Motivation

How to Become a Workout Person for Life

You might not know this about me, but I wasn’t always a “workout person.”

Although I played soccer and basketball growing up, as soon as I left for college, I stopped doing any movement of pretty much any kind.

I didn’t go to the gym or work out. I didn’t have any fun active hobbies that I did regularly or play any sports. I barely even walked on a daily basis.

Not only did I gain the typical freshman fifteen (or twenty) as a result, I also had low energy, low self-esteem, and felt just super lost and unconfident about my life in general.

It really took finding fitness to get me out of that rut—but it didn’t happen overnight.

It took years of experimenting before I finally considered myself a “fitness person” and built a workout habit that finally stuck.

Here are my top tips to get there much quicker than I did:

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get fit

9 Reasons to Get Fit

get fit

We all want to be in great shape.

But many people want to get fit just to look good. Yet there are so many other reasons to get fit other than just for aesthetic reasons.

Because while there’s nothing wrong with wanting to get fit so you can feel good about your appearance, working out just for looks isn’t actually the best long-term motivation for working out and getting fit.

Here are 9 reasons to get fit today:

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5 Reasons to Get Strong Today

There’s no question about it: being strong is becoming more and more cool.

Although professional athletes have always trained for performance, most of the general population mostly worked out for appearance reasons alone. Yet as the benefits of staying strong and fit throughout our lifetime are becoming more and more clear, both men and women are focusing more on strength—not just physique—as a reason to get fit.

We love feeling strong here at 12 Minute Athlete, and today we’re bringing you five really good reasons to get strong. Read them to get motivated and fired up, then check out our brand-new strength-building program below!

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12 Minute Athlete HIIT Workouts: A Beginner's Guide

We know some of you guys have been with us for years now, but if you found 12 Minute Athlete just recently, this guide is for you.

There’s so much information out there that makes health and fitness look much more difficult than it really is. But at 12 Minute Athlete, we want to prove to you that working out can be much easier than you think, and keeping up a good workout routine isn’t really as hard as you may thought.

12 Minute Athlete is a great fit for you if you want to get in the best shape of your life, but you

  • Don’t have much time
  • Don’t like to have to go to the gym to lift weights
  • Don’t have much or any workout equipment
  • Don’t want to do long, boring hours of cardio
  • Want to get stronger and fitter in less time

You can get in the best shape of your life without a lot of time, equipment, or space. In this post, we’ll show you exactly what you need to know to get started with 12 Minute Athlete and start rocking the workouts today.

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Get Your Mind Right to Make Better Progress

When it comes to achieving your health and fitness goals, getting your mind right is at least as important as the physical work. 

Why? Because our bodies do what our minds believe.

When you’re trying to establish a new habit or learn something new, you have to first believe that eventually, you will be able to reach your goal. If you don’t, any amount of effort you put in will end up being useless, because you’ve already set yourself up to fail.

For example, if you start with the belief that you will be able to do whatever your goal is (with hard work, of course), then you’ll take the necessary actions that will help you to move forward and ultimately accomplish your goal. On the other hand, if you believe that no matter how hard you work, you won’t be able to do it anyway, you won’t take any action (or you’ll make a half-hearted effort), and as a result will never get to where you wanted to be.

In today’s post, we’d like to remind you of the power of positive thinking and belief in yourself, and that the way you see your failures and setbacks ultimately determines your success. The way you think can help you move towards your goals faster than you thought was possible.

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Never Stop Learning: 7 of My Favorite Books to Unlock Your Potential

I strongly believe that in order to truly unlock your potential as a person you need to constantly be learning new things.

There are many ways to do this, including reading lots and lots of books, taking classes, watching documentaries or even TV shows, listening to podcasts… you get the idea.

I’ve been a huge reader ever since I was a kid, and I easily consume 5+ books a month, many of them focused on personal growth, business, psychology, and of course some health and fitness-related ones.

So for something different, I thought it might be fun to give you guys an insight on some of the books that have made the biggest difference in my life in the past 5-10 years. Not all of them will be applicable to you and your personal goals, but there might be one or two that end up peaking your interest and ultimately have a big impact on you, just like they did for me.

Here are 7 of my favorite books to unlock your potential in life, business, and health:

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How to Set Meaningful Goals You'll Actually Accomplish

Most of us know how important goal setting is when working towards accomplishing our big dreams.

Without setting goals, you’re much more likely to wander aimlessly through your workouts and life, missing out on so many ways you could be fulfilling your potential.

Yet in order to be effective, goal setting has to go beyond a once a year scribbling down of New Year’s resolutions. Because it’s one thing to have goals—and another thing to actually work towards them.

A few months back, I randomly came across the book, The Art of Mental Training: A Guide to Performance Excellence by D.C. Gonzalez when looking for books on sports psychology and mental toughness. I’ve been fascinated by the role of the mind in sports and other high achieving endeavors for a while now, and really connected with the Gonzalez’s approach to achieving peak performance in sports, career, and life. The book also breaks down goal setting in the best way I’ve ever come across.

As Gonzales says, “goals enhance performance and help create achievements.”

Yet not all goal setting is created equal. Here’s how to set meaningful goals you’ll actually accomplish:

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Learning to Back Flip: My Attempt at Overcoming Fears and Unlocking My Potential

Back in December, goodnessknows approached me with a challenge: try something new in the first 30 days of 2017 that helps you work towards the person you want to be.

Basically, try something that will help unlock your potential.

And sure, I could have chosen something small, something that would have helped me grow as a person on a daily basis. But I wanted to go bigger. I wanted to tackle a fear that had been holding me back for a while—so I chose to learn to do a back flip.

So why a back flip?

As many of you know, I have zero gymnastics background. Due to many reasons, I’ve always had a fear of going backwards—while back flips and back handsprings come naturally to some, they’ve always been about the scariest thing possible for me. Even attempting to work towards a skill like a back flip is something that even just a few years ago I would have been way too scared to even try. I would have thought it was impossible.

Tackling a big fear like this is my way of proving to myself that I don’t let my fears control me and that I am strong and capable (even if I fail a lot).

In partnership with goodnessknows and their awesome snack squares, here’s my journey to learning to back flip:

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Why You Should Work Out Even Harder

I don’t know about you guys, but when I work out, I work out hard.

Yes, I know there are times when going slower is necessary. After all, you can’t exactly learn to handstand by going full speed—you have to be patient and go slow to master the balance needed to hold your body in position upside down.

But most of the time, my favorite workouts are the ones that leave me dripping in sweat. The ones where I’m punching, jumping, or sprinting as hard as I can (and don’t forget about burpees!).

These are the workouts that leave me gasping for air and sweat dripping down my face.

These workouts leave my muscles burning, feeling like I couldn’t push past another rep even if I wanted to.

And these are also the workouts that make me feel absolutely awesome. Like I-can-conquer-the-world-and-go-after-all-of-my-dreams awesome.

Proving to yourself that you can absolutely crush your workout makes you feel like you can accomplish anything you put your mind to. And there’s nothing more satisfying than that.

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Four Things Fitness Can Give Us

We all know that working out regularly can give us a strong body and fit physique.

Yet there are so many other awesome reasons why we should move our bodies on a regular basis.

When I was in my early 20’s, to me, fitness was all about being thin and skinny (side note: I’m using the word fitness in its general meaning, a.k.a. being in good physical condition. I’m not talking about body building or bikini fitness).

To achieve that thin physique, I used to run a lot, and for sure, I became skinny.

Fast forward from my early 20’s and intense running days to now. In my early 30’s, I see fitness and all it has to offer quite a bit differently. I think we all should learn to appreciate these other benefits more. Moving our bodies definitely changes the way we look, but it can also add value to our lives on a non-physical level.

Here are four things that fitness can give us:

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