How to Make Fitness a Part of Your Life
When it comes to your health, wellness, and potential to live longer with little to no illness or injury, nothing compares to regular exercise and a diet void of ultra processed food. This post will serve as a beginner’s guide for introducing fitness into your life. We’ll address diet more in depth in a later post, but you can visit some of our other posts now for more info on how to eat healthy while traveling or how to seamlessly add the power of organs to your diet.
Benefits of Regular Exercise
Regular exercise is one of two of the single biggest positive contributors to overall wellness and longevity; diet, as you probably guessed, is the second. The research today on the benefits of exercise are endless (1) and all studies tend to conclude that the benefits to your health it offers cannot be replicated with a pill.
Exercise …
- Positively impacts your mood
- Improves your energy
- Assists with weight loss, leading to a better physique and boost in confidence
- Improves your strength, endurance, and resilience
Resistance training is necessary to preserve bone density, thereby decreasing the chance that a fall results in broken bones when you’re 65 (2). A respectable VO2 max helps fight off heart disease and will allow you to keep engaged in the sports or physical activities you love well beyond your AARP membership date (3).
Exercise is not the cure all, and keeping ultra processed foods in your diet, poor sleep, and the overconsumption of alcohol will all contribute to the degradation of these potential benefits from exercise. If your goal is longevity and minimizing the risk of chronic illness or injury, read on for some tools you can use to get started with forming a habit and making exercise a part of your life.
Where Do I Start?
Forming an exercise habit is challenging. There are numerous barriers to entry and the reality that exercise requires time and energy in a world where those two things are in short supply doesn’t help whatsoever. Be honest about what barriers you’re encountering when it comes to getting into an exercise routine and you’ll find it easier to leverage the plethora of tools available to overcome those barriers. Doing it with a significant other or close friend helps; keep each other accountable and get to it - your biggest enemy is inaction.
Let’s break down the barriers to entry even further. A common hurdle is not knowing what to do… like at all. Fortunately, the Rewild Team has been there (because we all start at zero) and after years trying, failing, and succeeding across various exercise programs, here’s where we recommend starting…
Training Apps
TrainHeroic - TrainHeroic | The World's Best Training App & Marketplace
TrainHeroic is our favorite app and marketplace for finding programs and tracking your progress. The app has grown significantly since we first started using it several years ago and now offers a “Pro” version that spits out a nauseating amount of statistics.
Sticking with the basic version and pairing it with a solid program (like any of the Power Athlete offerings, more below) will help anybody at any level stay accountable and on an upward trajectory of progress.
KeyLifts - KeyLifts - Workout Logger
KeyLifts excels at “keeping it simple.” The app tracks programs by using a simple periodization template for progress. The foundational program is known as “5-3-1”, which is a basic powerlifting program developed by Jim Wendler.
The purpose of this program is to build strength slowly by focusing on four barbell movements - back squat, deadlift, bench press, and shoulder/military press - in addition to various accessory lifts that you get to choose.
Peloton - The Peloton App
Arguably the most recognizable, the Peloton app is an impressive offering of cycling, running, HIIT (high-intensity interval training), mediations, yoga, and on and on.
This one ticks a lot of boxes and has different tiers depending on whether you have a Peloton exercise machine or not. There is a lot of support for this app, so expect regular updates and improvements if you decide to dive in.
Training Programs
There are hundreds if not thousands of apps in addition to the ones highlighted here, but our recommendation is to stick with one of these to start. Once you’re in your routine and making progress, you’ll naturally want to venture out to explore what else is out there. When it comes to programs, we recommend the following that are available on their own or paired with the TrainHeroic app.
Peloton
If you’re not buying a Peloton cycle or treadmill, don’t sweat it, this app on its own is one of the highest quality, yet lowest barriers for entry.
The strength programs paired with some stretching/yoga will get you off the ground, and they require just a few pairs of dumbbells and bands to start.
Delta Bravo - Delta Bravo: Home Workouts, the DEUCE Way | DEUCE Gym
Delta Bravo provides arguably a similarly low bar for entry compared to the Peloton programs, but the movements and intensity can be significantly more challenging if not scaled correctly for the beginner.
The Deuce Gym website offers an overwhelming amount of useful information to browse as you progress along your exercise journey, but for those looking for a steady start, we recommend grabbing their program on the TrainHeroic app. The biggest benefit is it only requires a few pairs of dumbbells and about an hour to grind it out.
Power Athlete - Power Athlete | Empower Your Performance
Power Athlete is our most go-to resource in this space. John Welbourn and his crew offer numerous “live” programs that progress in blocks and are not just cookie-cutter templates. Visit the Power Athlete website for everything from the below programs, to podcast episodes on nutrition and fitness. Our favorites for strength and athletic performance are:
Bedrock
Beginner program
Average time to complete is about 45-60 minutes / 6 training days a week
Mix of strength and conditioning to help build a foundation for more advanced programs
Includes basic barbell lifts, plyometrics, and “functional fitness” movements
Johnnie WOD
Beginner to Intermediate Program
Average time to complete is about 45-60 minutes / 6 training days a week
Most similar to Crossfit-type workouts (as many rounds as possible, for time, and for rounds)
Strength component often paired with conditioning consisting of plyometrics and a mix of dumbbell/kettlebell/barbell lifts
Jacked Street
Intermediate to Advanced program
Average time to complete is about 75 minutes / 6 training days a week
As the name implies, purpose is to build strength and muscle
Heavy emphasis on strength training but also includes regular 1-2 days of cardio/endurance
Grindstone
Intermediate program
Average time to complete is about 20-70 minutes / 2-5 training days a week
Designed for people with limited time
High-intensity training on a short schedule
Movements are not complicated so although is categorized as an “Intermediate” program, beginners can benefit greatly from this program
5-3-1 templates - List of 531 Workout Templates
The 5-3-1 templates on the above link seem endless; for a beginner taking a first look, there’s enough of an information overload to make you close out your browser and forget you even tried.
For the most basic, but impactful 5-3-1 templates to build strength, select one of these and stick to it. These are boring, but as the names imply, you will build incredible strength in as little as a month.
What Not to Do…
Get discouraged
Remember, everybody starts at zero. We all differ in form and how we respond to stressors, so ease yourself into a routine. Results will come with time, but they will never come if you quit.
Get Injured
This leads to shame, getting discouraged, and back to zero. Start slow, work on flexibility/ mobility, listen to the queues from your body to rest, and stay consistent.
Over do it
Same with avoiding injury, don’t keep the intensity at 10/10 every day. A common principle we on the Rewind Team learned early on was that it’s better to work at 80% consistently, than to hit a 100% one day and then need to follow it up with two rest days because you cant move.
Conclusion
Results will vary when it comes to exercise because you get out of it what you put into it. If you’re checking the boxes but keep a low to moderate level of intensity or are never increasing your weight week after week, don’t expect a bump in performance. If you’re working against yourself by eating pizza and drinking beer often, don’t be surprised if you see yourself regularly backsliding or at a standstill.
If your goal is weight loss, we on the team would argue your priority should be diet. A poor diet with vigorous exercise gets you absolutely nowhere when it comes to weight loss.
Your biggest takeaways should be to ease yourself in, and treat your workout like it’s something you have to do. It should be like brushing your teeth or taking a shower - tell yourself you have to do it, and you will.
References & Resources
