I am a personal trainer, here is my list of what I believe are the 7 most important components that need to be addressed by any budding athlete in the making.
1. KNOW WHAT YOU WANT
Most people talk about what they don’t have, what they can’t have and what they wish they had, instead tell yourself and the world around you what you will have.
Know exactly what it is you want and know why you want it. Knowing why you want something is much more important than what you want because this is where all the emotion behind the goal lays.
It may be that you want to fit into a certain dress or suit as your goal but it’s the reason why that motivates you. You may find your dream partner, or have tones of enthusiasm and confidence while presenting to others as a result.
So find out what you want and then why you want it, then you can use this for inspiration, motivation and amazing focus that allow you to adhere to what needs to be done. Also take into consideration what needs to be done to achieve your goal and ask yourself if that is realistic for you as a long term approach, other wise any results achieved will be short lived.
2. EAT TO TRAIN
I’m not going to go into this in detail as we all know what we should be eating and what we shouldn’t; there are no secret recipes or secret diet plans that are going to get you an amazing result, not in a sustainable way and that’s what we want.
Nobody wants to be on a constant yo-yo of following diet after diet.
Cut out the the takeaways, processed food, sugary stuff and and eat the foods that naturally grow around you, it’s as easy as that.
By eating natural foods it cuts out all the thought process around eating,
“Will this make me fat?”
“How many calories does this contain?”
“I think this is healthy?”
Its very hard to over consume when you are eating well balanced natural unprocessed foods.
Make your life easier and just eat natural food, then the only thing you need to think about is how much do I need to eat to perform at my maximum potential in terms of energy, concentration, performance in the gym, which is why the title is eat to train.
You want to eat enough that it allows you to train to your full potential, so don’t eat any less and don’t eat any more, starvation is just as bad as stuffing your face.
3. TRAIN TO EAT
This is the easy bit train like a Spartan, intensity is the key to exercise the more intense you train whilst adhering to perfect form the better.
For the majority of people the rules are the same, you should do weight training that allows you to reach technical muscular failure for each body part sending your heart rate through the roof. Training should ideally be the only stress in your life and it should be a massive stress that forces your body to adapt in terms of strength, the amount of lean muscle you have, the fitness you have and the amount of body fat you hold.
After you have trained you should be starving as you have trained to the max, hence TRAIN TO EAT.
4. SLEEP LIKE A KING
Sleep in my opinion is probably the biggest cause of fat gain for most people.
- If you don’t get enough sleep, you feel lazy and put less effort in at the gym.
- If you don’t get enough sleep you feel low on energy and look at food to make up for this lost energy causing you to eat more than you need.
- If you don’t get enough sleep, you get stressed, what happens when you are stressed for an extended period of time, you store fat as a safety mechanism.
- It can destroy your love life.
Sleep is a very complex area and I will not bore you with all the science, follow these simple rules.
• Go to bed on time at least 6 days a week aiming for at least 8 hours sleep.
• Ensure you have at least an hour to chill out before bed where you avoid all forms of artificial light.
• Have a hot shower one hour before bed a declining body temperature encourages sleep.
• Get your partner to go to bed at the same time as you and ensure the room is as near to pitch black as possible to ensure as much of your sleep is a deep sleep as possible.
• Leave your phone/alarm at the other side of the room, always get up at the same time always on your first alarm, snoozing promotes laziness.
5. DRINK ENOUGH WATER
Did you know that the biggest cause of illness is dehydration, yes people are dehydrated and I would bet on it that you are too.
Not drinking enough water is a definite way to increase your body fat levels and increase your chances of all sorts of illness.
For every 25kg’s you weigh drink one litre per day.
6. AVOID STRESS EXCEPT DURING TRAINING
I have already touched on stress; basically it makes you fat and severely lowers the quality and the length of your life.
If you have a job and it stresses you out, get a new job or find out what it is about the job that stresses you out and address the problem. If it’s that the hours are too long, work less, is it worth ruining your life over?
If any other aspect of your life stresses you out whether it be financial, to do with relationships or lack of purpose, look at what the problem is and what you could do to resolve it.
7. BE AS ACTIVE AS POSSIBLE
Are you being as active as you could be, are you walking from place to place, are you taking the stairs, do you play sport?
Get Moving.
Follow these 7 simple rules consistentky and look like an athlete.