[ad_1]
You’ve decided to make exercise a priority this year. You work out for several days. After a week or two, you don’t see any progress on the scale, so you abandon your goals. Sounds familiar? First and foremost, progress doesn’t happen overnight; it takes time. Moreover, exercise takes up only one hour of your day; what you do in the next 23 hours is what determines the outcome. However, a scale is never an appropriate tool when it comes to judging fitness progress. Instead, the intensity with which you train and the efficiency with which you execute an exercise all play an important role. So, before you skip your next workout, consider these five ways to assess your fitness progress.
Your PR Is Now Warm-up
In the fitness world, a PR is your one-rep max, which is used to assess your strength. So when you first start working out, you start with one of the lightest weights and gradually increase the weight as you train. So, if 7kgs was your starting point and now it’s your warm-up, it’s a clear sign that you’ve made progress in terms of strength. However, strength is something that develops over time, so it demonstrates that you have worked hard and dedicated yourself to your training.
Also Read: Exercising And Still Not Losing Weight? 5 Common Mistakes You Might Be Making
Your Form Improves
When we first begin exercising, whether in the gym or at home, the first major task is to learn the movement. Furthermore, if we are learning, we will not feel the burn on the muscle that we are training. But now that you’re comfortable with the lift and can do it with some weight, it shows that you’ve mastered the fundamentals. The best criterion for judging yourself, which may be useful for beginners in particular, is that if you did legs and they hurt the next day, it means you performed the exercises with proper mind-muscle connection and form.
Also Read: 5 Best Pre-Workout Foods to Boost Performance
You Can Feel The Pump
As the saying goes, addicted to the pump! Similarly, a muscle pump is one of the best ways to judge your progress. When you first start working out, it’s about getting the reps in. However, as time passes, you notice that you are building muscles, and your arms become harder and bigger with each repetition. The pump appears only after you have developed some muscle mass, and there is no greater progress than building muscle because achieving muscle naturally is a more difficult task than weight loss and weight gain.
You Know The Exercises
Don’t lie, we used to think a lat pull-down was a chest exercise because we brought it down near your chest. However, as you begin working out, you realize that the lats are back muscles, and you are ideally training your back. Furthermore, knowing how many exercises to perform and how many reps to perform is a clear indication that you are getting better at training efficiently.
You Are Getting Injuries
Yes, it may sound shocking, but if you are truly training every day and at full intensity, you may sustain a minor injury. When you first started training, your muscles were fresh and ready to take on the load, whereas when you exercise every day, they get overworked, and there is a higher risk of injury. Obviously, gym injuries are common, but if you have hurt your lower back, hamstrings, or shoulders, as these muscle groups are always working, it is a sign that you are progressing.
Image Credit: Freepik
,
[ad_2]
