Begin, by standing with an upright posture, and slowly breathe in and breathe out. This will help remove tensions from your diaphragm which controls your lungs. Breathe all the way in, and exhale all the way out. Imagine that you are breathing in focus and clarity and exhaling troublesome thoughts. Do this until you feel comfortable and relaxed. Then proceed to do some stretching - you'll find that stretching comes much easier after this, as most tension in the muscles originate from the mind. Keep your mind clear while you stretch your body thoroughly. I won't explain any stretching exercises, you can do a search on YouTube if you don't know how - but it is important to do this before you initiate any kind of strenuous exercise to prevent cramp and injury, also it allows you to perform longer without your muscles stiffening up.
Nowadays, I do most of my exercise outdoors, for reasons I will explain another time, but for beginners, the gym is a safe environment to begin working out. At first it may be slightly intimidating for the first timer to a gym, but most people are too focused on their own exercises to care what anyone else is doing. Make sure you are familiar with the equipment before you begin using them by seeking the advice of a qualified instructor - if you're using the equipment incorrectly you could hurt yourself or others. When you start, like I said in my previous post, think LONG term - this is something you want to keep doing for the rest of your life, so don't burn yourself out by trying to overachieve your goal in a short period of time - this will have the effect of putting you off exercise and making you mentally and physically weaker in the long run. It is best to proceed slowly at a pace that is not relaxed but enough to challenge your heart rate - if you're too relaxed then you're not going to benefit, if you're going too hard, you're going to burn yourself out, you want to be in the middle so your heart is getting a good workout and the blood is really pumping around your body.
The most important part of maintaining a workout routine is frequency - Someone who works out twice a week benefits more than someone who does twice as much once a week. This is because unlike your brain, the body does not have a memory, it won't remember how much work it did two weeks ago. The longer you leave it, the more unfit you get. If you're extremely busy, and can't find to go to the gym, just doing a few minutes of 'maintenance' exercises at home is better than doing none at all, this is how you keep your body in shape - instead of waiting to make up for the lost time by doing a big bout in the gym when you do go - remember, the body has no memory, your fitness level drops quite fast if you're not maintaining it.
On some days, you probably won't feel in the mood to workout - everyone gets it, it's completely normal; we're not robots which can turn it on and turn it off. Sometimes, I feel too tired, or the idea of all those repetitions and sets makes me feel tired - but once I get the blood pumping, I forget about it. Your psychology plays a big role in determining how motivated you are. Most people when they see a hill, they look all the way to the top and think, 'pheww, that's a big hill!' and immediately feel exhausted just from thinking about it! That is a psychological weight, it burdens the body as much as the mind, and can exist in any form, whether it be about work or relationships, it can be the obstacle to our goals. Some motivators will tell you 'attack it! face your obstacle and charge at it!', but I take a different stance, obstacles are obstacles because they are seen as such. A mountain cannot be overcome by a single bound, but it can be done slowly with each step and each breath. So the trick is not to look at the top of the hill/mountain, but to focus on each step that brings you closer, because that's what each step does, it brings you closer to your goal - no matter how small.
When I go running, there are parts of my regular route which has long straights where I can see stretching all the way to the distance, I avoid looking that far, instead I gaze at the ground just a few metres ahead, looking up now and then to make sure that I'm not going to hit something. By concentrating on each stride I take, I'm not overwhelming myself with the entire task - I'm breaking it down and making it more manageable, I'm not giving myself something bigger than I can chew, and this is all mental as all things are in life. People who give up easily, tend to be those who expect the prize at the end. Each step that you take should be a reward in itself, because each step makes your healthier and fitter, and that is all you should keep in your mind, the more steps you take, the narrower the gap becomes between you and your target. When you train, you should remember that you're training your mind as well as your body.
When you manage to build up frequency in training, like I said already, there are going to be some days which you don't really feel like it. The best way to overcome this is not to set yourself a target for the exercises you do that day - on the treadmill, don't set the timer, just run without looking at the clock until you feel exhausted. If you've decided that you're tired before you've even begun, it's pointless to expect that you'll do each exercise with your normal intensity, so don't count your repetitions because you'll be disappointed and your morale will take a beating. Just exercise without counting or timing, you may even find that you do more than usual! Often it is our own expectation of ourselves that creates the burden, a performance anxiety which comes to those who demand too much of themselves. We all like to see progress, but we kick ourselves hard if we're not making any - it happens to everyone. Forget about numbers, let your body work until you sense it has had enough, you may surprise yourself, because when there is no pressure, we can do much better. Once you're done, be happy that you did something rather than nothing, and the next time you train you'll be grateful that you did your maintenance exercises.
The ability to think long term is unique to human beings, no other animal on this planet can hold a goal in their head for years or even a century. A goal may not appear achievable at first, because we're not able to see the fiftieth step from the first step, but as we draw closer to the fiftieth step, we have a better perspective on how to proceed to the hundredth step. Exercising and building a body to good health and fitness, requires a long term strategy. Your body is what you wear everyday, something that you carry with you for the rest of your life, whatever you have been given, you should make the most of what you've got. A fit body brings confidence and keeps the mind happy.
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