WHAT IS NEEDED TO SUCCEED IN A FITNESS PROJECT

Many people that engage in a fitness training project fail and give up after some time. An important reason for giving up is often a lack of a concrete goal for the training project. Another reason can be an irrealistic goal, often combined with a belief that anything less ambitious is of no value. Here is some advices about succeeding with your fitness program.


Some general fitness training principles

To get training results you must work consistently, have at least 4 training sessions each week of at least half an hour duration. A couple of days of relaxation each week is good, however.

You should train both your condition, your muscle stretgth and your flexibility.

Condition is enhanced by doing activities that make you use much energy each minute, that is activities that engage most of the body at the same time, like swimming, cycling, running, ball play or skiing.To get great result you must use as hard intensity as possible for your present strength and health conition, but you should ititiate the session with a smaller intensity.

Muscle strength is enhanced the best way by training single muscle group at a time with high load. To get great result you must use as hard loads as possible for your present strength and health conition. You should warm up before using hard loads, either by doing some condition training first or by initiating your session with smaller loads. To perform 3-4 series with 8-15 movements (lifts, pulls, pushes) in each series is recommenable for each execise. Furing the week all body muscle groups should be trained.

Flexibility is best enhanced by flexing and stretching exercises. If your muscles are warm before you stretch, the result will be best and you avoid injuries. Slow strerching while holding the stretch in 30-50 seconds tend to give best results. More rapid stretches back and forth 25-30 seconds is another method.


Possible goals for a fitness project

It is important to be conscious about possible goals you can use as objectives for your fitness project, that is what types of changes it is possible to achieve in a fitness program. Then you should analyze your needs, that is analyzing what health and fitness problems you have. Then as a consequence of your analysis you choose your goals, that is choosing what you will change and the degree of change you want. A fitnes progect can have one or more of these aims:

- To get a better condition. A better condition will make it more easy for you to walk or run faster and longer, to work faster and harder physically or mentally, work longer without getting tired or feel more awake.

- To loose weight and do it the right way, that is loosing fat, but not loosing muscle mass.

- Get better and more sexy body proportions. That will for some persons be the same as a slimmer mid, rounder hip muscles, larger muscle mass around the shoulders, larger thigh muscles and perhaps more muscles in the arms. For other persons it will be a more markedly v-shaped body. However, what is considered to be elegant or sexy every person must decide himself.

- Get muscularly stronger so that you can excert a greater resistance to outside forces, be able to heavier lifts or just be able to impress with your strength.

- Make your body more flexible and elastic.

- Cure high blood pressure, digestive problems, heart problems or other conditions in your internal organs.

- Feel better in your whole body and mind.

- Get rid of or ammeliorate rheumatic conditions or pain in various body parts like the back, knees, neck hips or shoulders.


Analyse your needs

Before you begin your training program, it is advisable to analyse your need. Ask yourself if there is something with your body shape or physical condition that makes you unsatisfied. Also ask if there is something in your social or professional situation that makes you unsatisfied. Then ask if a better body shape of physical condition can make your situation better, or if a better physical condition can make you able to do something positive to change your social situation.


Set your goals

After having analysed your needs you should fomulate and write down your goals. Write down goals for areas like: Body shape, better condition, better strength, better alertness, getting rid of bodily pain. Also set concrete goals for what you will use your achieved bodily improvement for in your private life, in your work and in the relations to other people.

Perhaps when analyzing your need, you find out that you actually are in good shape, strength or condition, and do not want any improvements? In that case your goal shall be to maintain that good condition. Without maintaining it by regular training and a good diet, the good condition will gradually go away.


Vizualize your goals

Do not only define your goals by means of word and numbers. Try to see yourself as you will be when your goals are obtained. Try to remember the picture of the renovated yourself. When you do so, you may find out that you do not like what you see. If so go back, reformulate your goals, and visualize yourself once more. Do so until you are satisied with the picture of yourself that you see.


Plan the means of obtaining your goals

Then you have to find out what type of training and other means you need to carry through your goals. You must consider measures of several categories, and choose what methods or exercices of the different categories you shall use. You must consider measures of the folowing cathegories: Diet and nutrition, condition training, training of strength, flexibility training, relaxing methods and training of abilities like concentration, balance, coordination, etc.


Make a training schedule

Then you have to make a concrete training schedule. For each day of the week you plot in the excercises and other measures you will perform that day.


Analyse your effort and progress

Make an analysis of your efforts and your progress every second week. It is normal to get some surprises when you do so the first weeks. Perhaps you have not taken your schedule seriously anough and not fulfilled your taks. Or perhaps your schedule was too hard for you.

It is also normal to get surprises regarding your achievement. Provided you have followed your schedule, you may see greater or less progress than anticipated. If the progress is greater, then you have a great incentive too keep on. If it is less, do not give up. progress will come if you keep on.


Reevaluate your goals and methods

With the effort and progress analysis in hand, you should then reevaluate your goals. Perhaps your goals are to ambitious? Then you should lessen your demands. perhaps you find the working towards your golas easier that thought. Then you shouls consider be more ambitious.

Perhaps you have got new ideas for your development. Perhaps some of your ideas do not seem so bright any more. Before you go to the next step, adjusting your plan, you should make any change to your goals that seem wise to do.

You should also reevaluate your training methods according to your achievment analysis and your adjusted goals.


Adjust your schedule

Now you must adjust your schedule to fit adjusted goals and methods.

Also your schedule should be adjusted according to the the result of the effort and achievment analysis. Perhaps you did not after all fulfill your schedule. Ask yourself why. Have you only been lazy. Well, then you have to take your schedule more serious the next two weeks. Or perhaps your schedule has been really too hard for you. In that case modify your schedule so that it fits your abilities. You can still achieve your goals, but it will take some longer time.

Or perhaps your schedule has been much easier than you thought. Perhaps you should make your schedule more ambitious and fulfill your goals earlier.

To find a menu of information about training, diet and other means to atchieve health and fitness goals, please go to this site.




If you wish to be fit like this man or fit according to any other interpretation of fitness, your wish can be fulfilled  in most instances, but planning and constant motivation is needed.



Abaut the Paleo diet, the possible benefits you can get from this diet, and suggested modifications to this diet approach

How the paleo diet is composed

By a paleo diet you eat like people ate before the agriculture was invented and the purpose of such a diet is to stay young and healthy, loose weight and to help cure chronic diseases. When you follow a paleo diet (paleolithic diet) you eat the same food, and in the same amounts as people ate before the agricultural area began. Also you do not eat those food types that is thought to have appeared during and after the emergence of agriculture. The theory tells that this kind of diet is the most natural for human beings. Thereby it will give a person the greatest opportunity to stay young, avoid disease, loose weight, help cure chronic ailments and live long. In a strict paleo diet you eat animal food like lean meat, fish, seafood, foul and eggs. Furthermore the animals the food is made from must have lived a free life and fed themselves from the nature, or at least an approximately free life like all-year pasturing cattle. The animal based food is cooked or fried gently, or even eaten raw, as for example like beef tartar or sushi. In this diet you also eat plant based food like seeds, nuts, mushrooms, almonds, fruit and vegetables. Ideally also this food should be obtained from organisms collected from the nature itself, but organically grown plants are also accepted. The plant foods are eaten raw. Furthermore you use unrefined oils from nuts, seeds and oily fruits grown organically, including cold-pressed oils from olives, sunflower seeds, almonds, nuts and avocados. In this diet you do not consume processed or refined food of any kind, including sugar and salt. You do not eat cereals, potatoes, legumes or food made from these, as for example bread. Milk and diary products are also excluded from a pale diet. The theory holds that these food types were not a part of the daily diet before the invention of agriculture.


Benefits and dangers of the paleo diet

A paleo diet will give you an abundance of protein, fibers, vitamins and minerals. The intake of carbohydrates will be more restricted. Much of your energy will come from fat and sugar included in the natural sources. You will not get too much energy, though, which is good if you struggle to loose weight. This diet can help you stay young and healthy if it is varied and composed wisely.

But if you have an active life, you can get too little energy with this diet. You can also easily get too much saturated fat and cholesterole if you have a heavy weight upon red meat and eggs in the diet You can also get too little vitamin D and too little calcium if the diet is not made variable.


Wise modification to the Paleo diet

It is probably wise to live off a diet composed as near to the paleo-diet as practically and economically possible, but width some modifications:

You should allow yourself to eat some legumes, potatoes, other root tubers, and cereals, but preferably organically grown, and not processed to bread or the like. Legumes and cereals were probably a part of the daily diet from the first appearance of mankind.

If you are very active physically you will also need the starch from these food types to get enough energy. Oat is probably the most valuable cereal to include in the diet.

If you suffer from celiac disease or other types of bad reaction to cereals, you should of course avoid wheat and the cereals you react against.

You should also eat more fish and seafood than meat, in order to avoid a too high consume of saturated fat, and include fat fish to get enough omega-3-fat and vitamin D.

You do not need milk and diary products though. But some diary products will not hurt you unless you suffer from lactose intolerance.

If the climate is warm and you is physically active, you will need to include some salt in the diet, preferably sea-salt.


Benefits of a modified paleo diet

A paleo diet with the mentioned modifications is probably a kind of diet that best possibly will keep you young, healthy and slim. But that does not mean that there does not exist other diet philosophies that are equally good.


Disclaimer: health information contained herein is provided for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace discussions with a healthcare provider. All decisions regarding patient care must be made with the whlp of a healthcare provider, considering the unique characteristics of the patient.