If you are new to exercising in a gym these eight tips from Dave Swallwell should help you to get started on your fitness journey…

1. Set goals

First of all it is important to have one or two goals this will focus your training and keep you motivated. It will help you plan your workouts around achieving them. Make sure you keep it simple though, and don’t overcomplicate things.

2. Plan your meals

This is so important, if you know you are going to train, be fuelled and ready to go.  If you know what time you are training then you should be eating about 2-hours beforehand, for more on nutrition read the article on Fuelling for fitness – how to feel better, train harder and recover well.

3. Hydrate

Make sure you are well hydrated before, during and after your workout. If you are working hard enough you should be sweating which means those liquids need to be replaced. We have provided a water machine in the fitness room so there is no excuse! More information on hydration can be found here.

4. Combatting cardio

If you are new to cardiovascular exercise keep the durations short to begin with, say no more than 10 minutes and allow your body to adapt to the exercise.  Once you are in the groove and you don’t suffer from any discomfort after training then you can consider adding a minute or two or alternatively keeping the duration the same and upping your tempo/resistance.  Always consider how you feel after training, listen to your body and only look to progress when you are confident it is the right time to do so.

5. Working with weight

When performing conditioning or strength work start with light weights and make sure that your form is always good, if you try to load up too much in the beginning and learn bad habits they will be difficult to break and you risk injury – form is key.  Keep a good posture by concentrating on keeping your core strong through each rep and during all sets.

During your routine your form will be at risk as your body begins to fatigue, it is at times like this when you should consider maybe taking longer recovery between sets or even calling time on that session and trying again another day.

We have installed mirrors in the gym for you to effectively monitor your form.

6. Don’t skip the stretch!

It is important to warm up and cool down as part of your workout. This can help manage the risk of injury.

Dynamic and static stretches help you improve your flexibility and are good as part a warm up and cool down you should focus on areas that feel tight. Some examples of various stretches can be found here.

We have included some foam rollers in the gym for you to use to release tension on tight muscles. A good guide on how to use foam rollers can be found here.

7. Listen to your body

See how your body reacts to the exercises for a week or so, normally muscle soreness will hit two days after your training session and is known to many as DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) but it can last for more than three or four days if you over do it.  This might tell you you’ve trained hard but if your body isn’t ready to train again for another four days, is that right?  Probably not!

8. Rest and recover

Finally, if you train more you will need more time to recover, make sure you get enough sleep each day so that you are in a position to train well when you want to.  While training we create tiny tears in our muscle fibres and these are repaired while we sleep and this leads to improvements in your muscle mass – less sleep = reduced recovery = fewer gains.