The Dubai Fitness Challenge started on Friday 20th October, which is a great initiative to spread fitness and aim to make Dubai the most active city in the world by committing to 30 minutes of fitness every day for 30 days. Why not use this initiative to kick start your active lifestyle, or if you’re already active, raise the bar slightly and start bringing yourself closer to your goals!
So there are 24 hours, 1,440 minutes, 86,400 seconds in a day. Tell me again that you can't work out as you have no time. Having worked in the fitness scene for a very long time, this excuse is the most common one I hear. I truly appreciate everyone has a different way of life; the stress of having a few young needy children flying around the place or maybe running your own business can leave stress levels sky high and the thought of working out for a few hours in the gym feels like a nightmare. Along with this excuse comes one of the biggest myths and misconceptions, the thought that you need to be slaving away in a gym for hours and hours to build and maintain a respectable level of fitness.
What if I told you that 20-30 minutes put aside for a HIIT workout each day would help to build a base for fitness? Not only does it help you physically with health benefits such as torching fat, help build a healthier heart, spiking your metabolism to help burn even more fat for hours after your workout, but also mentally by helping your brain in terms of mood, memory & improving your capacity to learn. It is extremely important that we put a small amount of time aside daily to exercise. If you don’t have a gym membership and you have no equipment at hand, HIIT Workouts are ideal. As we say at Nike, ‘if you have a body you are an athlete’ and in this case, it’s so true. All you need is a small amount of space and the legs you stand on to complete some simple bodyweight exercises. Now, I am not claiming for this to be easy in any way. Just focus on yourself and your own journey, fight your own battles and make sure that you become 1% better each day at something and you will be well on your way to success.
Here are a few tips to make sure we firstly get started and secondly stay on track:
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Set SMART goals, specific, measurable, agreed upon, realistic, time based GOALS. Set a short-term goal, something that you feel with a certain amount of effort you can achieve & a long-term goal, something that has always been present in your thoughts but the magnitude of it scares you a little so it quickly goes to the back of your brain.
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Write it down; put it somewhere you can see, like your fridge, somewhere where it’s a constant reminder to yourself.
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Set a plan, follow a program. By doing this, you’re making yourself accountable and more likely to reach your goal if it is set out in front of you. For example, the Nike Training Club App does all of this for you. But don’t forget, a good training plan should always be followed with a detailed nutrition plan to run alongside these goals & help fuel you in your journey.
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Be consistent. At the start of your journey, some of your goals can seem a million miles away but the key is not to focus on the end outcome. Just make sure you are continuously getting 1% better every day, and eventually that pipe dream can and will become a reality.
To make life simpler, use the Nike Training Club app to follow your own personal plan that is specific to your goals, whilst being able to adjust your progress and your daily schedule to make sure that you can fit in all your other activities from the daily grind. Here are a few of my favourite workouts that I use if I am struggling for time. There is a huge database of workouts to allow all fitness levels to take part, but can be modified and adjusted to suit your surroundings:
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Burpees, bounds and bridges
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Wipeout 2.0
As important as training is, the saying ‘you can't out train a bad diet’ is so true. A good training plan needs to work hand in hand with a good nutrition plan and be tailored to your specific goals. You will never reach your goals if you don't fuel your body properly, as you simply won't function and perform efficiently. I aim to fuel my workouts so that I can perform at the best of my ability, so my pre-workout and post-workout meals are my most important. After your workout, you need good rest, sufficient sleep and good nutrition to recover and get back to 100% ready to do it all over again. Consistency is crucial, as all the hard work that has been done through your workouts would be lost with a poor diet.
Author: Nike Trainer Luke Gaffney.