Just a few things to mention briefly; no amount of exercise will ever make up for a bad diet. A healthy diet plays a huge role in your life and what I mean by ‘diet’ is a sustainable eating plan.
Why is it so hard to leave a bad diet? That’s because of dopamine. Dopamine is an organic neuromodulatory chemical that lets you feel good and one that your body also produces naturally however, certain foods may cause your dopamine levels to rise unnaturally especially food that contains sugar. But, here’s where the problem lies: This makes you more dependent on those kinds of foods to keep your dopamine levels up, and, causes your dopamine levels to tank when you start eating healthy again. This is, however, only temporary. Until your body restores the dopamine levels to their natural rhythm, you will probably feel a bit depressed.
If this happens when you suddenly change to a healthy diet and you want to avoid the crash, the best advice I have is to get a step-by-step guide to a healthy diet.
Workout Programs
When you start exercising, the first thing that you should decide is how you plan to split your workout routines. If you are going to do an upper-lower body split or the bro, a push or pull and legs, or a full-body workout three times a week. All of them have their advantages but the main thing that you need to keep in mind is that you have to keep to that workout plan for a minimum of 4 to 6 weeks before you can change it. This also includes the sets and reps. As for the exercises, as long as the motion stays relatively the same for example, a bench press or a dumbbell bench press, it won’t make too much of a difference. But, if you swap your bench press out for cable flyes it won’t stimulate the chest in the same way.
Why is this important? Well, if you make too many changes in your workout routine, it can cause muscle confusion. This will cause your muscles not to develop like they would have if you were to stick to the same thing. However, if you stick to the program for more than four weeks on the same exercise program you can change to a different workout program this will actually be a good way to help you avoid hitting your plateau.
Workout Plan and Exercise
The difference between compound exercises and isolation is demonstrated in the table below:
A good workout plan can include compound and isolation exercises but you will start first with your compound exercises and then at the end, you’ll do the isolation exercises. The reason is that compound exercises require a lot more focus, include a lot more muscles than isolation exercises and it will also be the best to do your cardiovascular exercises in the end.
You can do cardiovascular exercises as something to warm up but the level of intensity needs to be low and also not for a long period (5mins more or less but not more than 8 mins) and you can use cardiovascular training at the end of your session to cool down as a finisher to burn extra calories.
Recovery
One of the most important things that you should do is to make sure that your body or the muscle group that you have trained fully recovers. Why? While you are performing exercise your muscles get damaged. This is not necessarily a bad thing because they become healthier and stronger as they prepare for regular use.
A muscle can only repair itself if it is given proper time to rest. So, recovery is just as important as exercise! There are two different ways of recovery: active recovery and passive recovery. The distinguishable thing about active recovery is that you do not want to do any exercise that puts a lot of strain on the body, for example, you don’t want to do barbell back squat. But for example, you can do something like light cardio and battle ropes whereas, with your passive recovery, you don’t do any exercise on your off-day. In the end active and passive recovery both work, it just depends on what you prefer.
