Better Yourself: Episode 1

Get­ting into the gym can be a scary thing. There are so many weights/machines and infor­ma­tion that you need to know to obtain max­i­mum progress. While you may be wish­ing that you had a good video to start, allow me to help!

In this pod­cast, we inter­view Alex Wright, a Phys­i­cal Activ­i­ties Coun­selor for the UConn Health and Well­ness cen­ter. Alex is cer­ti­fied in:

• Cer­ti­fied Exer­cise Phys­i­ol­o­gist through the Amer­i­can Col­lege of Sports Med­i­cine (ACSM)
• Cer­ti­fied Strength and Con­di­tion­ing Spe­cial­ist through the Nation­al Strength and Con­di­tion­ing Asso­ci­a­tion (NSCA)

Alex and I go into the basics of work­ing out and some tips that may help keep you moti­vat­ed and on track to that main goal.

We also hear from some­one who works out every day, as they share their own expe­ri­ences in the gym and the chal­lenges they faced in their fit­ness jour­ney. You are not alone in this jour­ney and I hope you enjoy!

 

 

TRANSCRIPT:

Jack­son Bufmack

How’s it going? Every­body? My name is your host, Jack­son, and wel­come to bet­ter your­self. So bet­ter your­self is a pod­cast where me as a host will be going around talk­ing to dif­fer­ent peo­ple, just, you know, learn­ing about how to bet­ter your­self in the gym and how to work out prop­er­ly with me today. I do have Alex, right, if you just want to say hi,

Alex Wright

yeah, hel­lo. So I’m Alex. I’m a doc­tor­al stu­dent in the kine­si Kine­si­ol­o­gy Depart­ment here at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut, and I am also a phys­i­cal activ­i­ty coun­selor in stu­dent health and well­ness. And yeah, thanks for hav­ing me, of course,

Jack­son Bufmack

of course. At first, I just want to thank you for tak­ing some time out of your day to actu­al­ly come meet with me. And yeah, me being some­body who does work out, I know what it’s like first get­ting into the gym. It is very scary just walk­ing in there, see­ing all these weights, all these machines, not real­ly know­ing what to hit, what to do. You know the cor­rect work­out split cor­rect like, rest off days even, like, the diet part is a lit­tle bit hard, but we’re not going to go crazy into that. But um, yeah, if you just want­ed to give a lit­tle back­ground about, like, how long you’ve been work­ing out, like you’re kind of your school back­ground, like, where you’re from, stuff like that. Why you start­ed work­ing out?

Alex Wright

Yeah, absolute­ly. So I’ll first, I’ll say that I’ve been a ten­nis play­er since I was eight years old. And as an ath­lete, of course, you’re going to be going through dif­fer­ent kinds of work­outs. And so tech­ni­cal­ly, I’m 28 years old now. So it’s been about 20 years since I start­ed work­ing out. If you’re talk­ing about actu­al­ly doing some kind of train­ing in the gym, it’s been since the age of about 19 or 20. And so my under­grad school had a gym that I just start­ed work­ing out. And so, yeah, real­ly, in terms of lift­ing, it’s been about eight years or so, yeah.

Jack­son Bufmack

oh, nice, nice. So, um, what do you think is like the most impor­tant aspect of work­ing out?

Alex Wright

Yeah, so I think a key vari­able, if you were to get some­thing right, it would actu­al­ly be con­sis­ten­cy. And what I mean by that is you, first, you have some kind of rou­tine that you’re fol­low­ing, and sec­ond­ly, you fol­low that rou­tine. It does­n’t have to be the same one for, say, like eight weeks, but you fol­low some kind of train­ing pro­grams and be con­sis­tent with fol­low­ing them. Because you what you see a lot of the time is that peo­ple fall off what­ev­er kind of exer­cise between that they’re doing, and real­ly, what we’re try­ing to think about is just being con­sis­tent for the long term as part of a lifestyle, because for health ben­e­fits, for your fit­ness improve­ments, what’s real­ly going to mat­ter the most is how con­sis­tent you are. And so if there was one vari­able, I would say you should get right, it’s def­i­nite­ly the con­sis­ten­cy aspect.

Jack­son Bufmack

Awe­some. Awe­some. I’m actu­al­ly real­ly hap­py you said that, because I real­ly did just think of this ques­tion right here. So when it does come with con­sis­ten­cy, for me per­son­al­ly, I start­ed work­ing out at around, like, 17 years old, and the whole to see growth, you need, like, a whole nother part on the diet part for me, the part for me to stay, like, kind of like moti­vat­ed and stuff like that is after that, like one month, two month peri­od where I was see­ing all this growth, I kind of plateaued, did­n’t see any growth. And I’m def­i­nite­ly a vic­tim of, like, being like, Oh, I’m not see­ing any­thing. And then I stopped work­ing out for a cou­ple of months. Then I got back into it, and now I’m ful­ly back into it. So what do you kind of have to say for those peo­ple who kind of, like, lose the moti­va­tion those first cou­ple of weeks? Because the first cou­ple of weeks are prob­a­bly where you see like, the most progress, just because, like, your body starts to shape up stuff like that. So if you had, like, any advice for them to, like, kind of stay moti­vat­ed, what would it be?

Alex Wright

Yeah, so I think some­thing that you should real­ly do is actu­al­ly track the weight that you’re lift­ing. And I think that can be moti­vat­ing, because, as you said, when you’re first start­ing in the gym, you’re going to be mak­ing the fastest games of your life. And so for me per­son­al­ly, what I expe­ri­enced was that that served as a moti­va­tor for me to get to the gym. And so I’m like, Well, if I missed today’s ses­sion, then I’m prob­a­bly not going to add five pounds to my bench press. And I’m not say­ing you have to be hyper focused on num­bers, but I think those who are begin­ning in the gym, if you can actu­al­ly just some­how keep track of what you’re actu­al­ly doing, rather than just going off your mem­o­ry, just if you do have some kind. Of goal that you’re work­ing towards. I think that can be a big help for being con­sis­tent in those first few stages.

Jack­son Bufmack

And yeah, what’s like a key ele­ment to, like, a high work­out rou­tine? So like, it could be like a split, it could be like, kind of just like sup­ple­ments or some­thing you take.

Alex Wright

So I’ll first say that I think you need to think about what goals you have and what you’re try­ing to achieve from being in the gym. So of course, there’s plen­ty of health fit­ness goals you can think about. Some peo­ple are try­ing to improve their mus­cu­lar strength. Some peo­ple it’s mus­cle size. Oth­er peo­ple might be more focused on their car­dio or car­dio res­pi­ra­to­ry fit­ness. And so real­ly got to think about manip­u­lat­ing those train­ing vari­ables to suit the goal you’re try­ing to achieve. And so, for exam­ple, if some­one is train­ing for to increase mus­cle size, then there’s a few things they should think about. So first­ly, they should be doing some degree of weight train­ing or resis­tance train­ing, mov­ing the mus­cle through a dynam­ic range of motion against a resis­tance that’s going to be need­ed in order to actu­al­ly dri­ve some kind of stim­u­lus for the body to adapt and grow. And there’s a few more things they would think about, for exam­ple, based on the evi­dence, we know that their sets need to be pret­ty hard, and I’m not say­ing it has to be train­ing until fail­ure, mean­ing, if you do a giv­en set, you go until you can’t do any more. It does­n’t have to be that hard, but you should prob­a­bly at least leave less than three reps in reserve, based on the evi­dence. And again, anoth­er thing to think about is how much vol­ume you’re doing. So what we know is that the more vol­ume, in terms of how many sets per mus­cle per week, prob­a­bly the more growth you’re going to get, there is a dose response rela­tion­ship. And anoth­er thing I will men­tion is exer­cise tech­nique is prob­a­bly going to be impor­tant for most goals that you have. So in terms of the when you’re lift­ing, you know there’s a con­cen­tric por­tion of the lift where the mus­cle is con­tract­ing, and then there’s an eccen­tric por­tion when the mus­cle was length­en­ing. And so it’s prob­a­bly a good idea to actu­al­ly do most of the range of motion, and you should con­trol all parts of that lift. So on the eccen­tric, you’re not just, if you’re doing a bicep curl, you’re not just drop­ping the weight, you’re actu­al­ly con­trol­ling it on the way down, because that eccen­tric com­po­nent does matter.

Jack­son Bufmack

So I want to thank you again for your time, Alex, you offered a lot of good advice, and over­all, just help for begin­ners, for the gym, and I think that it will help them out in the future. So thank you. You’re welcome.

Jack­son Bufmack

All right. So here I am with Jason Erb, So Jason, do you want to tell me when and why you start­ed work­ing out?

Jason Erb

Well, I start­ed work­ing out a few years ago. I think it was around octo­ber 2021 dur­ing the COVID times, I main­ly start­ed work­ing out just because I did­n’t like my image. I was over­weight. Strug­gled with that for most of my life, and work­ing out has real­ly done a lot for me since then.

Jack­son Bufmack

Awe­some, awe­some. So what were some of the ways you kind of stayed moti­vat­ed dur­ing your fit­ness jour­ney? And why did you why did you always kind of, you know, stay on, like, track, going to the gym.

Jason Erb

Well, I mean, the main thing was let­ting it go too far. I real­ly found a love for the gym. And when I was over­weight, I did­n’t real­ly want to go back to that kind of lifestyle, being sad all the time, not want­i­ng to do any­thing. Trou­bles with my con­fi­dence, self esteem, just like stay­ing con­sis­tent has been the biggest thing for me.

Jack­son Bufmack

So would you say that it def­i­nite­ly has helped you out a lot, like men­tal­ly, too, instead of just a phys­i­cal aspect,

Jason Erb

for sure, men­tal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly, it does won­ders when you work out, when you’re on a con­sis­tent reg­i­men, going to the gym every day, even if you’re just going for 30 min­utes, any­thing is bet­ter than noth­ing. Awesome,

Jack­son Bufmack

awe­some. And then just final­ly. Do you have any advice for some­body who’s try­ing to get into work­ing out?

Jason Erb

I’d say to peo­ple real­ly find a love for the gym. Find some­thing that you like going there and doing, whether what­ev­er it is, lift­ing weights, doing car­dio, the love for the gym has brought me such a increase in self con­fi­dence and self esteem, I feel so much bet­ter about my body and it’s done one news for my men­tal health, awe­some. Thank you, Jason. Of course, Man.

 

Jack­son Bufmack

Alex and Jason gave some great respons­es, and I hon­est­ly hope that this infor­ma­tion can help you guys in the future with work­ing out. But oth­er than that, I hope you guys get start­ed and good luck on your journey.

 

SOURCES

https://studenthealth.uconn.edu/person/alex-wright/

https://www.rxresource.org/fitness/exercise-and-fitness-facts-and-statistics.html

https://freemusicarchive.org/static

https://freesound.org/browse/