Attitudes Shift With New Experiences

Strength training is such powerful medicine that it represents a rapidly growing frontier for health care. Strength is success, and it will come most quickly with focused, steady effort. When tackling just about anything, we often show up to a new situation with a preexisting attitude. She didn’t like the gym. Even after the training period ended, she thought she could get it done at home. The good news, as she learned, and you will too, is that attitude is not fixed. Do not believe that any negative attitude you might have in the beginning is destined to remain an ongoing barrier to your success. Attitudes shift with new experiences, with social influences, and with your own motivation. Knowing this will help you accomplish something. Your attitude is simply part of where you begin. Where you go from there can change, and you can overcome that initial notion. An attitude will seem like a huge factor if you give it a lot of attention and struggle to hold on to it.

A Minor Variation

Alternatively, your attitude will wink out of existence during the time you focus on engaging in movements with full attention. New experience, new shared perspectives with others, and successful new achievements will give birth to new and different attitudes. Part of this shift comes from habit. As we have said, strength training needs to become a habit for you. As you progress, all the little wins will start to emerge. You may notice these successes as you get stronger by an increase in the amount of weight you can lift or the number of stairs you can climb, but these improving statistics are not why you are working. The real payoff is when suddenly you notice that your posture has changed, that you feel strong, and that your walk expresses a certain greater confidence that communicates your new strength. This will cause others to look at you in a different way. This is a powerfully moving and meaningful success, the kind that bit by bit influences your attitude. Things that loomed large at first as obstacles get cast in a new light by such experiences. This has made it much easier for her to move heavy patients in hospital beds. And she now smiles and looks forward to going to the gym.

We Never Change

Those that need strength training most do it least. In addition, the prevalence of strength training among men and women decreased significantly as age increased.1 The figures for those doing more than minimal strength training are a fraction of those cited here. Those doing the minimum recommended sessions twice a week get weaker more slowly than those doing no strength training. Thus, virtually everyone embarking on the StrongPath is a beginner and not truly acquainted with the kind of strength training that can increase strength as you age. If you are 40 or older, chances are you used to be stronger and fitter than you are today. That has been the trend. Virtually everyone embarking on the StrongPath is a beginner. Each one of you is starting from a unique point and set of personal circumstances. So you will be learning to engage in exercising all your muscles in a way that continually assesses your abilities and works at the level that is right for you, every time you exercise. This process is simple, and you will use it to automatically adjust your workout as you grow stronger. Don’t be in a hurry or jump ahead in the process.

Any Way At All

Strength gains from increased muscle mass will begin to occur simultaneously, but more gradually. This means that if you spend money on home equipment for strength training, like dumbbells or resistance bands, you will be growing out of them quickly and having to buy more constantly. At a gym, you will just use the next heavier weights or adjust the resistance setting on the machine you are using. If you have minimal equipment, the only way to increase the work is to do more repetitions. At a gym, you will also find the equipment you need for a rotating fullbody workout at different resistance levels. You will see the importance of this as we get into the details. Plus, you will learn a lot just being in a gym. You will find trainers that you can hire to teach you proper form, and many gyms offer classes that teach you to use the equipment properly. In addition, the social aspect of a gym is very positive, and you are safer with others nearby rather than being alone. If you have a Medicare Advantage Plan, there is a good chance that you are one of the fourteen million that qualify for a free pass to over thirteen thousand gyms nationwide. Strength training is such powerful medicine that it represents a rapidly growing frontier for health care. You will want to be connected with a facility that places you with people and equipment that will evolve with new discoveries. This is because your body composition is changing. You may lose 4 pounds of fat and gain about the same amount of weight in lean mass. So stepping on the scale will not reveal that much has happened, but you may find that you had to tighten your belt by a notch. Your thighs may have become a little tighter and harder, as they slide into your jeans more easily. And your arms are firming, and even your face is beginning to change as your strength grows. With our guidance, you will learn to work out all your muscles in a rotation that keeps your body growing progressively stronger over time. The template we provide will make it simple to jot down the exercises you will be doing and to record the weight and how many repetitions you complete. Copies of the template can be printed out as you need them, and we recommend that you keep the hard copy in a file or binder. We want you to have a motivator toward success.