I have heard the same story over and over again during my long a career as a Newport Beach Personal Trainer. Some new client comes up to me and tells me that they have working out everyday for months, sometimes years, but they can’t remember the last time that they have seen any real progress in either their physical performance in the gym or their appearance.

This kills me every time I hear it, because I know it’s only a matter of a short amount of time before I discover what they have been doing to sabotage their fitness progress. Of course, it doesn’t have to be that way. Here is the most common advice I have doled out to these kind of clients as a Newport Beach Personal Trainer. Try applying them to your own exercise routine to help ensure you are always making progress.

Get Plenty of Rest – There are three factors to fitness: exercise, nutrition, and rest. Far too many people forget the third one, thinking that the best way to get fit is to work yourself to exhaustion every day. Allowing your body to recover periodically by taking a couple days off will allow your muscles to grow bigger and stronger, give you more energy for the next workout, and give you better results, faster.

Change it Up – The human body is very good at adapting to exercise. When you do a routine for long enough say six weeks or so, it becomes accustomed to those limited series of movements and stops developing. The trick to ensuring constant progress is to change your routine every two months.

What kind of changes should you make?

For weight training, you might try out different exercises that still work the same muscles. For example, you could try replacing your typical dumbbell curl with the incline curl or even the hammer curl. Or you can change the kind of weight you use. If you usually do a barbell bench press, try changing to the dumbbell bench press to work you chest in a different way.

You should also add a bit of a variety to your cardio. If you usually like to jog to get your heart pumping, considering buying a jump rope to get your daily dose of cardio, to do a few laps at your local community pool.

Beware of “Phantom Calories” – “Phantom Calories,” or calories that you manage to wind up eating every day without being aware of it, can sneak into everyone’s diet. It usually comes in the form of cream in your coffee, or cookies that a co-worker brings to your job. Parents are especially susceptible to these diet ruiners because they usually have a little nibble of whatever they happen to be serving their children. Try to take note of everything you eat.

Avoid “Liquid Calories” - With the exception of your after-workout meal, drinking anything that has a caloric value is usually a bad idea. Calories that come in liquid form, like milk, juice, or sports drink, tend to add up very quickly. For people who like to sip the day away, it can easily add close to a thousand extra calories a day. Plus, liquid calories also usually cause your insulin levels to rise very quickly, which encourages your body to store fat. I can’t tell you how many times as a Newport Beach Personal Trainer I have helped a person lose a ton of weight just by telling them to start drinking regular ol’ water during their workouts instead of Gatorade. Sports drinks might be fine for marathon runners and other people who need to be physically active for hours at a time, but for you average exerciser it’s just extra unnecessary calories.

If you'd like to learn more about exercise, fitness, weight loss and personal training, just click here for my Newport Beach personal page or click this link to learn how you can get into shape today