John O Neill, personal trainer at Club Vitae gym, Clayton Hotel Limerick, provides his best kept secrets about exercising.
1: It’s not about working hard at exercise. It is only about being consistent.
2: Don’t arrive to gym on an empty stomach, coming off a cold/stomach bug, or on four hours’ sleep. It wastes your time and mine when your body isn’t fueled, hydrated, and ready to work.
3: If you’re on a budget, recruit a few friends for a small group session instead of giving your money to a personal trainer. You do not need to spend big money just to get motivation from a personal trainer.
4: A 30-minute session at high effort is better (and cheaper) than 60 minutes of poor and half-effort.
5: It takes more than just showing up for training sessions to make you fit and healthy. It’s what you do before and after you meet with your trainer, including choices with food, alcohol, workouts, and a commitment to a new lifestyle.
6: Give Yourself Days Off. Resting is extremely important, because that’s when your muscles repair from workout sessions. You don’t want to get burnt out either, because then you’re going to give up and not want to go back to it.
7: Use the Buddy System. You keep each other motivated and a lot of times personal trainers will give discounts to groups.
8: Eat less energy in than you expend in a day to lose weight. Eat more than that if you’d like to gain weight, and weight train if you’d like the gain the right kind of weight (muscle). Find out what your energy intake and out take comes to so that you can start making calculated choices regarding your health life style.
Lastly, Noelle Griffin, Manager of Sanovitae, Clayton Hotel Liffey Valley offers her advice to get fit this month.
“Get ready before you go to bed. Prepare your lunch, fitness gear and clothes. This will give you much better motivation in the morning to go the gym. Otherwise, when you wake up in the morning, it will not only be harder to get up but there is a good chance you won’t pack your bag and end up missing the gym that day”.