Getting Started in Everyday Fitness
Whether you're new to training, out of practice, or just plain old and creaky, this is your on ramp to being fit.
Photo by Isaque Pereira from Pexels
Everyday Fitness is my little section of the internet, where I talk about what I see as the big four aspects of physical fitness: Movement, Strength, Nourishment, and Recovery.
This post is intended to be a stepping-off point for each of these aspects, providing a way to get started if youâre feeling lost.
For the Beginners
There are some reading this that may have no idea about half the things Iâm talking about. Thatâs totally fine. Everyone starts somewhere. The sections below should help explain the basics. But I want to start off with some advice for pure beginners on the path towards improving your own fitness:
Donât change too much at once. Instead focus on a single improvement at a time. Similarly, donât beat yourself up over failures to continuously do better - just get back on the horse and keep going.
Itâs easy to be intimidated when you go to a gym, not only by the equipment and implements, but also the people there. Realize that theyâre people just like you, and for a lot of them, fitness is a hobby. Plenty of fit people love to talk about fitness and help people. Imagine how youâd react if an outsider showed interest in one of your hobbies.
The ultimate goal of fitness, in my view, is to have the physical ability to do the things you want to do in your day to day life. Keep your goals small, grounded, and attainable. Donât train your body into the ground so you canât actually live your life.
Stay aware of these things through your training in the four aspects of fitness.
Movement
Movement is about the ability to move around in a skilled and fairly agile way without aches and pains. âMovement qualityâ is a big ticket phrase in the fitness world now, along with âcorrective exerciseâ. Lots of marketing money has been spent on convincing people they are broken and need to spend years and years fixing their bodies before they even begin to try running or squatting or exercising at all. You wonât hear a lot about corrective exercise from me, but it has its place if youâre just getting started or in pain.
Movement: First Steps
Read How to Maintain Your Body and go through the âWhat Needs A Tune Up?â section, taking note of anything that is problematic.
In particular, joint mobility is a great first step to add in every day. You can do it in the shower, or while youâre waiting for coffee to brew - just go from head to toe and move each joint a few times.
Once joint mobility becomes simple and easy, add in any corrections you took note of at the beginning. You donât need to do everything - just one or two of the listed corrections a day, seeing how they make you feel.
Finally, add in some of the exercises from the âPerformance and Movement Qualityâ section - get-back-ups, overhead squats, and crawling. With time, these three exercises may eventually take the place all the other work in your morning routine.
Going Further
The best way to improve Movement is just to move regularly. Get outside and get more physical play. Spend more time walking, more time on the floor, more time climbing, running, biking. The more physical you are, the more your body will adapt. Try to make choices that are physically harder when you have the opportunity.
Look to dance, yoga, martial arts, tai chi, or adult gymnastics to go beyond what you think might be possible for you.
Strength
Strength is the aspect of fitness that relates to moving, carrying, or manipulating some load. But itâs also about your heart and your lungs. Your entire body needs to be strong and powerful to be able to fully express strength. I put Movement first, because itâs a building block for being strong, but I believe that strength is the most important aspect of fitness to work on. Hereâs why.
Strength: First Steps
Strength and conditioning training benefit from self experimentation and learning through failure, but most people should begin their journey listening to others. If youâre here, I guess thatâs me? Start with The Basics of Strength Training and Heavy Conditioning for my introductory thoughts here.
If youâve never done any training, the âSo Youâre Stuck Insideâ series (Part 1 and Part 2) I wrote for working out without necessary equipment is a great jumping off point. It requires 20-30 minutes per day, 4-5 times per week.
If you have less time but have more equipment to work with, The Daily 15 Program only requires 15 minutes, 6 days per week. Even if you donât do this program, itâs worth review simply for the structure of a complete training program.
You can also look at the 20 Minute Strength Program, adding in 25 min medleys or 15-30 min complexes for conditioning. If you want to roll your own using what Iâve laid out in the other programs.
Going Further
Strength is never idle. It is something you can work on for the rest of your life. And thatâs really how you take this further. Find what is encouraging for you. Maybe thatâs lifting heavier and heavier weight, maybe itâs performing cool feats with your own body, or maybe itâs throwing heavy things around in competition. The only way to learn is to experiment.
But at the same time, donât kill yourself trying to reach new heights. Strength improvements never happen in massive leaps - itâs small changes over time, built up through consistent training. Set in for the long haul and focus on regularity and consistency.
Nourishment
The next aspect of fitness I call Nourishment because it covers a couple of things outside of simple nutrition. This is the area where we talk about what we take into ourselves to be used to create a healthier and more complete person.
Nourishment: First Steps
Ensure your nutrition is in check and make sure you have a plan to improve your shortcomings. Thereâs no single right way to do this, as long as you focus on whole foods that someone from 100 years ago would recognize as food.
Consider intermittent fasting as a way to manipulate your metabolism and your bodyâs aging mechanisms, aside from simply managing how your intake food.
A lot of modern peoples breathe shallowly, into their chests, and not deep into their bellies. Include some deep breathing exercises like crocodile breathing or the Wim Hof method into your day. This will help your body learn to breath deeper and take in more oxygen.
Maintain a sense of purpose in your training and your life. If youâre not working for reasons that are important to you, you will falter in your pursuits. Donât let negative self-talk derail you if you stumble - fill that space with earnest purpose.
Going Further
The ongoing steps for Nourishment almost always cover numbers and measurement. Look to accepted medical advice for where your body fat, weight, blood lipids, fasting glucose, VO2max, and other health markers should be. Talk to doctors and get tested, then focus on changing what you consume to improve whatever numbers are flagging or are most important.
Recovery
The final important aspect of fitness is Recovery. Recovery is when you overcome stress - the stress of living a life, the stress of training, the stress of illness and a hundred other things. Without proper recovery, you burn out, stall, and fail to move forward.
Recovery: First Steps
Reduction in stress and fatigue begins early. By scheduling ahead and planning for what you want to do, you remove a lot of decision fatigue from your day.
Make sure youâre eating enough for your goals. Even if youâre working to lose weight and are undereating, make sure youâre not going too far as to cause undue fatigue.
Practice good sleep hygiene by limiting stimulants and backlit screens before bed, and ensure you get between 7 to 9 hours of quality sleep per night (both more and less can have deleterious effects).
Find a way to shut off your brain for some time each day. Simple, repetitive tasks away from screens and stimulation are what you want here. Go for a walk in nature, color some adult coloring books, do some jigsaw puzzles, or meditate.
Find and maintain a support person or group that understands your goals and the changes in your daily life and helps you on your path.
Going Further
Like Strength, Recovery is something that is a focus forever. There will be days, even weeks, when Recovery becomes the most important aspect of fitness for you. Thatâs fine! Take vacations, skip workouts as needed if youâre feeling overstressed or underrecovered. One of the biggest factors in recovery is age, so as time goes on, you will spend more time here.
In Closing
This seems to be more wordy than I wanted it to be. I was hoping for this to be an introductory article I can pin to the site, and maybe it still works as one. In the future, I may edit and clean it up, replacing words with links.