E = Exercise
A = Attitude
R = Rest
N = Nutrition
Perfecting your body is best accomplished with a combination of exercise, good attitude, sufficient rest and proper nutrition.
Exercise. You cannot develop your body without exercising. To develop and grow the muscles, you must train them with resistance i.e., weight training. Lifting weights will give your muscles shape and tone, and make them firm and hard. The more muscle you build, the more fat you burn. Weight training also helps to burn off unwanted stored body fat. Cardiovascular exercise i.e., running, jogging, cycling, skipping, swimming, helps promote a healthy heart, but also speeds up the fat burning process immensely!
Attitude. Having a good attitude means being positive, determined, and having faith and desire, setting specific goals and taking action on them 100% of the time.
Rest. Getting sufficient rest between workouts is paramount in obtaining a top physique. When you weight train, the muscle tissue is damaged and broken down. When you leave the gym, the muscle tissue begins to recover and grows back thicker and bigger. This is how muscles grow and develop. It takes approximately 5 to 7 days before your muscles completely recover from the workout, so getting plenty of sleep each night and staying calm and relaxed during the day will aid in the recovery process. It will not only speed it up but makes the muscles develop much more. When we are asleep, our bodies release growth hormone, which is essential for muscle growth. It’s also good to know that when you release growth hormone, you are slowing down the ageing process!
Nutrition. Good nutrition and how you feed your body is essential if you want to develop it to be the best it can be. 80% of your progress will be based on how well you feed your body. Junk food = Junk body!
Each night before you go to bed, you should analyze your day and rate how well you did for each of these four different areas. For effort, the scale is 1.0 for the best and 0.1 is the worst.
For example, let’s say you trained really hard and you gave yourself a score of 1.0. Your attitude was fairly good, so you gave yourself a 0.8, and for rest, you did quite well too but you did go to bed a little bit late, so let’s say 0.9 for that. For nutrition, you had a couple of little treats but you were quite good, so 0.7 for that. With all these combined, you would think you’re doing really well and making fantastic progress. But let’s put it into this formula so you can accurately see how well you have really done:
1.0 x 0.8 x 0.9 x 0.7 = 0.504
This would indicate that your score is roughly 50% and means that you are only doing half as well as you could be. This is quite an eye opener. Even if you think you’re doing well and being disciplined, you’re actually not. Think how much more progress you could be making if you gave 100% in each of the four areas. What are you waiting for??
by Ciaran Woods.