Progression is the Key

In all walks of life those who want to make their mark need to understand the huge benefits that progression brings. Exercise is no different.

If you want to lose weight then you need sustainable exercise which builds in progressive steps. It may be at the beginning you can only manage to walk up the stairs out of breath. So see how much further you can progress with the stairs by climbing them more often each day. Perhaps you cannot do one full push up so see if you can do a knee push up (your knees rather than your toes are the fulcrum) and see how many you can do of these. Record the number. The next day see if you can do the same number. Two days later aim to do one more. Two days later than that another one rep should be added. After that possibly aim to add the reps on a weekly basis. All the while you are getting stronger and burning more fat. At some point you will be ready to try a full push up and so on.

http://speedendurance.com/2014/03/02/how-much-weight-do-you-push-with-push-ups/

Go for a walk and see how far you can do comfortably. Two days later walk a little further and so on. As  time goes on the distance increases and then you start adding in some small bursts of jogging. Then a bit more. All of the time you are measuring and recording your progression in terms of time, distance and so on.

Progression is key to all exercise. At the beginning you may be thinking about weight loss. Very soon it will become about fitness and strength training. These targets are simply extensions of the basics of weight loss but now you are driving to a different level.

The truth is that exercise can be a slow process but counting and measuring will enable you to see progression in a much more direct way.