#32: Are You Getting Stronger?

Hey Friends,

Happy Super Bowl Sunday!

I’ll start by saying that you can enjoy foods at your Super Bowl party guilt free. Food should always be guilt free, and I just feel like sometimes on days like these we need that reminder.

In today’s newsletter I’m going to talk about weight training. Specifically, I’m going to touch on ways to ensure you are being intentional and mindful about how you are lifting weights.

Weekly Action Point

🧘 This week before bed, let’s do 10 minutes of guided meditation or breathing work 🧘 

Life is busy and things move fast. Unless you’re intentional about slowing your mind down, it will always be racing.

There are constant distractions and things to stimulate us. Social media, TV, games, other people, etc.

Every night before bed this week, I want you to take 10 minutes to let your mind be idle.

It doesn’t actually even have to be before bed, that’s just an awesome time to do it. You could also do it in the morning or anytime during the day where you have 10 minutes.

Here’s a video to guide you:

Calm has a new 10 minute guided mediation every day, so you can switch it up each day if you want.

Now, when I tell people do to this, I’m guessing the vast majority of you won’t actually do it. I encourage you to give it a try. You’ll be surprised what 10 minutes per day of just existing without external stimulation will do for your mental health.

Time to Lift Weights… The Right Way

Theres a difference between lifting weights, and lifting weights with intention.

Have you ever found yourself going through the motions just so that you can tell yourself you lifted weights that day?

Or have you ever chosen your weight for an exercise just because it’s something you have done before?

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve had days like that. But the fact of the matter is, if you aren’t making intentional decisions with your weight training, you probably aren’t gettting the most benefit out of it that you could be.

I’ve been instructing group exercise classes for over 4 years and have worked with hundreds (or thousands) of different people.

One thing that I see all the time: people will gravitate towards weights they have done before. They go with something that’s comfortable. Something that they know they could probably do again that day.

And I get it, it’s scary to try weights that you have never done before. Not to mention lifting heavy weights is just hard.

But if you keep doing the same weights over and over again, you’re probably not going to keep getting stronger and will probably see plateaus.

In my opinion, every single person should have a goal of getting stronger. Being stronger will help you look better, feel better, stay healthy later into life, and generally enhance the overall function of your body.

I talk all the time about how complicated the fitness landscape has become. There’s so many different sources of information often times saying entirely different things.

If you could focus on slowly getting stronger over time and tune out all the other noise, I’m confident that you’d be in a good spot with your fitness goals.

Forget everything else, and just get stronger.

You’ll probably find that by getting stronger, you’ll love the way you look in the mirror or how your clothes are fitting.

But how do we get stronger?

Great question, glad you asked.

For starters, let me highlight a couple of things you should NOT be doing:

• Picking up the same weight every single time

• Getting to the final rep of your set and stopping just because you hit a number that you had in your head (Ex: the program said 8 reps, so I stopped at 8 even though reps 6,7, and 8 weren’t that difficult).

• Going through the motions. Lifting weights for the sake of telling yourself you did it

• Speeding through your workouts without resting in between sets

• Pounding your body into the ground because you believe that “more is better”

• Multitasking or letting your mind wander. Yes, scrolling on your phone in between sets distracts your mind and makes it more likely that you go through the motions when lifting weights.

Now, here are some things that I think you SHOULD be doing when lifting weights:

• Challenge yourself to try new weights, new tempos, or new rep ranges that you don’t usually do

• When you choose a weight, make a mental note so that you actually remember what weight you did for that exercise when you do it again in the future

• Keep a workout journal/log. I personally write down the sets, reps, and weight I do for every exercise in an excel spreadsheet so that I can see improvement over time

• Celebrate the small wins - strength building is a slow game. Maybe you were able to do one extra rep on one of your sets compared to last week, that’s a win that you should celebrate

• Challenge yourself to try new weights (Yes, that’s the second time I’ve said that. Hopefully, you’re catching on that it’s important)

Are these the only ways to get stronger? Of course not. For example, I made a point talking about heavy weights. But guess what, you could pick up a lighter weight, and then try out a tempo with 5 counts on the way down and 5 counts on the way up.

Playing with tempo is a great way to improve strength, and it’s way less taxing on the body than trying to push for heavier weights.

The main thing I want you to take away from this week: Pay attention.

I just want you to actually notice what weights you are grabbing. Don’t mindlessly wander over to the weight rack and grab whatever weight “feels right” for that day.

Pay attention to the weights you are lifting and how you feel while lifting them.

As a result, it’s way more likely you will be getting stronger over time.

Ben’s Best

Wanted to share this instagram video showing protein bowl options. I wanted to share it as a reminder that you don’t need to do anything fancy.

Combine a bunch of ingredients in a bowl, and let their flavors work together. There were no crazy ingredients in any of these bowls, and nothing that would take very long to prepare. But all delicious options.

eatinghealthytoday

View more on Instagram

Reminder to be kind to yourself. You are doing awesome :)

Have a great week everyone!