Are you someone who is all set to restart your exercise regime after a long hiatus? Then please take care of these points. The first thing you should consider is your current health condition. When you are restarting your workouts it isn’t necessary that you would be having the same health condition as earlier.
Delivery, diseases, injury, and work-related stress are the most common reasons why many people take a break from exercising. These are factors that will detrimentally affect your health in many ways. If you had taken a break due to some injury, there will be certain limitations while doing workouts. You might have to leave out certain workouts or opt for another movement instead of the usual one.
If illness is the cause, you may need to change the way you choose your workouts and the way you do those chosen workouts. Here, changes have to be made in a different way for each disease. For example, a person with respiratory disease may not have the same workout pattern as a person with heart disease. If you are on medication, you may need to adjust accordingly. There is a correlation between the timing of certain medications and the timing of exercise. In short, before starting exercise again after a long break, the first thing to do is to see a doctor and do all the necessary tests and decide all these things.
For some, it can be due to a lack of motivation or the fear of being mocked or ridiculed that keeps them away from working out. So if you embark on an exercise regime without any preparations or weighing the pros and cons, things can get out of hand. It would be beneficial if you have a friends group in which you can discuss your workout regime without the fear of being judged. A good workout buddy can really motivate you when you are feeling down. You should make sure exercise is enjoyable for you. A good fitness professional can help you in this regard.
Coming back to the world of workouts, proper and regular exercises can directly make us physically and mentally strong. When you move your body it makes you feel energized and releases endorphins that make you happy. It regains your self-esteem, increases your intellectual capacity, and even helps you get interrupted sleep. Make sure to break your workout goals into smaller chunks and give yourself a treat when you manage to reach them. If possible stay away from negative people and surroundings. And if you are unable to overcome these challenges despite trying everything mentioned above, you should seek the help of a mental health professional without hesitation.
The next step is to change our workout goals to accommodate the current time and conditions. A lot of things might have changed—circumstances, job timings, patterns, the way of communication, and the facilities required for workouts. Therefore the time and quality we need to allot for our workout might have changed. If you are a new mom, one part of you will always be focused on your baby while working out. And you might have to squeeze some time for workouts according to their sleep timings. If you have shifted to a new place and if the gym is far, you might have to take that journey into account. In this way, all such situations should be clearly considered, and a goal should be set henceforth. A definite schedule should be fixed. Whether progress is being made on the path forward or not should be timed precisely. Progress on the path forward should be measurable at regular intervals. It should be sustainable in the long run despite all the new constraints. Otherwise, you will have to repeat the same thing years later.
At any age you can exercise, be it in your 80s or 90s. If you are working out after a long hiatus, please consider your current age as well as your altered fitness level.
Long-term non-exercisers experience reduced heart and lung capacity, muscle atrophy, loss of flexibility in the joints, body balance and reaction time, and increased body fat. Regardless of all this, if you repeat the same workout years later, you will end up with serious injuries. Start lightly and gradually increase the intensity of the exercise depending on how the body responds.
Even if you consider all the above mentioned factors carefully, you should have good eating habits, drink plenty of water and get enough sleep to enjoy the benefits of exercise. No matter how regularly and enjoyably you exercise, if you do not pay attention to the food you eat, none of the results will be seen properly in the body. If this goes on for some time, the motivation will go down. Eating habits should also be adjusted while considering all the important things when you start a workout after a break like current age, health status, illness, injury, medication, time spent working out, and the purpose of the workouts. Protein, fiber, and other nutrients needed by the body should be obtained. Having said that don't wait to fix all these things on day 1. This should be done under the supervision of a fitness nutrition specialist, giving the body the time it needs.
Now you have got some clarity regarding this matter. Never mind those long breaks from workouts, go ahead and bravely take that path towards fitness.
