Mindful Fitness Regimen Planning
Starting exercise routine and fitness regimens are daunting and overwhelming, especially to a novice in this uncharted territory. Thus, a proper plan bearing various decisive factors in mind requires complete evaluations of an individual’s interests, lifestyle, and co-relation with continued motivation for sticking to a regimen. Exercise routine – Understanding your body type and lifestyle can assist you in determining the best exercise routine for you. 3 Body types: Ectomorphs, Mesomorphs, and Endomorphs require different exercise routine approaches. The following factors are kept in mind to design a schedule that caters to a person’s needs:
Exercise Routine – Body composition: Body Wants & Needs
Understanding that each body type is unique is crucial in understanding your body composition and how it handles and burns calories. The most noteworthy classification regarding body types is ectomorphs, mesomorphs, and endomorphs. This classification helps us distinguish the easy exercise routines from the difficult ones.
· Ectomorphs should lean towards HIIT to ensure their cardiovascular system is utilizing itself to provide stamina, as often a lean appearance is mistaken as the epitome of physical wellness. Ectomorphs are long and lean, with little body fat, and also little muscle. They have a hard time gaining weight. Models and basketball players fit this classification.
· Mesomorphs include various alternating regimens to ensure endurance and strength, sustain weight, and gain muscle. People with a mesomorph physique often tend to have a medium frame. They can create muscles easily and have even more muscle than fat on their bodies. Mesomorphs are generally solid and also strong, not obese or underweight. Their bodies might be called rectangle-shaped fit with an upright position.
· Endomorphs should also lean towards HIIT and weight training to avoid chronic health problems down the road like insulin insensitivity leading to diabetes. Endomorphs typically have a smooth, round body, medium-large bone framework, tiny shoulders and much shorter arms or legs. They typically bring their weight in the reduced abdominal area, hips, and upper legs rather than evenly dispersed throughout the body.
Exercise Routine – Goals: What and Why – Stay Fit
Workout routines are neither easy-to-start nor easy to continue. Hence, it is imperative to have a clear set of goals before embarking on a journey that requires dedication and consistency. To start, one must be able to answer what outcomes they hope to achieve that might include:
- Weight loss
- Muscle gain
- Muscle toning
- Increased stamina
- General active lifestyle
Settling on a goal is derived from a personal aspect of life, which often serves as motivation. This motivation decides whether or not a person will continue exercising instead of giving in mid-way. It serves as a scaffold for the person: someone might be losing weight for an upcoming wedding or gaining muscle to battle insecurity. No matter the reason, the goals narrow down the quest of selecting an appropriate workout regimen.
- Weight loss: Best targeted through High-Intensity Interval Training
- Muscle gain: Combining muscle training through weight lifting and cardio show rapid improvement in a short time.
- Muscle toning: CrossFit and Pilates yield the best results
- Increased stamina: For athletes, increasing their capacity to exercise routine is vital. A mixture of High-Intensity Interval Training and CrossFit fulfills this purpose.
Exercise Routine – Sustainability: How Long and How Much
Most exercise routines and diets fail because people aren’t consistent with the regimen they seek. It could be due to many reasons. For example, the high endurance required, an incompatible fitness routine with lifestyle, etc. The root cause of all these reasons can be traced back to a single thought process: Over enthusiasm at the beginning and under-assessing the logistics of the changes required to accommodate a regular workout routine.
Sustainability requires an apt analysis of your previous habits and how much time you can willingly subscribe and sustain over a longer duration of time without turning exercise routine into a burden. It also helps identify which workout will be chosen in the start to see results and which ones need to continue to maintain physical well-being.
- High impact, fast results, less time: Weight training.
- High impact, slow results, less time: High-Intensity Interval Training.
- Low impact, slow results, more time: Cardio, CrossFit, Yoga, Pilates.
Exercise Routine – Nutrition: To Eat or Not To Eat
Even though people can lose weight without exercising, it is usually short term. Nutrition education tells us that a healthy relationship with food should be maintained while achieving fitness goals through an exercise routine to boost morale and aid the exercise routine regimen to deliver health benefits.
- Muscle gain: A protein-rich diet helps the rapidly growing muscles to increase in size
- Weight loss: A diet bearing calorie deficit ensures maximum efficacy for workout
Lifestyle & Exercise Routine
Lifestyle dictates how much time they can freely attribute to a regular exercise routine. A routine also helps us decide what suits our timings and goals. As every regimen is target specific, the duration can become the ultimate deciding factor for choosing. For instance:
- Shortest time scale, least number of days: HIIT
- Moderate duration, a moderate number of days: CrossFit, Weight lifting
- Prolonged time window, daily: Cardio, Yoga, Pilates
Exercise Routine – Comfort Zones – Staying Fit
Despite the growing popularity of gyms in recent times, the relevance of their functionality is still a topic for debate. But in all scenarios, it comes down to personal preference if they believe they can stick to a routine in their homes or if they want to join the gym for extra equipment and community support.
- Home: Yoga, Pilates, Low-Intensity Weight Lifting
- Outdoors: Cardio
- Gym: CrossFit, HIIT, High-Intensity Weight lifting
Exercise Routine – Recovery days: Don’t forget to rest!
As tempting and glorious as it may appear, all work and no rest is the ultimate way of physically tiring yourself out and mentally exhausting yourself from the repetitive chore of exercise routine. The lack of recovery days in the planning stage is the reason behind abandoning a highly enthusiastic fitness plan mid-way.
One needs recovery days for mentally unwinding and physiologically letting the muscles rest, recover, and regain strength. The process of muscle rejuvenation requires the realignment of your entire metabolism to the changes your body is undergoing. Therefore, an exhausted body cannot continue intensive workouts long term.
Deciding the Best Exercise Routine for You
Once all the pre-disposing factors are known, one can visualize how the schedule for the week will look. Answering the questions of why, when, and how can create an elaborate plan, an example of which might be: An endomorph with a busy schedule, wanting to have a generally active lifestyle while avoiding diseases, can take up HIIT combined with weight lifting for four days a week; and seeks help from the gym-based community to tackle his concerns. It will help create a well-informed and well-adapted regimen for beginners and athletes to accomplish their personal goals. Looking for a fitness gym to start your new exercise routine? Try Orange Theory Fitness.