UPDATE: I’ve started a health and fitness site, Muscle Made Simple, where I’ll be sharing more workout tips, inspiration and motivation! Just this week Todd and I have had three people approach us asking how they can get started on a healthier life. It’s the start of the New Year and health and resolutions are on people’s minds. We want to help make your resolutions successful, so here is what we tell people that are looking at starting a fitness journey.

Starting a fitness journey

To start, don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. What do we mean by that? Choose one thing to work on. Start by changing your diet, or start going to the gym. Most people, not all, but most, will go all in and burn themselves out. Fitness is a lifestyle and needs to be treated as such. You have to change the way you eat and drink, the way you work out. That means fitting these things into your schedule, which is probably pretty busy already, right? You want to make this manageable. Get into the routine of eating well. Once you have that under control (and yes, you’ll see some weight loss during this phase), then head to the gym.

The real workout starts when you want to stop - Start your fitness jouney

Now that you’re at the gym… how often should you go and what, exactly, should you be doing? Here’s our answer – if you were completely sedentary and are just starting out, shoot for 3 days a week. When you arrive, do a 5 minute warm-up, whether it be on the treadmill, bike, stepper or arc trainer. 

Once you’re warmed up, you’re going to pick the body part to focus on that day. We break ours up into back and triceps, chest and biceps, legs, and shoulders. Do 5 exercises, 4 sets of 10-12 reps. The last two reps of each set should be hard to complete – that means you’ve got a good weight. Need an example? Here we go: 

Say it’s back and bicep day, this is what we’d do: 

Pull Ups – for beginners you’ll use the assisted pull up machine. 4 sets, 10 – 12 reps.

Lat Pull Down Wide Grip- 4 sets, 10 – 12 reps

Lat Pull Down Narrow Grip- 4 sets, 10 – 12 reps.

Seated Cable Row – 4 sets, 10 – 12 reps

Standing Straight Arm Pushdowns – 4 sets, 10 – 12 reps

Dumbell Concentration Curls – 4 sets, 10 – 12 reps

Barbell Curls – 4 sets, 10 – 12 reps

That’s it, back/bi workout is done! We move continuously through our workout. Because we work together, we get a break in between each set while the other person does their set. If you’re alone, take a 30 second break between each set. If you’re working hard enough you’ll start to breathe heavy and increase your heart rate. This is what you want!

I finish my workouts with 30-45 minutes on the treadmill or stepper.

I’m also a big proponent of weight lifting. I am not a cardio bunny. People think that the key to losing weight is to just jump on cardio and run, run, run. STOP! If you want to lose weight AND tone your body, weights is where it is at.

What to keep up with our fitness journey? Or looking for some tips and tricks? Follow us on Instagram!