First: Nutrition is more than 3x more important than workouts. Here's the reason why: simple math. Three meals a day, times seven days in a week = 21. Workouts in the same week might be 7, 6, 5, 4...1, or zero. Nutrition is 3x (or more) impactful than training because it happens 3x (or more) times per day.

Second: What you don't do might be more impactful than what you do. Taking away a negative behavior/action/habit can be more valuable (and usually more accessible) than adding a positive behavior/action/habit. For example, removing unhealthy foods is less complicated than adding unfamiliar healthy foods. Another example: removing an hour of lousy posture or desk time daily is smarter than adding an hour of posture work or stretching/mobility.

Sometimes it can feel like there's too much to know or do. Or if you don't do ALL of the right stuff, then you shouldn't even bother at all.

And it's all relative. What someone considers a victory might be only a 'small step' according to someone else. Your starting point might be someone else's goal. Seriously.

So sometimes I try to take a step back and compare my situation with the scope of the rest of the world. It helps me to realize I'm working on big stuff or small stuff.

Example: If I went to a person in a developing country and explained to him/her that I was struggling to make it to a 60-minute workout in an air-conditioned building--How might they respond to that while he/she works all day in the high temperatures to make a rough living?

Well, just thinking about those two different situations makes me realize that I'm making too big a deal out of going to the gym. It's not THAT hard, not hard like the person who works ALL DAY in the heat for less money.

I say this to myself frequently to remember how much worse/tougher things could be. After that, I feel a boost because now I'm actually "volunteering" to do something uncomfortable. You are deciding to do it when you could easily live without doing it. There's a power in that kind of thinking.

At the same time, I don't want to diminish anyone else's efforts. Because the effort that you are undertaking puts you ahead of effort that others should be doing but aren't. As soon as you're trying, you are ahead of people who are not trying or who are not aware they should be trying. Or who don't even know how to start.

Quality of movement over speed.

Control the downward movement. Strength comes from muscle tension, so don't drop down quickly in any exercise movement, or you'll miss out on muscle tension.

Pay attention to your body. You know that feeling you get when you're about to sneeze? That's your body giving you a preview of the future. If you feel a 'bad' or 'wrong' feeling in your body, heed that warning. Always go home with a little energy remaining rather than overdo it and get injured.

Nothing will derail your progress like a joint injury.

Nothing will derail your progress like a joint injury! (repeated on purpose)

Control weights first. Do every rep well. Then look to go faster.

Work harder by getting more done. Do this by minimizing rest time, not by speeding up movement. If you do a large or medium-sized group of good reps in a row, that will always be better for you than doing small groups of quick crappy reps. Work, breath, work again. Don't waste time getting your gear ready, straightening your bar, picking a song, chalking your hands, etc. Either be working or be resting & breathing.

Finally, the mental tip that will override all others: Don't act like you are suffering. The workouts will be uncomfortable, of course. But if your brain is thinking 'poor me, this is so hard,' you will always be operating at less than your potential. Remember that you 'volunteered' to undertake this effort, and there is serious power in that volunteering. If you can celebrate the fact you're choosing to make your body (yourself) do this high level of work, then the work feels less horrible. Making yourself go when all you want to do is stop is the ultimate strength to develop. Knowing you have that strength will last forever. The discomfort of the workout is temporary. Be obsessed and focused on how happy you are that you could make yourself do ____ amount of exercise in _____ minutes. This mindset is better than focusing on how uncomfortable it was while it was happening.

You should be thoroughly hydrated before participating in any workout or challenging physical activity. Drink more water than you think you need until you have had about 1/2 your body weight in ounces of water. For example, a 200 lbs person would need about 100 oz of water. Also, it is smart to have a little protein and some carbohydrates about 45 to 60 minutes before you work out so that your body has adequate fuel during the workout session.

Make sure that you always maintain a good posture during exercise movements. Stand with your feet underneath your hips, toes pointed mostly forward, knees slightly bent, while squeezing about half as hard as you can in your abs and your butt. Also, squeeze your shoulder blades together behind you and keep tension in the muscles of your upper back to keep your shoulder blades in that position while doing other motions. This shoulder position is called retraction, and it is crucial for the health and safety of your shoulders.

Focus on keeping your breathing rhythmic and ensuring that you take a breath fully in and exhale carbon dioxide fully out. It is usually best to breathe in between repetitions rather than during the motion itself. This pattern is the recommended timing because of the effect that lung volume has on internal body pressure and stability.

Remember that it's the challenge that brings the change, but if you overdo it, you can get hurt. If you get tired during the workout, take the shortest rest that you can handle and then get back to it.

Warm-ups should never be skipped, compressed, or done without focus. Warm-up time is your preparation time, where you make your body ready to execute movement at the level of intensity needed to create change. Remember, training is the act of slightly overwhelming your body's current capacity to stimulate your body to become slightly better. If you are going to operate at a level that will slightly overwhelm your current capacity, you need to prepare before you go that fast. The warm-up time a.k.a. Your preparation time is crucial to a safe and effective workout. Spend at least five minutes on some cardio method like jumping rope, using a treadmill, an exercise bike, or an elliptical. This time should be general cardiovascular exercise at a very medium pace that serves to get your blood flowing to all portions of your body, increase your internal body temperature, increase your heart rate, and how fast you are breathing. Equally important, though, this should be the uninterrupted period of near-meditation about your workout. Clear your mind of everything that has happened or needs to happen, and instead focus on what you are doing for the next 60 to 90 minutes.

Remember that all reps you do TEACH your body to move that way. So if you do sloppy reps, you're programming your body to be sloppy automatically.

So teach your body to have great movement automatically by always insisting on great movement during your workouts--even when tired. And try to work as hard as you can during each rep--engage max muscles--rather than trying to be efficient. Squeeze your abs as tightly as you can during the planks, not just as tightly as you need to to stay in the position. It's harder, but it's better because the point of working out is working.

'Engaging' your muscles means to activate and contract those muscles. This is a skill that takes time to develop.

Flexing is an anatomy term for closing the joint angle, AKA making the angle smaller. So when someone says to flex your biceps, what they should technically be saying is to 'flex your elbow,' which requires a bicep contraction.

So to recap, engaging means contracting the muscles while flexing means closing the joint. 

Example: If you were standing straight up with both feet on the floor and you lift your knee towards your chest, you are flexing your hip (closing the joint angle) by contracting your leg muscles.

A great way to practice contracting a specific muscle so that you can, later on, utilize it to your advantage in the workout is to use isometric exercises. These are non-moving exercises like a squat hold, hollow body hold, pull-up hang, etc.

One thing that helps me immensely in this is to visualize the path of the muscle from where it starts to where it ends. Then I imagine what would happen if those two points were drawn closer to each other. As though they have a rope or string connecting them, and someone is pulling from the middle of the rope, then bringing both ends towards the center. Usually, your muscles work just like this, with a few exceptions of muscles that are connected to large portions of your body like the trunk. When those muscles contract, they generally move the limb towards the trunk rather than the trunk towards the limb.

If you're interested in this, I highly recommend you check out a great book called Strength Training Anatomy. This book is worth it if you're serious about getting the most result out of the effort you put into the gym.

Your first goal should be to build a strong armor of muscle surrounding your joints. Start with the most overlooked muscles because they are the ones that will give the best boost when strengthened. During the workouts, you may find that specific exercises are easy, while other ones are very challenging, that is OK and highlights the work out movements that are in the most profound deficit for you as an individual. When you find a movement like this, focus extra on executing quality repetitions with proper technique to speed up the process of improving. During all of your exercise repetitions, you should be striving to move with consistent pace and smooth motion. Do not use momentum during the repetitions.

Most people inadvertently commonly start quickly to build momentum to finish a repetition, especially when getting tired. 'Own the weight' and keep it under your control at all times. You should find a level of difficulty that results in your muscles becoming fatigued to the point that they are not able to generate enough tension to move your joint(s) with the load. You want to 'fail' midway through moving a load, but in a "boring" fashion. The weight should be moving at a smooth and consistent pace and then slow down and stop while you are trying maximally to continue moving it.

You should include plank or any other isometric core work. Isometric means not moving, just muscle tension. Not only is it suitable for Durability, but it also increases maximum strength.

Think about it like this: Your core muscles (every muscle from collar bone to knees on the front AND back of your body is a core muscle) have one priority over all others--that is to keep your spine straight and safe. Your brain is the overall commander of this. So the brain monitors how the tension in muscles is affecting the spine. Your primary ab muscles have to contract tightly to keep your spine straight while other muscles (legs, chest, etc.) generate their tension for a given movement. Your brain regulates this tension to keep the spine safe.

What I'm talking about today is how stronger abs can increase your Deadlift, squat, press, etc.

Example: if your hamstring's tension during a deadlift would cause the pelvis to shift and the spine to be compromised, your brain is automatically limit the contraction force of the hamstrings to a level that doesn't compromise the spine.

Another example: your finger and forearm flexor muscles (responsible for closing your hand) also cause the wrist to bend when they contract. That bend would put your wrist at a 'gooseneck' angle (like a false grip). Unfortunately, this wrist angle negatively affects the forearm's "length-tension relationship" (a fancy way of saying muscles don't work as well when they are very shortened or very lengthened). To maintain an excellent length-tension relationship, your brain will simultaneously automatically contract the muscles of your forearm extensors (which responsible for OPENING your hand). Those muscles keep the wrist straight and strong.

Because of the relationship between these two muscle groups, your brain will always 'throttle down' the contraction of the Flexors to the level that the Extensors can produce. Otherwise, the Flexors would bend your wrist.

Abs and the core muscles work similarly. If your core isn't strong, your brain will never contract other muscles (the movers) as powerfully as they could contract.

First, you will need to be lean so that only a thin layer of skin and other tissue covers the ab muscles. Being lean makes them visible — no way around it. Then you can increase the size of those muscles to make them more pronounced.

The most important thing in training for abs is to make sure you're squeezing your muscles as tightly as possible. You have to choose to squeeze at max effort even though it's tougher and harder, and you'll get more tired more quickly. You're working much smarter, though, tapping into the biology of your muscle fibers.

Hollow Body Hold: https://youtu.be/tRawu5sQ2BI - a great place to start because the abs have to work hard, but the spine is flat on the floor. Lots of ways to adjust the difficulty as you get stronger.

Hollow Body Rock: https://youtu.be/RrtrpZGrf5c - the harder version of HB Hold. Progress to this once you can do the Hollow Body with your feet just off the ground AND the back still flat on the floor.

Flutter Kick: https://youtu.be/1F3Xiirrghs - stay tight like the Hollow Body Hold, but now you have to fight the forces from the feet moving

Super Plank: https://youtu.be/cGzigDTdf_4 - planks must be done with the spine just as straight as it is in the Hollow Body Hold. The concept of contracting 'Super' tight by squeezing as tightly as possible should be applied to all core training.

Super Side Plank: https://youtu.be/y6wIzHN_Tmo - everyone needs to do more side planks. Be as tight as possible rather than just tight enough to stay up.

Foot Elevated Plank: https://youtu.be/dqEHyxnbcxQ - picking one foot up off the ground will force your abs to work to resist rotation

Leg Lifts: https://youtu.be/ZWYtA6VS5kQ - keep the low back flat against the ground while your legs move at the hip joint only (knees stay straight)

Dead Bugs: https://youtu.be/tiWvIRSNR24 - advanced version of leg lifts. Great to practice both the same-side and opposite-side variants.

Sit-Ups: https://youtu.be/Wfj9cmCzIb4 - with an important note in this video for protecting your spine while you do these

Crunch: https://youtu.be/C8e8LI6GTk4 - A traditional core exercise (good if done correctly!). You only need to rise as high as demonstrated in the video.

Reverse Crunch: https://youtu.be/XpBqnSKqyxA - super tough if done correctly. A great compliment to regular crunches.

Bicycle Crunch: https://youtu.be/A4d-mJunZ7A - a good one if done, making sure not to twist the spine. Make it harder by lengthening out the other leg as you touch your knee to elbow.

Bonus

Tuck Jump: https://youtu.be/vDLgKqw1JVQ - A good one for abs because the core has to work hard to lift the knees high at the peak of the jump.

Here's a demonstration of how you can use shoulder retraction (a fancy name for a specific position of the shoulder) to optimize shoulder movement and strength. https://youtu.be/KH5eWLmeuXA



Here are some other video resources for you:



A demonstration video of the row: https://youtu.be/wUGcdV1LzO8

 A machine, but you can see the shoulders retract: https://youtu.be/YaulO2MSpV4?t=30s (check 30 and 59-second marks)

Incline Bench Row: https://youtu.be/mdSdPYlSqoQ

A great exercise to strengthen the muscles responsible for keeping your shoulder in the right position. 



Finally, a machine again, but check this video for advice on techniques for keeping your shoulders retracted while you do vertical pulling (like pull-ups). https://youtu.be/HCLL4Nk33tQ

Substitution is switching one exercise for another. This only works if the movements swapped have similar characteristics and offer similar training stimuli.

Scaling is modifying one exercise to meet your current capacity while still being challenging. In most cases, scaling is used to develop your capacity and eventually progress to the unmodified version of the exercise.

Scaling can be either a progression or a regression. A progression is a more difficult movement variation, while regression is a less difficult movement variation.

We don't want to use 'less difficult options' to make workouts easy, only to make them possible.

For exercise substitutions or modifications: If you don't have a particular machine or training tool, ask around at your gym for a similar device or use a similar exercise that you already know.

How to know when to progress: Your first goal should be to build a strong armor of muscle surrounding your joints. Start with the most overlooked muscles because they are the ones that will give the best boost when strengthened.

During the workouts, you may find that specific exercises are easy, while other ones are very challenging, that is OK and highlights the workout movements that are in the most profound deficit for you as an individual. When you find a movement like this, focus extra on executing quality repetitions with proper technique to speed up the process of improving.

During all of your exercise repetitions, you should be striving to move with a consistent pace and smooth motion. Do not use momentum during the repetitions. Most people inadvertently commonly start quickly to build momentum to finish a repetition, especially when getting tired. 'Own the weight' and keep it under your control at all times.

You should find a level of difficulty that results in your muscles becoming fatigued to the point that they are not able to generate enough tension to move your joint(s) with the load. You want to 'fail' midway through moving weight, but in a boring fashion. The weight should be moving at a smooth and consistent pace and then slow down and stop while you are trying maximally to continue moving it.

Then as a bonus, you should focus on slowly lowering the weight with control. Lowering the way with control taps into another biological system in your body that you can use to your advantage. If you can lift it, you can lower it with control. If you use momentum, you are not maximizing your results from the exercise.

Once you can do an exercise movement like this, search the internet for a progression.

Hey, great question! First of all kudos for sticking with it over a year!! Slow and steady and stick with it for life!

It's common for people on health & fitness routines to want to snack, particularly if they have recently increased their physical output (activity or exercise). Your body just kicks your appetite up a bit because it senses you're 'spending' a bit more.

At the end of the day, when willpower is spent, it's easy to go off plan.

You can do 'harm mitigation' by making lower-caloric-density snacks more easily accessible. Or, my recommendation, you could plan your snacks out a bit to make it easier to stay on the plan on the non-snack nights. I like to have 1-3 'free' options per week where I have a snack or treat. Knowing I have those special free meals planned helps me stick on the other nights.

This might not be the right approach for everyone (take caution if you have a history of disordered eating), but it works well for me and I’ve helped a lot of people with this.

"Free" meals are when we relax our focus on food. For most people, this means larger portions, snacks, or more sweets/treats. These Free Meals are best to do on social events or special occasions because then we can enjoy our foods AND friends. A lot of people get in this bad loop where they have ice cream solo on Wednesday then feel guilty when having cheesecake on Friday with friends.

Just knowing we have that Friday event to look forward to can help to not go off-plan on Wednesday night. At the start of the week, plan your meals for max enjoyment, and use that to your advantage to stay on your plan.

So use a 4x7 grid to put marks on any of the meals that you know should be Free Meals in the next week. Once you see which meals are your Free Meals then you should make sure that you are going to be able to eat healthy for the other meals. I recommend that you stick to 3 Free Meals or less per week. Three meals equate to about 15% of your meals for the week if you eat three times per day.

For your snacking, you may find success with planning your week in advance; choosing your best, most enjoyable snack nights, and then sticking to it and feeling successful with a sustainable achievable routine.

I personally kind of like that hunger feeling when I know I'm doing the right things (AKA working out and eating right) because I know it means I'm in that slight caloric deficit I was trying to create. In a sense, the sensation is notifying me I'm hitting my target.

Sometimes that craving gets overwhelming though! I find that if once I 'break the seal' it's hard to stop. That's just me though! Some people can successfully have 1-2 bites of ____ and then stop. Not me! I know myself enough to know I shouldn't even start. So in those moments, I tell myself that I will absolutely have the snack/treat/cheat but not until tomorrow. Usually, this mental commitment is enough to tide me over for the night so I don't go off plan; and by the next day I have renewed willpower, or I'm one day closer to my next free meal.