By Sean McDiarmind
Watching all of those athletes do amazing things with their bodies is mesmerizing. They triple-flip in mid-air, lift five-times their body weight, run at godly speeds, and throw balls at exactly the place they want to hit. They make it look like such an easy task! But the fact of the matter is, they’ve been training for years in silence. Now, they’re just letting their success make the noise.
Meanwhile, many of us are still struggling to get our body in the shape we desire. Many of us start making pacts of turning our lives around, that this is the year we achieve our fitness goals. And before we know it, another year has gone, the belt is still as tight (or even tighter!) as ever, and we can’t climb a couple of floors without gasping for breath, holding on for dear life.
If you’ve tried to start your journey of transforming your body, but have failed, you’re not alone. There are many out there who have gone or are still going through the same thing, getting distracted by everyday life. However, there are just as many out there who have succeeded and are now living with the highest potential of their bodies. So how were they able to do it?
Athletes share their precious tips on how to get that olympic body we’ve been dreaming of.
1. Become Friends With Your Body
The first thing you have to do, is to get in the right mindset. Getting into the right mindset is a very wide and general statement, but we can start with one thing: Become friends with your body. You might have heard some people saying “love your body no matter what!”, and as cheesy as it may sound, it’s true. Becoming accepting of your body starts by quieting down the shaming sounds that it is ugly, weak or just hopeless.
You might have followed a certain workout routine, even followed diets that others swore by, only to find they’re not as effective with you. If that indicates anything, it just says that the regime wasn’t right for you. This is where you need to step in, take your body out on a date, and get to know more about it. Learn out more about your body type, what kinds of exercises will be most effective, and what kind of nutrition will bring out its best.
2. Set Your Goals
After you’ve known more about your body and what works best for it, decide on your goals. Dream as big as you can, even if it sounds absurd and impossible to achieve in your head. Just dream. Do you want to be that muscular bodybuilder? The super lean fitness star? Do you want to do jaw-dropping calisthenics with your body? Or do you want to be the super-flexible and mindful yogi?
Set your fitness goals, and then start following a plan to get there. You can find hundreds of workout plans to help you get started, or you can hire a personal trainer to customize a plan just for you. No matter how big your dream is, you can get there one step at a time.
3. Watch Your Food
We can’t talk about exercise without talking about nutrition. Nutrition is what gives your body the fuel it needs to do anything, much less follow a workout routine that puts more strain on your body that it’s normally used to. Hype the greens, the veggies and fruits, and stay away from the junk. Make sure you get all of the elements your body needs.
4. Hydrate
Your body is 60% water. To maintain all of the everyday bodily functions, and compensate to that which you lose during exercise, staying hydrated is essential.
5. Keep Your Body Clean
Living healthy in a world that’s full of pollution, contamination, and hidden pathogens waiting to latch on to your body is not a very easy task. Your body could infect in a hundred different ways from normal everyday activities, whether you’re only drinking contaminated water or eating raw sushi. There are several benefits associated with cleansing your body using natural detox that you could really use to maintain your health, despite all of the dangers lurking out there.
6. Spice Your Workout Routine With Different Exercises
Once you’ve settled on a certain fitness goal, it might be tempting to keep at the same workout routine. You might want to focus on weightlifting for strength or bodybuilding, on cardio for weight loss, and on yoga for flexibility. But the fact is, spicing your routines with different forms of exercise will help your overall fitness health. It will also alleviate your boredom from repeating the same workouts over and over.
7. Forget the Scale, Eyes On the Mirror
While it’s tempting to keep checking what the scale says, it might be misleading. Instead, watch the mirror for progress, feel the progress as you slide easier into old clothes, and feel the added-energy flowing through your body.
Discipline & Consistency Are Key
A general rule of life says that “Nothing worth having comes easy”. That is true for everything in life, and it’s also true for getting the dream body you desire. You’ll hear a lot of people telling you that passion is key, and that motivation is the one thing that keeps them going. But no one talks about the days when they’re too unmotivated to do anything at all. Real life isn’t a fairytale in which a magical genie will appear before you and grant you your wishes. So at those days, discipline and consistency are the only things that keep you going; they’re the key.