15 crucial fitness tips for beginners

Taking up sport is an excellent decision that your body will thank you for in the long run. However, in order to achieve your goals, you should first be aware of some basic facts that will have a decisive influence on your progress. To make it as easy as possible for you to enter the world of iron, we have put together 15 crucial tips to help you achieve your dream figure.

1 - Find a goal

Before you even start training, you should be aware of what you want to achieve with your commitment overall. Otherwise, it is quite likely that you will tread water for a long time and only make minimal progress. Accordingly, you need to think in advance about whether you primarily want to build muscle or lose fat, as each requires a completely different approach.

2 - Start small

Assuming your goal is to build muscle and reach the strength level of an Olympic weightlifter, this does not mean that you can work with heavy weights right from the start. Even the strongest athletes in the world started small, because their bodies also had to get used to the increasing load. Take a leaf out of their book and start slowly, as this is the only way to prevent unnecessary injuries.

3 - Climb slowly

As already described, your body needs some time to adapt the structures of the active and passive musculoskeletal system to weight training. Accordingly, increase your training slowly so that you can improve your performance step by step. However, don't forget that your body needs to be constantly challenged in order for such a performance-enhancing adaptive response to take place. If you progress too slowly, progress will largely fail to materialize.

4 - Don't overestimate yourself

Before you increase the training weight, you should make sure that you can control it safely at all times. An excellent indicator in this regard is to check whether you can hold the weight used for a good second at each point of the movement. Only if this is the case is it worth increasing the load.

5 - Follow a training program

Especially if you have never really dealt with the subject of strength training before and you tend to feel overwhelmed by all the equipment inside a gym, you should follow a fixed training program. Special beginner programs also have the advantage that they are usually tailored by experts specifically to the needs of less experienced athletes, so that you learn everything that is important for your training step by step.

6 - Pay attention to your technique

At the beginning, it is less important which specific exercises you perform, but rather that you internalize the basic technique of performing the exercises in order to train effectively and safely. You should also always make sure that you keep your back straight and tense your core muscles throughout the entire movement.

7 - Find a training partner

There is nothing more motivating than a training partner, because even if you don't feel like going to the gym, a good training partner knows how to get you to exercise. You also benefit from having a second person to help you with your exercises and assess your technique so that you can always train safely and purposefully.

8 - Stretch before training

Just like the warm-up, a light stretching session before training is an essential part of a visit to the gym. This is absolutely essential, as your muscles, tendons and ligaments are more prone to injury when they are cold and inelastic. However, you shouldn't overdo it either, as stretching for too long can have a negative impact on your performance.

9 - Also use free weights

Of course, your training program does not have to consist exclusively of exercises performed with free weights, but you should definitely take advantage of this. The advantage of dumbbell training over the use of machines is that, in addition to the primary target muscles, the secondary auxiliary muscles are also trained, which improves the interaction between the individual muscle groups, which in turn is beneficial for your performance potential.

10 - Train your legs

Very important point - Many women do not train their legs as they assume that endurance training is already sufficient for developing firm thighs and a firm bottom. However, since endurance training alone cannot lead to significant muscle growth in the long term, it is essential that you strengthen your legs with targeted exercises such as squats or the leg press.

11 - Train alternately

You should not forget that you should not train the same muscle group again on consecutive days, as your muscles need time to recover. So give each muscle group at least one day's rest before you train it again. For this purpose, it is a good idea to train three times a week according to a full-body plan, for example, or to do what is known as split training.

12 - Ensure sufficient regeneration

As already mentioned, you should allow your body to rest, otherwise it will not be able to regenerate. What's more, many muscles will always be stressed in some way, despite a sophisticated training plan. As a result, it is not possible to spend every day in the gym without impairing regeneration, which is why you should work on your body a maximum of 5 days a week.

Glutamine Zero is ideal for regeneration:

Glutamine Zero

13 - Drink enough fluids

More than 75 percent of your muscles are made up of water. It is therefore obvious that hydration plays a central role in the performance of your muscles. Scientific studies have shown that a fluid loss of just two percent caused by sweating can lead to a drop in performance of up to 20 percent. So remember to drink between 0.7-1 liter of fluid during training to prevent your strength potential from dropping.

Can help you to drink more fluids with almost no calories:

Active Drink

14 - Eat a healthy diet

If you really want to achieve your goals, there is no way around a healthy and balanced diet. Regardless of whether you want to build muscle or lose fat, you should make sure you eat protein-rich foods and banish sugar and unhealthy fats from your daily diet. However, especially when dieting, you should not get carried away by reducing your calorie intake too much, as your body needs fuel to be able to perform at all during training.

Protein potato chips as an ideal snack between meals:

Protein Chips - Pack of 5

15 - Don't be intimidated

Even if the many mountains of muscle in the gym often give you a strange look, you shouldn't let this intimidate you, because they also started small once. Focus exclusively on yourself and on the goals you want to achieve.