My first blog about fitness didn’t turn out as it should have and it came to my attention that I distracted myself from my initial goal and idea quite drastically. I want to fix this and tell you more about my experience, what I learned and share some information and resources I found helpful as a beginner in fitness.

I have now completed my first full month of fitness and I can proudly say I have no intention of giving up. I renewed my membership and established a new, tougher and more intense workout routine, which I will show you.  I will divide the post into two parts since I have a lot to say (does this mean I also learned a lot). Today I will set the foundations and tell you what you have to consider and learn more about before you start any workout routine and sign up for a fitness membership. I will cover things like setting the goal, choosing the right gym, and discovering your body type, which is essential to know before you try to get any results from actual exercise. I hope you find it useful, enjoy!

The Goal

The most important thing to set straight before you engage in any commitment to fitness is definitely the goal of this endeavor. What is your motivation, what do you want to achieve as a result, what are you working for? Getting this settled will help you choose the gym and create a routine and diet, which will help you get to your goal. Of course, you need to make sure the goal is realistic and remember that achieving great results takes a lot of time and effort.

My goal

I have explained why I started going to fitness in my first post (here), but I never talked about my goals and expectations from it.

My goal from this is to get my body in a better shape (surprise, surprise) and build more muscles while reducing the unnecessary fat. I generally want to create a healthier lifestyle for myself and I think that fitness is a great step towards this. I am way more active and I am a lot more careful with what and when I eat since I started fitness. I haven’t achieved super good results yet, but I can see the little progress I am making and for me this is a good motivation to keep going and achieve better results.

The fitness

I feel obliged to say that it is important to choose the right fitness for your needs and consider what you will need to achieve your goal, what the fitness can offer in terms of equipment and environment, when you can use it, and is it worth the price. Some gyms allow you to attend only at certain times of the day, which can be a huge drawback if you are a student or a full-time worker trying to fit a good workout session into your already packed schedule. Getting your requirements right and considering all the above-mentioned factors can help you determine whether a fitness is worth the membership or not.

How did I choose?

I didn’t. There is only one local fitness and I didn’t have anything to choose from. But I have to admit, I was pleasantly surprised. The equipment in the small local gym is actually quite diverse and there are all types of machines for training each of your muscles. There are also several other aspects, which I am extremely happy with and I believe this type of gym would be perfect for any beginner.

• The gym is open every weekday from 6 am to 10 pm and weekends and holidays from 7 am to 5 pm, which I dare to say fits any type of people
• I am paying around 18 euro a month and I can go as much as many times as I want, whenever I want and stay as long as I want
• The gym is basically on self-service, there is staff there only twice a week to help newcomers sign up and show them around. Once you sign up you get a chip, which opens the doors and gives you access to all the equipment inside. No pressure of being observed by instructors or random people watching
• It establishes a community. Everything is left in the hands of the members – we are in charge of keeping the place nice and creating a good and motivating environment for ourselves

I hope this helps you get an idea of what expectations and requirements you should have. Of course, your demands strongly depend on your personal preferences, but I think this can give you an idea of what aspects to look at.

I am trying to make the best of all the benefits and I visit the gym five times a week for at least 1-1.5 hours and so far I am quite satisfied.

The importance of the body type

Starting this challenge was definitely not an easy thing to do and finding out how to approach it was probably the hardest part. I didn’t really know what exercises I should start with, how much and how often to do them so I had to spend a lot of time finding resources and doing a proper research. One thing you should know is that if you don’t approach fitness properly and you overstrain yourself or do the exercises in the wrong way you can do a lot of irreversible damage to your body.

A good thing to start with is finding out what type of body you have – is it Ecto-, Endo- or Mesomorph type of body. This will help you determine what kind of exercises you should focus on and what type of eating habits you should establish for the best results of the workouts. If you focus on the wrong type of workout you will struggle without getting any results, which can be quite demotivating. I didn’t even know there were different body types, but I am glad I found out because this definitely gave a lot of valuable information about my body.

It is highly unlikely that you fit into one category perfectly, the chances are there is one body type that fits you best, but you also have traits from one more type. From what I read you should focus on following the guidelines for the body type that suits you best, but also consider the tips for your secondary classification. Without getting into too much detail, here is a bit about the three body types so you can get an idea of what I am talking about.

Ectomorph

• Lean build, long limbs, and small muscle bellies
• Struggle to gain weight as either body fat or muscle
• Should focus on nutrition – calories, carbs, protein, and fat
• Heavy weights with long rest between sets and less cardio; a lot of protein before work out and good meals after

Endomorph

• Relatively high amount of stored fat, a wide waist, and a large bone structure
• They struggle with losing fat
• Focus should be on shedding fat through aerobic exercise
• Focus on muscle-building with conditioning to strip away unwanted body fat
• A low-carb diet that still includes oats and brown rice should be complemented by a high protein and fiber intake
• Train with intensity

Mesomorph

• Wide shoulders, a narrow waist, relatively thin joints, and round muscle belly
• Natural tendency to be fit and relatively muscular (which doesn’t mean you are automatically fit and shouldn’t put effort in maintaining your body)
• Doesn’t tend to store much fat and easily shapes muscles
• A basic guideline for mesomorphs to follow would be to consume meals that are 40% complex carbohydrates, 30% lean protein, and 30% healthy fats
• Train with an athlete routine

Based on what I read and some tests I took I got the result of an ectomorph with several traits of a mesomorph. This helped me structure my routine and decide on what type of exercises to focus and what kind of diet to keep.

Actual footage of me in the gym

Resources

The most useful and detailed article, which will tell you everything you need to know to identify your body type and what to do for the best results is Coachmag’s guide on body types – it will give you information about diets, sleep habits and importance of work out routines in a really interesting and educational way. I highly recommend it.

If you want a summarised information and guide Bodybuilding’s Body Type Test article will be best for you. It describes the most essential characteristics of each type, a test with 9 questions that will help you identify your body type and a short guide about what you should focus on. Check it out.

That will be it for now. In part two of the post, I will continue with my discoveries regarding the eating habits, the exercises its good to start with, and how to establish a routine. Of course, I will compliment this with examples of how I changed my menu and how I developed and improved my workout routine. Stay tuned for the next post on Friday and thanks for reading. I hope I managed to be helpful and gave you some good insights!

Instagram     LinkedIn     Portfolio