Gym Goals

Its important to set goals when going to the gym. Helps bring some motivation to picking heavy things up and putting them down for an hour out of the day. Your gym goals should be specific, and realistic. If they are not specific or realistic, you will have difficulty having success at the gym. There's a need for balance between being specific and being realistic.

Some examples of bad goals:

Get fit in 3 months

Gain 10 lbs of muscle

Train for my marathon in April

1. is not specific in terms of what fit means, fit needs to be defined. Does that mean lose 10 lbs of fat? Run 3 km in 20 minutes? 2. 10 lbs of muscle is realistically possible, but when is this going to happen? In a year? How are you going to accurately measure 10 lbs of muscle? 3. You could walk a marathon of you really wanted, so what time are you aiming to complete the marathon?

Examples of good goals:

Squat >200 lbs in 6 months

Run 10 km in under an hour, running 4 days a week

Reach 160 lbs in 3 months

They are clearly defined with time limits. You can gauge the effectiveness of your workout routine by looking at your progress towards those goals. If you reach the goal early, great, you pushed yourself hard and succeeded, if you didn't reach your goal, that's too bad, time to reevaluate your workout routine and keep it up. Maybe set the bar a little lower in terms of your goals. It is important to set these goals so you have at least some type of motivation to keep going to the gym.

If you dont have clearly defined goals, then what's the point in going to the gym? The likelyhood that you will quit going to the gym without some sort of achievable goal is high.

Next time I'll talk about workout routines, and what's up with all these very different approaches to getting fit.

How to get in the workout groove

I have started and stopped working out throughout the past couple years, and I really struggle with getting my ass off the couch to go to the gym. I had the time, it wasn't like I was busy doing anything, but I thought "ugh, I have to gather my stuff, drive to the gym, do the hour of exercises, and then drive home." Me overexaggerating to myself, I thought it would take two hours for this whole operation.

Based on various sources, but most notably an article from the american college of sports medicine, people think when they go to the gym they need to start at a full sprint (3 sets of 8 repetitions typically) when it comes to lifting weights. If you think that you need to set this bar right away to get going, then great, but for others like myself, I couldn't start going to the gym that way. It felt like too much work for what it's worth.

I was suggested a book by my gym rat friend: the Men's Health Home Workout Bible. It stated that what we should be doing to start, to start gaining more motivation, is to actually decrease sets and weights while also increasing reps.

I made my first workout plan using that book. I started going 4 days a week, doing 1 set of 20 repetitions, with a really light weight for the first week. I increased my exercise to 2 sets and 15 reps with an increased weight, and I did that for the next two weeks. I then went into the "bro" amount of exercises, 3 sets of 8.

I also set myself up to not make excuses by going to the gym right after work (or before school). It's a very shitty time to go, but I tried to make working out a part of my day regular day as much as I could.

Getting into the habit is all about the baby steps. Set low bars for the beginning, but definitely have clearly defined workout goals. Goals are the most important element to gym motivation which I'll talk about in my next post.

When I post photos, aside from my “you know I had to do it to em” one, I plan to post unedited so there isn’t any smoke and mirrors tom foolery. I am going to avoid posting photos with specific poses that make my body look better.

The body pictures were taken 8 months after I started going consistently to the gym (which is now 4 months ago), and from left to right on the bottom is my transition from the start of my second year of university to the start of my third year of university. Half way through the workout journey I realized I didn’t take a before picture of my body, which blows, but whatever, you can tell the amount of fat I lost in my face.

Welcome

TL;DR is at the bottom.

I wanted to make this blog because I noticed someone at the gym today that was lifting heavier weights than me but was half my size, and he was struggling to lift the weights in a position to actually do the exercise. I also noticed a kid in high school, watching what I was doing and mimicking my movements without the weight when I wasn’t looking (Dude, peripheral vision is a thing). I really wanted to approach these guys and give them some advice. Their form was terrible, and they were trying to lift more than the one regular that is known to take steroids, but I figured it wasn’t my place to say anything. They may feel embarrassed if I approached them, or maybe they would be grateful, but I remember being in their position.

Some background about myself: I am 24, I’m in my third year of university in an engineering program, and I’m a flatlander from Canada. I love food, gaming with my friends, playing Magic the Gathering, yelling at other people driving from the safety of my own car, and working out. 

I have been working out consistently for the past year now which really isn’t a lot of time compared to most other fitness inspiration people, but I’ve been going to the gym frequently enough, trying different diets, different supplements, and various types of workout plans that I now feel comfortable giving advice on how to start changing your body in positive ways and answering questions about working out.

Over the past year, I have gone from a 6′2″ skinny fat college student weighing 192 lbs to a 6′2″ skinny muscle college student who is now 185 lbs. I dipped in weight from 192 lbs to 170 lbs within 3 months, and from there, I have slowly gone up in weight to 185 lbs. I went hard in the paint when it came to working out and eating. I was going to school full time, and I worked a part-time job over the weekend. I tallied up on average how much time I spent doing school work and my part-time job, and it came to about ~65 hours per week. I then scheduled for about an hour, 6 days a week, to go to the gym.

“Why would you do that to yourself, Lee?” Well, I looked at myself in the mirror one day after a shower, and I thought, “I really don’t like how my body looks. I have love handles, I’m starting to get A-cup man titties, I can see my belly protrude out of my shirt like I’ve substituted beer for water my entire life.” At that point in time, I was going to the gym 2-3 times a week for a bit, and it was more like I was going because I knew I should be going. So I figured, what if I just cranked up what I was doing for the school year? It will help blow off steam during school, and I can start feeling OK with my body. So I spent hours after school, during breaks in school, asking fit people at school, watching YouTube videos of fit people, reading books about getting fit, and reading peer-reviewed articles on the benefits of fitness to start my new X-TREME fit journey.

In this blog of mine, I want to talk about my own experiences with finally getting off the couch and getting into the gym. How I battled the mental and physical struggle of it all, and what I learned in the process. I hope that from my posts (which I plan to post something every day, sprinkled with some posts when I feel inspired) others will feel like going to the gym or getting fit isn’t as daunting as they think it will be.

TL;DR

I’m a 24-year-old college student that got tired of the way my body looks. So, I did a bunch of research and talked to a bunch of fit people (university athletes and gym rats), and went into the gym consistently for a year. I tried different workouts, exercises, and supplements along the way to figure out what I think work and doesn’t work. I want to share my experience losing fat and gaining muscle in hopes that it inspires you to go to the gym or to help new gym-goers improve themselves. I plan to post once per day