When it comes to getting fitter, it doesn’t have to be complicated. The theory of doing a bit more than you used to do seems solid enough and for a lot of people it can move them towards their health and fitness goals. But the longer you train for, the more you might find that just doing a bit more isn’t moving you towards your goals.
Over the next few articles, we’ll be highlighting and explaining various pitfalls that we see people fall into time and time again. As well as explaining the reason you may not be making progress, we’ll also be providing guidance for how you can go about fixing it. Some of the points are linked and may seem contradictory to each other, but that’s where the coaching staff at SC FIT come in – to help you work out what’s holding you back and how to address it.
- – You don’t warm up well enough
- At the moment it’s cold, so getting warm takes a bit more work than it does in the summer months – but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible! Every workout we do we have an appropriate warm up that not only serves to get you warmer but also prepares you mentally ad physically for whatever you’ll be doing next. Make sure you give the warm up your full attention and choose challenging progressions or weights so that you can get even more out of the rest of your session.
- – You don’t cool down
- If your idea of cooling down is stopping moving and collapsing in a heap before going home then maybe you’d benefit from some mobility work or going to find a rower or bike to gently move around on for 5-10 minutes. This extra blood flow is never a bad thing and some stretching of the areas that you’ve just worked can really help to decrease how sore you are in the following days.
- – You don’t spend enough time on strict gymnastics work
- Strict gymnastics work such as press ups and pull ups builds a big foundation for the faster, sexier kipping stuff that you want to race ahead to. But rushing ahead without a strong base is a recipe for disaster. Instead, try adding multiple small sets of movements that you can do such as press ups or ring rows to build up your capacity and watch it translate into more fitness in future. Without a solid grasp of strict basics you will hit a glass ceiling of performance that no amount of kipping practice will get you through – besides, wouldn’t it be cool to be able to jump up and crank out a few strict pull ups on de