by Hasic Mirsad
Goal setting isn’t just for business anymore. If you really want to build the type of body you want, you’re going to have to start getting specific about your goals.
However, when there are so many different myths out there about fitness, it can be hard to even imagine that you’re going to achieve that ripped set of abs and rock hard body that you’ve always wanted.
So in the name of being specific, what are your goals, really?
• Do you want to achieve a certain body fat percentage?
• Are you interested in finally seeing a certain number on the scale?
• Is there a set of pants that you’ve always wanted to fit into?
Think about what’s going to motivate you because we have to be honest: the road to sculpting that set of rock hard abs is going to be difficult.
So you will need to ensure that you build a program that focuses on logic rather than myth. Speaking of those myths, which ones are we really talking about?
Myth 1 – Training Every day is a Must to Get Ripped
Let’s cover the one about training that we hate the most: if you just train hard enough, nothing else matters. Five workouts back to back?
Who cares as long as you’re losing inches around your waist? This has become worse as the late night infomercials and online programs have gotten more aggressive. If you’re not into “Insanity” or any other program that focuses on pushing you to “dig deeper”, then you’re not the only one.
Yet you might feel that training that hard constantly is really the only way to go. If you’re a beginning to weight lifting, training that hard is a good way to get yourself hurt. Even if you aren’t using weights you can still injure yourself.
A lot of people assume that you can’t get an injury from cardio machines but that’s not the case at all. You just need to make sure that you focus on the bigger picture — everything physical can injure you. You need to go back to the fundamentals and look at rest and recovery.
Myth 2 – Resting is a Waste of Time
Recovery is going to be one of the most important things you can focus on. This is where the body gets to rest and human growth hormone actually gets a chance to be secreted. When the body is in motion constantly, you’re pulling your body into a state of stress.
Now, it’s not the type of stress that keeps you up at night logically, but it’s one that can mess up your sleep physically. Your body cannot tell the difference between the stress that comes from running from something trying to eat you and running cardio or lifting heavy weights.
So you are going to have to really take the time to rest and heal yourself before you go through another workout. What happens when you don’t? Cortisol happens when you don’t. High levels of cortisol promote inflammation and harder recovery.
You won’t recover as well, which means that you’ll go into your next workout still a little torn up from the last one. That’s really no way to get things done.
Myth 3 – You Don’t Need Quality Sleep at All
Proper sleep is critical to resting well — eight hours is a good idea, but sleep quality is equally important. Don’t think that you should just be able to get away with being able to sleep with all of the lights on.
Sleeping in a dark area with all of the lights off and the TV off as well will be the most optimal. If you sleep with a lot of interruptions, your brain is never really going to be able to focus on rest and recovery.
It will always be drawn to those other stimuli and avoid sleeping properly. That can be part of the reason why your sleep isn’t as refreshing as you might want it to be.
Yes, it’s fun to talk about training hard and thinking only about the gains that you want to make. However, is that really going to let you enjoy the type of body that you want? Not at all.
Myth 4 – You Don’t Need to Think Deeply About Fitness
The biggest myth of all is the one that says that you don’t need to think deeply about fitness. That’s a mistake that can really hold you back in the worst of ways.
If we may be blunt, the sharp difference between someone that gets what they want and someone that doesn’t is the level of effort that they put in.
Targeted effort is a lot better than stumbling around in the proverbial dark, so make sure that you don’t just train hard — you train smart!
Of course, you don’t have to take our word for anything. We can’t watch you eat, we can’t watch you train, and we can’t watch you sleep/rest.
However, the mirror will tell you immediately if your progress is actually progress or if you’re starting to move backwards. Good luck!
(Hasic M writes for Ab-Solutely-Fit.com where he shares his knowledge about ab exercises and workouts aimed to help you sculpture your abdominal muscles.)
Focus on compound exercises. Ab exercises are great for targeting your ab muscles directly but performing push ups and squats are excellent for stablizing your body, creating muscle, and burning weight all more than. They work a lot more than one muscle group which can be why they’re called compound workouts.