slimmersummers:

fitness—health—nutrition:

6 Biggest Exercise Mistakes Nearly Everyone Makes:

1. Doing Exercise You Don’t Enjoy

I used to think that to be fit or to look a certain way I had to do this or that particular exercise. I was wrong, and my motivation suffered as a result. Working out should make you happy. You should get excited abut the thought of your workout. If you’re always dreading tomorrow’s workout, how do you expect this healthy habit to last a lifetime? Find physical activity you enjoy and love and you will never exercise a day in your life.

2. Doing Too Much Exercise

Exercise is great, so more is better – right? Wrong. I’ve tried to out-exercise a bad diet in the past and have failed miserably every time. The amount of exercise needed to “cancel” out a bad meal is enormous. In addition, it has always lead to an injury. It certainly is possible to do hours of intense exercise a day, but it’s something that has to be worked up to. For most people that want to be fit and health and look good doing it, a few intense workouts a week combined with staying active is plenty to get the job done.

3. Exercising Through Injuries

Even to this day I have a tough time with this one. I always seem to get an injury at the peek of my motivation. I don’t want to stop exercising – and I don’t. Dumb! As a result, I push through the pain and the injury never gets better. I go through the 5 stages of grief before I do the right thing – rest the injury. I know you don’t want to stop, but trust me, the longer you put off recovery of the injury, the longer you’re going to have to wait before you can go at full intensity. Nagging injuries are a pain in the butt.

4. Not Warming Up Correctly

Throughout school I was taught to warm up properly by doing static stretches. Static stretches are stretches you hold for a period of time. For example, bending over and touching your toes and holding for 10 seconds. Later in life I found out that this did little for improving muscular performance or reducing injuries. Instead, dynamic stretching is where it’s at. Dynamic stretching produces significantly greater performance when compared to static stretching protocols.

5. Thinking You Need to Separate Strength and Cardio Training

More and more people are discovering the benefits of high-intensity interval training. I used to come from a bodybuilding background where strength training and cardio were two separate workouts. This training became so popularized that people started to forget that cardio is simply cardiovascular training. Cardiovascular training can also be accomplished at the same time as strength training. You just need to push the intensity of your workouts. HIIT is a great way to do this.

6. Working Out Your Ego Instead of Your Muscles

In my younger lifting career, I wouldn’t be caught dead doing an exercise that didn’t have a significant amount of weight on the bar. I was the king of the quarter squat. But boy did my ego feel good. Unfortunately, this came at the expense of muscle growth. Today, this is still one of the biggest exercise mistakes I see in the gym. Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks. Work out with a weight that allows you to use proper form and move through the full range of motion. If you need an ego stroking, there are better ways.

Article from Coachcalorie.com

6 exercise mistakes everyone tends to make

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yanilavigne:

(Quotes here)

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Breakfast desires.

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Just, don’t.

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As much as I ignore it, stating that I have other wordly duties to tend to, music always finds me, somehow. My mother has been a teacher of Indian classical music for more than 25 years. As a summer story, my grandmother lightly warned me that music wouldn’t ever let go of me because just before I was born, my mother had close to 6 full batches of music classes, every day. As I grew up I used to see my mother teach all kinds of people classical vocal music – old paatis (grandmothers) who had come down to a foreign land to meet and spend time with their working children, working professionals who used to work in the morning and practice aalaaps of various raags with my mother in the evening, housewives who cooked well and sang even better, and of course, the largest group was us – all the children from senior kindergarten to 12th grade! Those were fun days. Eventually, I knew I would invariably be teaching music someday. My first memory of teaching music was when I was 10 years old, sometime around 1998-1999. I was asking (more like coercing) 5 of my friends to study a song I had learnt at a class just a week earlier. While I was coo-ing away in the classroom, the teacher heard me and demanded angrily that I come right to the front of the classroom and sing in front of 60 plus students. It was a punishment for singing in class, instead of completing the assignment that was given to us. The subject was moral science and it was taught to combined classes. So, these were not just my classmates I was singing in front of, but people from other classes as well. Students were crammed in tiny benches and were staring at me. Nervous and fidgety, I proceeded to sing this:

‘Never tell a lie, even if in fun.

If you tell a lie, Damage can be done.

So always speak the truth, always speak the truth.’

Stunned silence, followed by weak applause and loud chuckles.  I was red faced. My teacher, however, was mighty impressed. She had found a person who could teach moral values through songs! That’s basically half her workload done. So every moral class after that, I taught my classmates songs on peace, love, truth and happiness. My first role as a teacher was as a 10 year old gawky kid imparting funny songs on human values.

Recently, I bumped into a friend of mine who reminded me of those days. She teased me and asked me if I remembered those songs. “Of course not!” I squealed unconvincingly. But the truth is I remembered each one of them. She then told me that she still remembered those songs and proceeded to sing for me:

‘A smile makes you happy, happy inside;

Laughter comes to you, whenever you smile.

Life can be happy, life can be dull.

It’s up to you so, smile, smile, smile.’

Smile, I did. And then burst into a crazy fit of laughter as we relived childhood memories from a beautiful past.

Probably the best way to make up after a fight with your better half.

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