Posted on March 10, 2010
This statement applies to all of life. Travelling on a journey without a specified destination is going nowhere, and nowhere never comes coz nowhere always changes.
In the fitness industry, you are always encouraged to clearly define your fitness goals so that you are able to visualise yourself within that end result and then begin to work towards it. So whether it’s weight loss or weight gain, toning or bulking, endurance or strength, the list continues, you have to clearly define it. Let’s put it like this: You Visualise it, Vocalise it and then Vibrate it. Begin with the end in mind is the statement that Stephen Covey uses in his book “Seven Habits of highly effective People”.
So, now you have clearly defined that you want to work on your stomach area and make it a little rounder and flabby. So what’s next......, Ah...... go home, spend most of your time in front of the tele and eat lots of junk food.lol
Most people in the gym know what they want to achieve but it seems like very few actually get there. You want to get your chest a little bigger and more defined and you reckon that doing seated rows and making sure that you extend that chest forward at the end of the pull will do a great deal of work. Your thinking is somewhat ok, but you got the whole thing mixed up. First define where the work is in this exercise. Is it in pulling or releasing? If it’s pulling, which is in this case, you will realise that the back muscles are the ones which pull your arms back.
I feel that we spend a great deal of focus on the end result and spend less time on the process that is actually supposed to get us there. So here is a couple of questions. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#04These are probably the two basic questions that I believe every person who goes to gym must be able to answer. It’s like the novel example. For there to be progression, the novelist may decide to section the story into chapters and each chapter has its own purposeful contribution to the whole story. The different story characters and sub-stories are meant to add their own flavour into the main story.
So for the overall fitness result to be accomplished, you as the gymer, you must know your body and the exercises that each part of your body must perform in order to contribute to the overall desired fitness result.
Let’s go back to the chest (Pectoral muscle) workout example. The function of this muscle is to draw the upper arms forward given that the arms are stretched away from the body to form the figure “T”. So, whether you are lying down facing up or down, or standing – as long as the upper (top) arms are at a “T” position, when you bring them in front of your body, you work the Chest. Hence the push ups (facing down), bench press (facing down), pec deck (sitting upright). Ok, I think you get it now.
So, take a little more interest in your body and understand its workings because at the end of the day it’s the one that accomplishes your goals. Someone put it like this: Without a vision the people will perish, and without people, a vision will also perish. To accomplish the vision, you also need to take good care of the people who work the vision.
Spend some time on the net reading about the anatomy of the body and the functions of the major muscles. For any other questions you are free to contact the TSG front desk.
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