Minimal Damage

To kick off the New Year workouts, understand that the damage from the holidays is not as bad as you might think. Looking at anyone's fitness journey over long periods of time, one will find that it ebbs and flows, missing a couple weeks here or there is pretty irrelevant.

So where do you start?

1. Don't be tardy. Pencil your work out time into your schedule just as if you are keeping a doctor's appointment. Its unfair to your body and mind to skip. Plus, leaving the cold, dark winter days and heading into a brightly lit gym will increase seratonin in your brain making you happier and healthier.

2. Make a goal. Before running around the gym like a chicken with its head cut off, decide where you're headed. Don't say I want to tone and lose weight. Instead, say I want to lose 2 inches on my waist and be able to do 12 pull-ups on my own. Thats a goal.

3. Choose your weapons. Take some time to learn your way around the gym. If already familiar, decide what tools are going to effectively help you reach your goals. If you don't know, find a work out buddy or consider hiring a trainer.

4. Recreation. The winter is the most difficult time to find something outdoors to do for more than a few minutes long. Get creative, take some laps at an indoor pool, shoot hoops at the local Y, ski/snowboard, shovel snow, or even go wild on a friend's drum set.

5. Eat better. Slowly move away from the holiday sweets and fattening foods and begin to incorporate more fruits and vegetables into every meal. Stay off sugar-laden juices and drink more water during the day. This will help elevate your metabolism, keep you hydrated, and make you feel fuller.



Begin with the basics:

Before beginning a new and strenuous work out, survey where you are with the following exercises. Grab a note book and write down how many reps you can do until failure, which means do it 'til you drop.

1. Push-ups: Hands shoulder-width apart. Keep in your back flat and shoulder over your hands, elbows tucked in your body at a 45 degree angle.













2. Squats: Grasping you hands behind the head, feet should-width apart. Bend at the knees until you come to waist-height.












3. Crunches: Place an exercise ball in the small of the back, feet flat on the floor. Hands behind the head, careful not to lift your head with your hands, come off the ball just high enough to where your shoulder blades come off the ball and then return to the starting position.

Depending on where you are, you may be able to do 5 push-ups, 60 squats, and 100 crunches or 20 push-ups, 20 squats, and 50 crunches. Don't focus on how many you can do initially, but keep note so in a few weeks you can try them again and see that you've improved. These three exercises are great because you can take them anywhere and they will hit every major muscle group in the body.