| By :
Ted Holcomb
All you have to do is visit a local bookstore and head to the magazine section and you will find tons of advice on how to get a six pack in six days or how to get biceps to look like the hunk on the front of the magazine. If you were to throw all those magazines into a pot, mix them up, you will get pretty much the same formula I've been advocating for some time. If you are new to the workout game, the question always arises how much should I work out and how should I work out. Let's take a look at the first question. At first, you should consider working out two or three times a week. Make sure you take one or two days off in between workouts. This should allow time for recovery. Remember, it's not just about starting out that is important. It's sustaining your efforts long enough to see a difference. That difference you see after time spent on your new workout schedule will be all it takes for you to stay motivated and increase your intensity and frequency. That small level of success will be a powerful motivator in maintaining your exercise goals. How long do you need to work out? First get the notion of time out of your head. When you prescribe a certain time to your workout, you become focused on the starting and stopping based on the clock. That's not how you want to measure your success. Instead measure your success with the number of reps you do, the number of laps you run or swim. For example, when you are marking your workout journal, it doesn't help you to check off that you worked your legs for a half hour. What does help you, is noting how many reps on the leg machine you did. Sticking to performance and completion of goals is more important than keeping track of time. Sure, we all need to be somewhere else, so allowing yourself sometime in the morning or the afternoon to workout is important, but it should not be the basis of your success. With that said, you don't need to block off the entire morning to work out. In fact, often times, we resist working out because we think to ourselves that "we don't have the time" to work out today. When in reality, all we really need is 15-20 minutes or the time it takes you to perform about three reps of any exercise. The notion of time is often more of a barrier for many of us than we would like to admit. The moment that we use the clock to measure our activity we create a great barrier to achieving our goals. This is true for the mental blocks we place on ourselves to begin training as well as the results we think we are achieving based on the time we put into the workouts. Instead, try and work out for a half hour or so (unless you are with a partner and running, walking, swimming or playing a game together), but add a greater sense of intensity to your work out, increasing your heart rate and sustaining that elevated rate for some time. Try to increase your workout so that it pushes you to the limit. This will help create greater resistance for your body and will generate the results you want much quicker. As you increase your strength and capacity to workout longer, gradually increase the difficulty of the exercises you are working on. Training in this manner will create greater cardiovascular benefits as well as generate the lean muscle mass you want. Remember, as a beginner, you can keep your workout to a twenty minute maximum. Be sure you are putting in the time, but also that you are doing the right exercise for what you are trying to achieve. For the best insight on the right way to lose weight through exercise, go to www.BeAPrettyWoman.com and find get started today!
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