The No. 1 Rule You Need To Follow To Get In Shape

There is a direct correlation between the weather and bodies in the gym. It’s not scientifically proven, but I SEE it.

On the first sunny day of the year, you know that day when it’s hotter in the UK than in Ibiza, the gym is packed. Instead of spending The One Sunny Day in their local park, having impromptu BBQs and exposing all that winter skin to get some much needed Vitamin D, women are in the gym panicking, because even after all those promises on New Year’s Day, they are still no closer to achieving their body goals. And now summer looms and with it the prospect of spending another holiday in a bikini they don’t feel confident in.

Squats Galore

They’re doing squats till the cows come home, there’s a queue at the ab machine and exercise bands everywhere you look.

The problem is, running to the gym in a panic, copying things you’ve seen on Instagram, doing what you think will work, for 6 weeks before your summer holiday and then giving up again as soon as it’s all over, is never going to get you the body you really want.

That girl on the beach with the body you envy has worked for it.

Because there is one single most important element to achieving your body goals and getting all the health benefits that go with it. It comes before everything else, before the type of exercise you should do, the amount of times you should do it, where you should do it, how you should do it, in principle it even comes before form and technique.

And that element is consistency.

Why It Works

Consistency is the single most important factor you need to consider when you want to make a change. If you’re not very active and then one day go to the gym, do an intense work out, lift weights, do loads of cardio, go to a class, leave feeling amazingly refreshed and then don’t go back (why? Is something you might want to ask yourself here) you’re actually doing more harm than good. Because your risk of injury is high and you’re putting your body through a whole heap of stress it’s not used to. So your body freaks out and immediately starts to try and keep up with you, pumping out cortisol (the stress hormone linked to weight gain) and doing what it can to complete the exercises – because you never do this stuff it’s not ready for it. When you stop and your body says ‘phew glad that’s over!’ you feel some aches and pains for a few days while it repairs itself and then it returns to the state it was in before you started. And of course the older we get the more down sides there are.

Your body is the most efficient machine on this planet and it will never use more energy than is required for your lifestyle. It doesn’t grow or improve or get stronger if it doesn’t need to because that would be a huge waste of energy. But when you continually put your body under stress – that’s what exercise is to your body, a stress it’s not used to but when done correctly, the right kind of stress is good stress – your body adapts and grows stronger and more efficient so that it can keep up with the demands. Muscles grow, our heart and lungs become more efficient and spare fat is utilized as an energy source.

Doing 50 squats every time you remember isn’t going to get you that Insta ready booty, but doing a prescribed number of squats consistently, with a calculated progressive overload technique built in, will.

If you’re in your (late!) 30’s like me, how many good summers left do you have to show off that beach ready body you’ve always wanted? And how many will you let go by before you finally decide it’s time?