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Start Here! Read these 5 tips before you begin your training program

By Eric Johnson

Do you want a stronger healthier body? Of course you do! Here are 5 tips to consider when creating your training programs.

One of the hardest parts of beginning a fitness program is trying to figure out where to start. This can cause most people to give excuses not to train. Finding out a clear starting point and knowing what to include in your fitness program can help relieve some of the frustrations it takes to get started. Use these 5 tips to help get you headed in the right direction on your fitness program.

  1. Move: Implement some sort of joint mobility training into your program like Z-Health. The more comfortable your body is at moving in all directions the easier it will be to adapt to a given stimulus and create faster progress. Also, you will create a body that is more functional and is more resistant to injury.

  2. Create better posture: And also help build a solid foundation. Start within the body; lengthen from head to toe creating space through all your joints. This should help you achieve proper alignment and posture. Next, continually program this into your brain by reinforcing it every exercise. Focus on the length, alignment and posture during movement, not just at the beginning and end.

  3. Balance: Basically, if do something one way, you need to balance it out with doing something the other way. For instance, if you bench press, then you need to perform something like a bent over row in order to create that balance we are looking for. Using the primal movement patterns can help you achieve the balance between movements and ensure that you look good both front and back!

  4. Repetition: Get your reps in! Continue to repeat the same movement over and over again and guess what? Your body gets better at it. There is one catch though, if you perform poorly executed movements, your body will store poorly executed movement patterns. And then down the road compensations are built and injuries occur. Now, do you want that? I hope not. The main focus here is 'Perfect practice makes perfect!' Make sure you use the tips in #2 to help create a perfect movement technique and then continue to practice them perfectly every time you execute them.

  5. Relax: Most of us are already good at being tense. Stress, work, home life, frustrations can all add up to being a big ball of tension. So, learn to relax, not just at home or at work but in your training program as well. Learn to recognize and release excess tension in your movements. You only want to use 'just enough muscle' to safely perform your exercise. Any excess tension will decrease your efficiency and can add to poor movement patterns. An easy way to achieve this is to use this tip in conjunction with tips #2 and #4 to increase your efficiency. Take your time during your 'perfect practice' to focus on areas that may have excess tension in them.

Being able to emphasize important points like these can help you achieve faster results and more importantly, perform better while reducing the risk for injury. Take advantage of the beginning phases of your fitness training program to get a solid foundation built. If your foundation is not solid and aligned properly it is going to be harder to build on top of it and expect great performances out of your body. And, great performance is what you should expect out of your body.

About the Author:

Eric Johnson is a Certified Personal Trainer, Russian Kettlebell Instructor, and Certified Z-Health Instructor. He manages Fitness Together in Stockton, Ca. His website is http://www.stocktonft.com