IS STRETCHING IMPORTANT:
Most of the people who go to the gym must have heard about stretching. Some people like your typical ‘Gym bros’ are totally against it while many like yoga enthusiast are totally with it.
So, you might have seen people in the gym who either spend hours doing stretching before starting their workout and even people who just start grinding weights without stretching.
So, there are different camps giving different advice. So, to understand what stretching actually is, lets divide stretching into two categories:
1. Static stretching: Which is when you stretch and hold a particular muscle/ muscle group for (30-60 seconds).
2. Dynamic stretching: It is continuous and controlled movement of body in a range of motion.
So, you might be thinking which type of stretching is good for me. Is it static or dynamic. The answer totally depends.
If you are a guy who wants to lift weights in a gym, then static stretching before your workout isn’t a nice idea. The reason is very simple.
If you perform static stretching before your workout, your muscle fibres tend to get stretched and lose, which isn’t an ideal condition you want your body to be before lifting.
Meanwhile you want to incorporate dynamic stretches before your workout as it increases blood flow to your muscles meanwhile maintaining that muscle tension/tightness before you lift weights.
This doesn’t mean that static stretches shouldn’t be incorporated in your workout routine. Static stretches play an important role when you are looking for the aspect of recovery. You should incorporate it after your workouts. Its very important to perform static stretches as it prevents muscle stiffness, which most of the gym goers face.
The duration of both static and dynamic stretches shouldn’t be more than 10-15 min. Doing more than this, will only lead to increase in your workout duration without any added benefits.
Hope you liked my work. Any question is appreciated.
#grownostr #fitness #fitnostr #stretching #workouts #gym
ROLE OF DIET IN FITNESS: WHAT BEGINNERS SHOULD AVOID.
I have been into fitness space for quite a while. When talking to many beginners, I tend to realize that many people who want to start their fitness journey, tends to get confused about what to eat.
Its primarily because of social media influencers who tend to complicate things. This leads to most people getting confused or getting discouraged due to setting up unrealistic goals for themselves.
It’s easy to get overwhelming when you start your fitness journey and try different shit. I have been in this situation. You must have heard from a lot when people saying, ‘Oh you should follow this type of diet’ and you ask them why they would give you some random scientific study done on it, which I can guarantee that no one has technical knowledge to understand it, but who cares, his favourite podcaster/influencer told him it works.
The fact of the matter is, there is no such thing as ‘diet model’. There is no such thing as a certain type of diet works or doesn’t work. If you begin your fitness journey with such a mindset, you wont last long. Sure you will get results at first, but it’s a long-term game. You will have periods of breakdown, where you would essential quit.
The thing that people don’t discuss is that, instead of creating such diet models, it’s better to assess what you are eating. You don’t need to quit things that you like. Life is short, you need to enjoy it. That said you need to modify your diet.
Modifying your diet includes following steps:
• Just write down what all things you tend to eat in the whole day/week. You will get a rough idea about what all things you eat.
• Now you need to modify it. Its simple, just divide your list items into industrial garbage, somewhat healthy, healthy.
• So, to give a brief view, Industrial garbage include all items that come in a wrapper. Anything that is manufactured by some corporation in a machine. It ranges from your chips to your favourite KFCs.
Your somewhat healthy foods consist of food that you eat in a restaurant.
Healthy foods are foods that you cook yourself at your home.
• Now you need to remove industrial garbage from your diet. These are fuckin empty calories and importantly our body isn’t designed to eat that crap. But if you like it, try to minimize it as much as possible, like once a month.
• Now comes the healthy foods. If you are eating suppose 21 meals per week, 80% of it should come from healthy foods. So, you might be asking what all things can be called healthy, is it oat meal or brown rice or grilled steak. The answer is quite simple, it totally depends from where you belong. You might be Italian or American or Indian or Chinese, it totally depends. No food is superior to another. Each traditional cuisine come under healthy option if you know how to tweak it a little (we will discuss it).
• Now comes somewhat healthy foods. We all like to go to our favourite restaurant and have our favourite meal. Its also like a social place to many of us. It should cover to approximately 10-20% of your meals.
• Now we have covered the framework of what we are going to eat, we need to focus on how to implement our strategy. We are going to focus on just two things which is
1. Portion size
2. Tweaking with the food
So, imagine a plate, now you need to fill the plate with carbs, fats and protein. So, you will fill the plate with 40-50% with healthy carbs next 30-40% with proteins and rest with fats. My best advice would be to take a plate and fill it with your meal, I would ideally prefer 3 meals a day, but it’s totally upon you.
Now the main problem that beginners face is the problem of over eating or under eating. Its quite easy, you don’t need to track your calories, which I feel is bullshit, instead try assessing your body after each meal. If you are feeling lethargy after having your meal, probably you need to lower your portion size or if you tend to stay hungry, always want to binge eat, you should probably increase your portion size.
Now comes the part where you need to tweak your food. Its sometimes necessary to do so as some foods are rich in carbs but are deficient in proteins or healthy fats. So, it’s always good to add or subtract stuff from your food so as to maintain that portion as we have earlier discussed.
Also try to cook your food in saturated fats and try to avoid sources of trans fats. Adequate salt intake also plays an important role.
Hurray now it’s all done. You didn’t need to change your ‘diet plan’, neither you will ever crave for that cheat meals. Neither you had to go full carnivore or vegan or some other shit, you can just enjoy your social life, meanwhile maintaining a great health.
The main take away point is patience. You won’t see results in a day or week. It takes time, that’s the reason you need a strategy which you can follow on a long-term basis. Stay focused.
If you made so far thank you. If you think I provided any value, please try to support my work. Any queries I would be happy to answer.
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