Our boot camp is intense. The workouts are hard and the environment sometimes causes a little bit of unintentional competition against others when in reality, the competition is against only with oneself. Can I be completely honest for second? I would really, really prefer that most people implement the boot camp more around 3-4X a week than trying to use every single 6X a week offering.
The single most important area to implement that people forget is the nutritional aspect. Oh, there he goes again. Keep reading! So many people try but trying to out-exercise a bad diet will not only leave your frustrated and disappointed, but you really have the potential to get hurt! My definition of a good time does not include hurt back, aching knees, and hurt shoulders. If you experience any of those when exercising, then you may need to consider the fact you are exercising in a way that is going to get hurt! I am not saying that things occur from time to time and they do occur! If they do occur listen to your body and give that area that is hurting a rest for a minute!
The nutrition is really really simple. If a person could eat a portion of protein and a portion of fibrous carbohydrate 3 meals a day, they would be 90% getting the body they desire and want not only for looks but for performance for life. This means excluding starchy carbohydrates and unnatural and processed foods but keeping the foods that are natural and optimizes our gene expression. There is no need to count calories doing this approach and a person can and should eat when hungry. Think about this for a second. If you put nutrition number one on your list to fix and improve upon, you would not need to beat yourself up doing those 6X a week routines or even worse starving yourself while doing two hours or more of cardio just to keep re-injuring an area and continue inflammation in the body.
There are two other important areas that people forget about when trying to live a healthy lifestyle: rest and relief from stress, and allowing the time to play and have fun. Rest is the most overlooked area of fitness and health. We live in a society that believes more is better and you are considered lazy if you don’t put in the sacrifice of working out, working overtime, taking the kids to 19 sports and activities, and not getting enough sleep every night. When was the last time you slept most of the time and then to awaken completely refreshed? If you can’t say you do most days of the week, then you should consider changing this. This is your time to recharge and heal.
If you were to change your mindset and dedicate yourself to a 3X a week schedule, you would have 4 other days that give you an hour or more of your day to rest from the stress of your life. Also, you can put better focus on the nutrition part we talked about earlier and even make a few more meals each week that eliminate the processed junk from your food supply! The physiological and psychological effects would be amazing!
I mentioned allowing yourself to have time to play and have fun. Why do we feel guilty these days when we want to simply do things we enjoy even if it’s sitting down and enjoying a good book on the back patio? If you change your mindset to allowing yourself 3 days a week spaced out where you dedicate to boot camp, you now have 4 days in the week you can simply play and have fun! You can finally take a walk and enjoy the scenery. Play a sport one to two times a week such as tennis, ultimate frisbee, flag football or even jogging if that is what you love (runners finally getting some love from me!)! Play with your kids. A game of tag can be fun and you yourself can be more like a kid! Do what YOU think is fun to do and don’t let anything consume you!
I think people make fitness and health a task when it doesn’t have to be at all. For most people, fitness and health can be achieved with sufficient exercise, plenty of rest, allowing yourself to play, and an undying commitment to eating correctly in a world that wants you to do anything but eat correctly.