Hey, y'all! I've been interested in fitness for a while, but my general approach has been the same: real results come from sustainable lifestyle changes. Here are some lessons I've learned along the way and keep close to my heart in my own journey towards becoming more happy and healthy.
Note: I am not a professional, just a busy college student speaking from personal experience.
Check out the page "Outside the Gym" and @lifty.nguyen for more details on lifestyle content!
Key point: don't wreck yourself. Challenge yourself and push your limits, but don't go too far.
Injuries will affect your performance if not your entire quality of life. Too many of my lifting buddies deal with chronic lower back pain at only 20 years old, and I've had my own fair share of poor form taking me out of the game for a bit.
Form is key.
Goals are great to shoot for, but prioritize your safety and avoid ego lifting.
Don't move weight you aren't confident you can control.
A back injury is not worth moving a couple more pounds, especially if you're moving it with bad form.
Regardless of the exercise, start with a lighter weight first to learn proper form and build confidence in the movement.
The ideal weight for your working sets is one that takes some struggle to hit a certain rep range (something that varies depending on your goals).
A good starting guideline is a weight that you struggle to complete 8 full reps with. Keep working at it until you get to 12 full reps, then up the weight.
Any exercise is a lower back exercise if you do it wrong enough. Nobody needs to hit spine day.
Listen to your body.
Even outside the gym, growth comes from stepping outside your comfort zone. However, there's a clear difference between the discomfort of "good/productive pain" and the harm of "bad pain". There's a good chance you already know the difference.
Results are worth the discomfort of good pain, but harmful pain feels terrible and limits your progress. Whatever pride you get out of being "tough" and ignoring your body isn't worth sacrificing your long-term goals and well-being.
Rest is important.
I have a good friend who ran 10 miles every morning and ended up with a stress fracture because he didn't take rest days. Rest isn't "laziness", it allows you to recover and let your hard work pay off with muscle growth.
Movement is medicine.
This varies case-by-case, but in case you do get injured...
Even though everybody recommends ice for soft-tissue injuries (think bruises, sprains, and strains) to reduce inflammation, this can actually slow healing by preventing blood flow to the injury.
Instead, an active approach within your limits early on can promote repair because increased blood flow to the site can carry more oxygen and nutrients needed for healing.
Going from 0 to 100 real quick is an easy ticket for an injury.
Also, gradual changes last longer, so let your body get used to the new challenges of a new workout plan!
Even if you work out regularly, don't underestimate the importance of warming up and cooling down.
Both get your blood flowing and reduce stress, risk of injury, and muscle soreness.
Once, I pulled my adductors because I tried to speedrun the rest of a leg day before going to class. 0/10, never again.
The cool thing about progressive overload is that there are lots of different ways to make a movement more difficult/intense. Here are a few examples:
Increase weight
Increase the number of reps
Increase time under tension (slowing down and controlling the movement)
Decreasing the amount of rest between sets
Adding more sets
Incorporating a more difficult variation of a movement
It's not always about how much you can lift - just pick a way to make the movement more challenging and you'll improve.
I get it, we want results fast, quick, and easy.
However, in the long run, consistent, deliberate effort in the right direction matters more than the occasional burst of motivation. You need sustainability to get results, which is why things like crash dieting or aggressive New Years' resolution gym-going for 2 weeks often don't work.
Make small changes to your routine that still incorporate the things you enjoy.
Honestly, as much as I love W&L's Fitness Center, it doesn't have to be a big part (or even a part) of an active lifestyle. Finding something you enjoy (an intramural sport, walking the Woods Creek trail, skating head-on into W&L tour groups, etc.) makes getting healthy exercise consistently a lot easier. If you can make it more challenging over time, even better.
I recommend checking out the Outing Club for fun things to do!
On the diet side, as long as your overall diet is in the direction of your goals, treat yourself to the things you enjoy. Two small changes I made that had huge results were adding more fiber (vegetables and fruit) to my meals and planning meals around a protein source like DHall grilled chicken or whatever's at Daily Dish.
Long-term, smaller changes that don't deprive your life of joy keep you happy and still on the way to your goal!
One of my favorite quotes is Winston Churchill's "Perfection is the enemy of progress".
Whatever you do (exercise, nutrition, sleep, etc.) still has benefits even if it's not perfect.
We're human. Life gets busy. Sometimes you're out the door at 7:45 for your 8 AM, nonstop all day, then back home at 9:30 PM. Other times, you have a paper due in 3 days and 2 upcoming tests you need to prep for if you want to keep your GPA afloat.
When I'm in the weeds, I tell myself to just do something. That could be going to the gym and speedrunning a workout (only my compound movements, no accessories), hitting the Third Year 24-hour gym at ungodly hours before a shower and sleep, walking a lap around the Science Center, or even doing a couple sets of bodyweight exercises on my bedroom floor.
At the end of the day, consistency is key to long-term results. It doesn't have to be perfect, but as long as it's something, I promise you'll be better for it.
For the most part, we make time for what's important to us. My best tip for general time management (which helps me make time for exercise) is to take advantage of Google Calendar.
Block out mandatory obligations like classes, personal meetings, work-study, and dedicated club meetings or practices.
Feel free to take note of optional events like different campus organizations' events that you come across on Campus Notices/billboards (or creatively written emails)! That way, you don't miss out on cool functions.
If you didn't already have a calendar, you'll probably notice you have a lot more open time than you thought. By giving it a little structure, you can unlock a lot more time to do whatever you want with.
Block out dedicated "windows" of time for important yet flexible things like homework/studying, quality time with loved ones, and meals.
Setting time boundaries can help you work or study more efficiently.
Just like how you'd schedule something important like a meal (even if it's 30 minutes or less), schedule in time for exercise.
This doesn't have to be in the gym - see "Something is always better than nothing." for what I meant by that!
I grew up playing video games among other things, and one of my favorite ways to stay motivated is to set "game plans", "objectives", and "sidequests" because every small goal was free serotonin.
Part of this includes making little "deals":
When I wake up groggy for a morning workout, I make a deal with myself.
I get my clothes on and go.
If I decide I absolutely don't want to be there after 5 minutes, then I give myself permission to leave.
I'm proud of myself for getting in the door, and more often than not, I find myself finishing the workout once the ball's already rolling.
Discipline is important, but so is respecting your own wishes and honoring your own needs. Even if you decide to leave the workout unfinished after 5 minutes, you're much better off than not even trying.
Breaking up big tasks into little steps/goals makes anything more achievable, plus we take the little wins where we can get them!
Social media is often far from reality, and that especially goes for the fitness industry. Content creation is a high-effort, hand-picked highlight reel, and what you see in fitness inspo posts usually features perfect lighting, editing, posing, and even Photoshop sometimes.
Even without these things, certain prized physiques (take bodybuilder-shredded, for example) require a lot of effort, stress, and mental bandwidth to keep up. There comes a point where counting every single calorie and macro interferes with other important things in your life, and that's not the healthiest.
We're all human. Comparing ourselves to unrealistic standards might be motivating, sure, but it's unfair to us and harmful in the long run. I love how much I've learned from Instagram reels and YouTube videos, but for your own mental health, take fitspiration with a huge grain of salt.
Last summer up in Utica for my Shepherd Internship, I spent most afternoons/evenings at a powerlifitng gym only a short skate from my dorm. In the women's locker room was a mural of a quote that I really liked:
You can be a work in progress and a masterpiece at the same time.
Especially if you're someone who values self-improvement, it's easy to never feel "enough". While this fear of failure/sense of inadequacy/other form of negative motivation works in the short term, it reinforces low self-esteem/self-confidence and causes undeserved stress.
In contrast, positive motivation carries you in the long term. It's the enjoyment of exercising for its own sake, whether that's endorphins, your weekly GroupEx spin class with your best friends, hitting new strength goals, or just choosing to get yourself a little exercise in the first place.
It's okay if you haven't worked out in weeks, months, or years.
It's okay if you didn't really grow up active even if you're feeling some of the effects now (in freshman year, I couldn't climb up 2 flights of stairs to my dorm room without getting winded).
It's okay if you're nowhere near the condition you wish you were in.
What matters is if you're trying to be better than you were yesterday. And regardless of where you start, you deserve to take pride in both the little things and yourself as you strive for better. I honestly hope that in the long run, we all show ourselves the love we deserve.
A lot of people focus on the "ideal" thing to do: ideal diet, ideal training program, ideal supplements to take and when, etc. I've been there myself, and honestly, it was a really mentally taxing way to live. Pursuing perfection led to a lot of sacrifices that ultimately made me unhappy.
Also, I feel like the fitness industry (and lots of other ones too) contributes to this by creating problems to sell you stuff you probably didn't even need in the first place.
If you get a big-picture look at it, you'll turn out fine (read: enjoy the benefits of exercise in the present and reduce your risk for diseases later on in life) as long as you build a couple healthy, sustainable habits and keep up with them over time.
Just keep it simple and sustainable with self-love and compassion at the center, and you're set. None of us are perfect and some days are bound to be better than others, but we all deserve to treat ourselves kindly. You got this, I believe in you!
Stay happy and healthy, folks! I hope these help; good luck with your own fitness journeys!