Student Fitness

By: Joe Norton 

1. Don’t just hope to find time for going to the gym. Take the time to plan it. The college lifestyle can be hectic and plans/entire courses of the day can be changed with a decision. When you have plans in advance you can build your day around your fitness lifestyle.

2. If lines at machines at the college gym are annoying you then you might want to try going earlier in the morning or later at night. College gyms tend to have very light traffic till just before lunch, it will get more busy throughout the day usually peaking by 5-8 and die off the closer you get to closing time. With this in mind, you can have the whole gym to yourself if you go at one of the less busy time periods.

3. Don’t forget about all the old school bodyweight exercises you know of. You know exactly what I’m talking about: The Push-up, the sit-up, the pull-up (if you have a chin up bar to use). These are compound bodyweight exercises that are the basis for many fitness routines and it’s because they are some of the most effective excercises we know about. Pushups and situps can be done anywhere, any time. Why not do a quick set of each during commercials?

4. Hoof it a bit. Walking is a great form of exercise. Try to plan your day to allow for a few strolls. Even though they require little physical effort they cause serious health benefits. Take every chance you can to get out of the cramped dorm room and take a look around on a walk. Why take the shuttle to save 10 minutes when you could have just added in 10 minutes of light exercise…

5. Moderate your alcohol consumption. Alcohol is not going to help any of your goals – unless your goal is to pass out. Alcohol causes a decrease in testosterone and will negatively impact your ability to grow muscle. Alcohol is also full of empty calories and simple carbs, plus – a lot of people eat seriously unhealthy food once they have had too much alcohol (this is where most of the fat for the beer belly comes form). Read more about “Alcohol In College”

6. Get enough sleep. Atleast 6 for most people, 8 is recommended. Lack of sleep can cause many things, the worst of which is psychosis (that’s right, a psycho), including decreased cognitive ability. It will also completely screw over any kind of lifting / fitness plan. Your body needs time to rest and repair, if you never give it time it can’t ever rest & repair. Read more about sleeping…

7. Avoid the buffet. It is scientifically proven now that when you go to a buffet you definitely eat more. We all knew it, no one doubted it, yet for some reason people still go to buffets which tend to have the worse food on campus. Bleh, boo this buffet! Read more about buffets…

8. Put some Pilates into your fitness plan! Pilates are those core based bodyweight exercises that seems kinda somewhat similar to yoga but its not. Yeah those, they are amazing for abs and can be done anywhere. I suggest the floor because it has no give and works good as support. However, you can even do them in bed. Things like “the hundred”, leg raises, the saw, v situps, are all Pilates moves and there are many more – check’em out.

9. Stay busy. Join an organization or professional development club and participate often. Not only will this help out your resume and your skills in the given area, but also it means you are busy more and less time to sit around. Stay moving, stay burning calories.

10. Join a team or club, or atleast start a recurring physical activity (like Sunday basketball games, Saturday morning football games, whatever). Add something to your life that is going to continually cause you to do activities that benefit your goal. Deciding to run a 5k or hell, even a marathon – is a gigantic example of starting a recurring activity that will actually guide you to your goal.

Keep these tips in mind this upcoming semester.

By: Joe Norton 

It’s called progressive overload.
It is the process of systematically causing your muscles to overload, to get max’d out, and thus they adapt to this stimulus and grow to handle the weight. Then you do this again.

Try to make a weekly target, like add at least 2.5 pounds per exercise per workout.
After a few weeks you have made substantial gains and all the while it will hardly seem difficult. This is how the professionals do it, it’s as simple as that: Progressive overload.

I highly suggest using a journal to record your exercises and to make sure you are slowly progressing. After a month you will wonder how you ever managed to keep track of your progress without it (and you’ll realize you actually didn’t) It wasn’t until I kept a journal that I made significant gains in strength in short spans of time.