Why 30 Day Challenges Aren't All Bad
30 day challenges are commonly mocked in the fitness industry for being a bad tool for developing sustainable, long-term fitness habits. 30 day challenges encourage short-term thinking, which is unlikely to help with long-term development. However, it’s important to remember that long-term thinking is just a combination of all your periods of short-term thinking - and thus, sometimes, short-term thinking can set the right standard for your future behavior.
Learning To Hold Back
Most people believe that the real struggle is in motivating people to put in hard effort - I find from experience, that often it is the exact opposite. Many people struggle to hold themselves back, want to push themselves too hard, and as a result, suffer from suboptimal results and burnout. Learning to hold back and pick your battles, is an important skill in long term success in fitness and self-improvement efforts.
Neck Training - Weird But Useful
The neck is an often overlooked area of training - and largely, this is justified because there’s minimal reason to train it in many sports. However, if you participate in any sport which involves heavy contact, or if you want to maximize the appearance of muscularity, there are still ways that neck training can be useful. I cover my recommendations and experience with this weird training method.
The Absolute Minimum You Can Work Out While Still Seeing Results
Any kind of movement or exercise is better than doing nothing! There is basically no lower limit when it comes to getting results from exercise. It takes more effort to build strength and other qualities, and less effort to maintain them. This means that even as returns diminish, or if you have to do abbreviated routines, you can still have efficient workouts. Programs that use short, intense, and infrequent workouts can provide reasonable, long term results. As long as the program is followed consistently and progressed smartly, there will be improvements.
Every Pushup
Pushups are a versatile bodyweight exercise to strengthen the chest, arms, and shoulders that can be easily scaled to suit the level of anyone from beginner to advanced. Different positions can be utilized to change difficulty. Elevating the upper body, like doing countertop pushups, allows for lighter than bodyweight pushups. Elevating the feet, changing position, or attempting single arm pushups increases difficulty.