What To Do When Your Fitness Program Is not Working

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Have you been working out for a while, but you've been getting discouraged of late? Perhaps you have not been seeing results as good as you've hoped? Or are you getting bored of your fitness routine and feel like quitting? Do not give up hope. Let your physical fitness slide, and you will become like the millions of Americans whose lives have been shortened by obesity, heart disease, and poor physique. There is a way to make your fitness program start working for you again.

First of all, try to remember the initial impetus that got you to start working out. Maybe you put on a favorite pair of old jeans and found that the zipper would not close anymore. So you started on a fitness program with the goal of getting back the body you had before your jeans got too tight. That's a good goal for anyone to have.

Now break it down into more concrete steps. You want to fit into your jeans again, and that means leaner hips. That, in turn, means losing weight and sometimes some body shaping. This will affect the kind of fitness you should be doing. You would do different types and levels of exercises if your goal were instead to train for strength, or endurance, or flexibility. So do not just put in random exercises in your personal program. Make sure your routine is focused on exercises that are geared towards achieving your specific goals. In the case of weight loss, your program would be more effective if you focused on jogging rather than biking or swimming. Do research on fitness methods first, or ask a trainer to advise you, so you know how to structure your program.

In my case, I wanted to have bigger muscles. So I did some research and found that free weights would be of more help to me than lifting machines. Training with free weights would utilize more of my muscles and work them harder, and so would help me achieve muscle growth faster, and also develop more of my body's muscle groups. But my research also warned me against training with weights too intensely. I learned that I needed sufficient rest periods between weight training sessions, at least a day and sometimes two. Otherwise, I would end up sabotaging my efforts because muscles only grow during the rest periods.

However, there are times when you should not be too goal-oriented. If you're getting tired of your fitness routine, change it to something else, almost anything else. There are so many fitness options out there: dance, hiking, rock climbing, yoga, martial arts, and rollerblading are just some examples. Perhaps you will not reach your fitness goals as quickly with a new method, but maybe you'll find fitness to be interesting and enjoyable again.