6 Simple Tips To Stay Focussed

Here are a few quick tips on how to get more out of training, stay focussed and feel good about doing it.

1. Get things in some kind of order.

You may have heard:

“A highly varied diet, rich in nutrients is the best way to get healthy, lean and fit.”

“You need to match each day’s food intake to that day’s exercise level.”

“You shouldn’t eat carbs after 6pm.”

We see loads of people at Storm who have reached a point where they have formulated a sort of hybrid of a number of different approaches and have created a set of guidelines for themselves that are either unnecessarily restrictive, simply a bad approach to reach their goal or a set of guidelines that they frequently break.

Maybe it’s time to go back to basics and find out your average intake over a 5-7 day period.

I remember having to do this manually back in the day but you’ll be pleased to hear that there are apps that will help and they have plenty of instruction on how to use them on Youtube. A good one is myfitnesspal.

2. Take selfies.

If you are not a fan of the lens then take some measurements or ask your local training facility (like us;) to take your body fat measurements. You need something to take away your own ability to second-guess subjective changes to your body.

3. Start with a plan and expect to go off map.

The important thing is momentum. Don’t waste any time beating yourself up about not planning your time well enough to complete your full program. Keep some short effective sessions up your sleeve and DO SOMETHING!

Even if you have half an hour to train you can still get an effective training effect and regular activity keeps the protein P53 high which makes your muscles more able to respond to exercise.

Review your training at the end of each month for its effectiveness, remember you are reviewing the training you actually did and not the program you started with.

4. Keep some perspective.

Sweating the smaller details of your nutrition and training can cause you to loose perspective of what actually works.

Your energy balance (Total energy consumed vs the total energy used in exercise and non exercise activity) is the thing that will have the greatest impact on your body fat levels.

Most people tend to measure this within a 24 hour period which is of course useful but in my experience it’s better to take into account energy balance in both a 24 hour period and a 7 day period and make sure the average daily intake is correct.

Consistency is killer, be boring, it works!

5. Keep training simple.

SONY DSC

I didn’t say keep training easy… there is a difference!

There often seems to be an expectation that an effective training program needs to be a complicated training program.

If you plan to lose some body fat and build some muscle you could go for a four day per week training program.

At an intermediate level your week may look like this;

Monday – Full body weight training.

Tuesday – High intensity interval training.

Wednesday – Low intensity recovery (chilled stuff like walking or swimming).

Thursday – Full body weight training.

Friday – Low intensity recovery.

Saturday – High intensity interval training

Sunday – Low intensity recovery.

I know I said four days of training and there are three days of low intensity in there but in my book walking isn’t training it’s exercise! Training and exercise are a different thing. Exercise should be carried out daily, even your grandparents knew that!

6. Reward success.

Like anything, making continual progress toward any meaningful goal is challenging.

Break up the journey by putting a marker in the ground when you have hit a target or accomplished what you set out to and don’t forget to feel good about it! Driven people tend to just jump straight to the next target.

I would urge you to avoid doing this.

Remember that regardless of what your goal, surely the end goal is to feel good?!

Have a great week!

Spence.

Want to get your fitness in order? Get in touch now by filling out the quick online form here.