Buying used exercise equipment won’t make you fit!
Getting an exercise bike can’t change your life!
Forking out for some exercise equipment may show that you are interested in getting fit. But just spending the cash on a fancy exercise bike won’t change your life by itself. The only way to transform your fitness is to start doing regular exercise. So before you rush out and buy some used exercise equipment from eBay, ask yourself the following questions:
- What do you want to do?
- How can you get the maximum health gains from the minimum effort?
It’s very easy, in the first flush of a new exercise kick, to go at it like a bull at a gate. Completely overcome with enthusiasm, you start using your new exercise bike everyday for hours on end in the quest to carve out an athlete’s body, where there were once only wobbly bits. Sadly this isn’t the best way of going about getting fit. At best you’ll end up exhausted and bored. At worst you’ll suffer an overuse injury which could set back, or even stop, your new exercise regime before it starts.
Don’t get me wrong - I don’t want to discourage anyone from doing any form of exercise. Quite the reverse! But you need to know how to start out properly to avoid the sort of setbacks which so often lead to exercise equipment being resold having been used just a handful of times. Believe me, when you have started trying to get fit there is NOTHING more demotivating than suffering some minor injury, which means you have to stop exercising, then recover from the injury, then start again at a lower level. That’s how I tried to get fit years ago. I was one of the lucky ones. Many people don’t get past the stop-go phase of enthusiastic exercise ignorance that I endured for years!
So how do you start using your new exercise bike without overdoing it?
- Choose what to do to get fit carefully. Many people buy used exercise equipment because they think that’s what they need to do to get fit. Not because they particularly like the activity which that particular kit involves. If you find the idea of sitting on an exercise bike boring now, how do you think you’ll feel about it when you’ve been pedalling for hours every week in the hopes of getting fit? Face facts - if something is boring, you won’t keep doing it. So find something more exciting to do. If you have a short attention span (like me!), choose two or even three different things to ensure that you can’t get bored. Then exercising will become fun and something to look forward to. Trust me, it’s true!
- Start at the right level. If you haven’t lifted anything more than a donut in the last three years, don’t even think about trying to lift 100lb weights in the gym. If you get puffed out crossing the road to the ice-cream van, don’t try to run 5 miles on your first day out. Start with what you can do relatively comfortably, but make sure it’s not so hard that you can’t manage it every day.
- Do some exercise every day. They say that if you do something every day for 2 weeks it becomes a habit. Therefore, make time in your life for 30 minutes exercising every day. And make sure that you really do exercise every day. That’s one of the reasons for starting at a low level of exertion. It’s better to do 30 minutes of low level exercise every day at the start of your new healthy life, than to try and do three sessions a week at a level which is too high for you. Don’t worry about progress. If you exercise every day, you’ll be amazed at how quickly your endurance and speed increase. Progress comes naturally when you don’t overwork muscles which haven’t been used for years!
- Progress at a steady rate. Increasing your level of exertion steadily every week will give you the maximum benefit in the minimum amount of time. It may seem slow to start with, but in 3 months you’ll be amazed at the progress. Is 3 months too long? What’s the hurry? By exercising you will increase your expected lifespan, and your expected healthy lifespan by much more than 3 months (some studies suggest regular exercise increases lifespan by 3 to 5 years).
- Learn as you go. The more you learn about the interactions between health, nutrition and exercise, the healthier you will become. Once you start caring for your body and doing what you can to become fitter, you will also want to do what else you can to make a difference. I don’t mean going on a diet - we all know that they don’t work. No, I’m talking about learning more about nutrition - what’s good and what’s bad, so that you can make your own choices. Choosing not to have a bucket full of thin fries from the burger outlet, instead sating your desire for potatoes with baked potato wedges (hardly any fat, and taste great!).
- Don’t get stressed when you have a ‘bad’ day. We all fall off the wagon sometimes - maybe it’s just one of ‘those’ days at the office. Maybe something happened which meant that you REALLY didn’t have time to do any exercise. The thing is, if you get stressed about it, you turn it into a major event. Beating yourself up about something that has already happened just makes you feel bad. It can actually sap your motivation to keep exercising - ‘maybe I’m just not cut out for getting fit’, ‘something always goes wrong when I try to improve myself’ etc. If you just accept that you missed a day (or two, or three) and move on, you won’t suffer the motivational blip caused by self-loathing. After all, you are already doing a lot more exercise than you used to, aren’t you? So your health is going to be much better than it would have been if you hadn’t started. So what is there to get stressed about? Just look forward to getting back to the exercise you enjoy tomorrow. Don’t forget that exercising is a great way of relieving stress; so if you feel stressed at having let yourself down, just go for a walk or a run or a bike ride. You know you’ll feel better once the body’s feel-good endorphins start taking effect!
- Get your friends and family to help you. That’s going to mean different things for different people. Some find it motivating to have an ‘exercise buddy’, as the camaraderie and imposed exercise discipline of exercising with some one helps get over the initial motivational challenges. Others just need to know that their family support their quest for self-improvement, while they enjoy a bit of personal time devoted to nothing more than themselves. Sound selfish doesn’t it. But don’t feel guilty - your family and friends will be happy that you are starting to look after yourself more, and are taking steps to ensure that you continue living a healthy and happy life. They can survive without actually having to see you for 30 minutes every day!
How you go about getting fit is more important than buying a particular piece of exercise equipment. If you know what you are aiming for, and the basic rules which control how fast (or how slow) you get fit you can transform your life, with or without the latest exercise bike. So before rushing out to the sports shop or logging onto eBay, find out the basic rules - they will help you to:
- Decide what to do to get fit.
- Find out how to get fit as fast as possible with your chosen form(s) of exercise.
- Work out what (if any) exercise equipment you will need for your program. (Yes it is possible to get really fit without joining a gym or buying any expensive equipment!)
- Know how to put all the components together into your own personalised fitness program that will transform your life.
All this needn’t be daunting. I managed to get fit myself the hard way, but I learnt a lot along the way. I’ve also carried out a lot of research into the latest science of getting fit, to find out where I went wrong, and what I did right. Now I want to help other people who are in the same situation that I found myself in years ago - too fat and very unfit. So I’ve written an eBook called Get Fit, Feel GREAT! based on my experiences of going from fat to fit, and on the latest scientific studies about fitness improvement. Click here to find out more about this simple, 60 page guide to getting fit as fast as possible.
Use your exercise equipment to get fit fast simply by learning a few simple rules.
Find out more about how to get fit.
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