How to make a training body?

The authors of this story, Marti Soosaar and Krete Junson, both studied physical education at the University of Tartu. Marti Soosaar is the founder of Stebby, Estonia's largest health marketplace, and FitQ, a software for personal trainers. Krete Junson is the Head of Health Sports at the University of Tartu Academic Sports Club.

How can you finally get a beautiful gym body? This is undoubtedly a recurring question for many, and the computing power required to solve it is somewhere between the bitcoin system and the energy needed to calculate the final value of silicon.

This is a subject that is approached from different angles quite often, so it's possible that you've read a dozen of these stories as a pastime, but in the worst case your form has made little progress between them. Were these stories ignorant and badly written? Obviously, we are not revealing any X-files to you now, when we say that, in many ways, your lack of results in the meantime are not to be blamed on those stories, but on the fact that you have not really done much of anything yourself.

With this story, you now also have two options. Read and do nothing, or read and do nothing. The results will come. If you finally decide to say goodbye to the half-finished mentality, there's no more chance that you won't finish the story.

Do you have time to train?

Before we can get down to the real content, we need to get this issue off our necks. Answer the question in terms of, do you have time to work out? A survey of Stebby users a few years ago found that more than 90% people value a sporty lifestyle and exercise, but the reason almost half don't get enough of it is lack of time. 

So what is the reality of that time? We all have 24 hours in a day, yet some of us can get to the gym and others can't. Interestingly, when you start to look at it, it seems that, as a rule, people who are more energetic and successful in life find the time to exercise. How is it logical that a person who is more successful at what they do has more time for exercise than others? Perhaps the time and energy they put into training has made them more successful?

Lack of time must be honestly called what it is - one big fat excuse. Anyone can get a good workout done in just 30 minutes. For example, on the FitQ page, you can open a video recording wherever you are. Put on your workout clothes and start sweating it out, even in the office. You'll also save the time it would take to drive to the gym. 

Tuning motivation is key

In order to create a lasting habit of lifestyle change, you really need motivation and purpose. It doesn't necessarily have to be an Olympic record, but it can be something much closer to home - like beating that pesky back pain with exercise, or feeling 10/10 in your body every day. If that goal motivates you more than a can of beer or a slice of cake, there's hope that the ice will start moving in the right direction. But still, if you still taste like beer or cake, at some point you're going to break anyway.

So - the first practical tip to make your life more active is to never leave your whole journey behind because you overdid it the other day. A slap on the wrist is a surefire way back to square one or even lower.

In fact, we are looking for balance in our lives and mentally whipping ourselves will ultimately not bring good results. So also try to find a balance between exercising and "enjoying life". Believe it is possible.

In the long term, you need to develop a habit that becomes part of your life and is more important than your initial motivation or goal. Goals come and go, but the habit stays. Remember how hard it was to learn to read or ride a bike in the beginning, but how easy it is today? It's the same with exercise - until you have it, it's incredibly difficult to get out of the house. But once you start rolling down the hill, it's hard to stop.

Starting to move

First, let's distinguish between daily exercise and training. Ideally, you need both in your life. You've probably heard here and there that you should take 10 000 steps a day. There is no very precise or scientific answer as to why 10 000. Somebody has thrown out a number, and a number of people and media outlets have picked up on it and passed it on. But there is some truth in the number. Anyone who works in an office and drives to work, and has ever tracked their daily exercise habits, knows well that on a typical working day, there tend to be between 2000 and 3000 steps, so you have to be active about getting around at work and at home. This is certainly one of the keys to a much healthier life. 

Daily exercise keeps your body working and prevents aches and pains caused by forced postures, and burns calories, which in today's world we get more of left and right than we planned. If a colleague is having a birthday and offers you a piece of crispy treat, wouldn't you rather politely accept and enjoy it? Then again, that calorie bomb probably wasn't in your daily plan to begin with. However, you probably have colleagues and their birthdays in your life much more often than once a year. 30 unplanned pieces of crispy treats a year equals about 1 kg of unplanned fat on your hips. And 30 missed crinkles, while the rest of the collective gorge themselves like Erik Orgu, equals 30 frustrating moments a year. Neither of these options is good. A moderate exercise load will give you a good muscle tone to add energy to each day. In addition, a moderate 30 minutes of daily exercise will burn 200-300 kcal, which will allow you to take that slice of crispy treat offered by your colleague if you wish and sincerely congratulate him on the added life experience. 

Don't forget the workouts

A question I often hear from newbies is: should I be watching my diet or exercise more? So which should I focus on? It's as difficult a question as which came first, the egg or the chicken. Without the egg there would be no chicken and vice versa. Same with good form. If you hit the gas at the dinner table like Ott Tänak, you get abs like Barutol. He's a very athletic man, isn't he? But if sumo isn't your sport, you have to cut down on the amount of food you gorge on, unless you're burning as many calories a day as Rein Taaramäe did in the Vuelta.

But is there any way to get slim without exercising? If getting slim is your goal, the answer is yes. But do you want to look good or starved? Unfortunately, looking good without exercising is not something you get from anywhere. So, we can safely say that both are quite equally important. Nutrition experts say that about ⅔ of the emphasis should be on diet and ⅓ on exercise, but luckily we're not currently doing an 8th grade math problem with only one absolutely correct answer. "Life isn't all black and white", Best B4 once sang, and so we'd like to make a conscious effort to address both sides of the equation.

Founder spotlight

Imagine a dream. You're at the gym for the first time and it seems like everyone is looking at you and laughing at your outfit and some of the suits, and the laughter gets especially crazy and deafening when you pick up some exercise equipment and try to do something with it. Even the admin at the front desk can't hold back the laughter, despite the fact that his back is to the gym and he can't see you.

Unfortunately, for many, this is not just a nightmare. We've heard from many people who seem to have some of these fears in real life, and the feeling that everyone else has come to the gym and paid their money just to be looked at with a critical eye.

The real truth is that in the gym, everyone is in it for themselves and their own workout, and no one has time to stare at you. If you feel like you don't know how to work out on a machine, ask a kinder-faced co-trainer. They'll be happy to help. Of course, in larger gyms, they will give you a tour of the gym before or after you join and show you the ropes. You can find the free exercises with explanations on the internet on your phone, even during the workout. This reduces the chance of you becoming the new star of some silly dumbbell-twirling video in a YouTube clip with a billion views to zero.

If you keep training long enough that you're an old fish, you'll realise that everyone in the gym is doing their own thing, and every fresh face is welcome and welcome, and people don't come to the gym to watch you train.

Training equipment dilemma

Does good training equipment make you a good athlete or do you have to be a good athlete to have good training equipment? There is no very good answer to this question. Either way, you can and will. 

If money is not a problem for you and your bank account got so full yesterday that the bank called and asked you to withdraw some of the money to make room in the bank, it's certainly not a sin to buy the latest and greatest piece of equipment and then go show your friends how your bling-bling carbon-ultra-extra-max bicycle gearshift is so up-to-date that it changes gears at your thought. There's no sin in expensive gear. As long as it gets you moving.

The main thing not to think is that if you don't have the money to buy any equipment at all, then active exercise is not for you. With excuses like that, you're certainly not going to get any further than watching Home and Away (after watching season 33 episode 212, you'll make the further excuse that you don't have much time).

You don't need very special equipment for walking or jogging, especially in the summer season. In winter, you can walk a little faster without breaking a sweat in your regular clothes. At home, you can do arm curls and general body workouts in your underwear. 

If you don't take active steps because you don't have enough money, you will end up with no energy and no strength to be more active in your work and thus get out of a difficult financial situation. Exercise can help you with this too.

How much effort should you make? 

To get in good shape, you need to get your daily diet right, as well as your exercise and training loads.  You will have read that it's not worth overdoing it. You've experienced first-hand that too little effort doesn't produce results. So how much is enough? The rule of thumb is that a developmental training load starts with three training sessions a week. In essence, this means training at least once a day.

A practical tip for a beginner is not to get discouraged. Or do it very rarely on a very special occasion. For example, if you're going canoeing with friends for a long day, it's OK if you're quite tired by the evening, but don't do it every week.

With marathons and all that madness, you end up doing it one day and then doing nothing for a week. Eventually, you find you're all told have done less exercise in that time than they would have done without the effort in one day.

A good workload in training is one where by the end of the workout you feel moderate exhilaration and mild fatigue. You'll recover nicely by the next day. Eventually, your form improves so much that distances get longer and weights increase imperceptibly over time.

You won't put your health at risk by making moderate efforts. If you're a trainer with a specific goal in mind, you're not going to get away with light effort, unfortunately. In this case, it is definitely worth getting a health check-up when you start, to get an honest assessment of your condition from a sports doctor, and if you are not Mati Alaver yourself, you should definitely get a coach to help you.

What coach? I'm an amateur!

That said, it's sensible to do this if you want to achieve a specific goal, rather than just enjoy the exercise. After all, a good coach wants to be rewarded for a job well done. So it's up to you to decide how important it is to you to achieve your higher goal and whether you're prepared to invest time and money to achieve it.

Working with a personal trainer as an amateur doesn't mean you're back in your sports school youth class, where a big-bellied uncle with a stopwatch aggressively blew the whistle if he thought you weren't trying hard enough. And it felt like that to him about once a minute. You can forget the nightmares of your childhood, because today you get to choose your own coach, and largely on your own terms. 

What expectations could you have of a coach? Obviously, if you're not Katrina Lehis, there's no point in going to Nikolai Novosjolov and saying you want to become an Olympic champion and then expecting your coach to push you all the way to the Olympic podium where you can listen to the anthem with tears in your eyes. That's certainly not going to happen. 

But a smart coach will be able to tell you what your current abilities are and how you can progress from there to reach your maximum goal. Involving a good trainer in your training will ensure that you make the most efficient use of your training time, and will certainly give you better results than training on your own or without a plan. It is also an extra motivator, because if the trainer has made a plan and you end up not doing it, what look will you give him or her?

You can find good personal trainers at any major amateur sports/fitness club, and you can also check out the FitQ trainers website for a selection of personal trainers, to see if there's a trainer there for you. Working with a personal trainer or joining an adult recreational training group is becoming increasingly popular in the world and in Estonia. 

If you still think you don't need a trainer, and that you can now (after reading this story) exercise and motivate yourself for your own health, then the way to go is to increase your own knowledge. This doesn't necessarily have to be done with the help of a coach.

Of course, your friends Google and YouTube are always ready to lend a helping hand, but their algorithms are unfortunately optimised not to give you the most relevant content possible, but the most clickable and readable content possible, which can sometimes be the wild fantasy of some self-confident profane. Several clubs, including the University of Tartu Academic Sports Club fitness club, for example, offer members lectures and useful content on how exercise, diet, sleep and other activities affect your body and its condition, the quality of which you can be far more confident of than the advice of Dr. Google and Coach YouTube. When educating yourself, always be source-critical.

Closing words

Did you read to the end of this rather long blog? Now we have some good news and some bad news for you. Let's start with the good news. You can pat yourself on the back because you've probably read more text today than 99.9% average Instagram scrollers. What's more, 99.7% of them gained more new knowledge and at least as much entertainment as you did on Instagram, because we've included a joke in this story. 

The bad news is that in the time it took you to read, you probably weren't moving, and now it's time to fix that. If you read this story and started dreaming of a beach house, but now you still don't do anything about it, you'll just remain a dreamer. So now 5-4-3-2-1-go.