility exercises that I do daily. But if I am short on time and I can’t do my whole mobility routine, these are the six exercises I must do.