If you are the one who is starting to find his or her fitness, then this blog post is just for you.
As a beginner, you may be wondering, “where to start?”.
So, let me help you. The biggest hurdle that you are gonna face in your fitness journey is “lack of time”. Lack of time always acts as a detriment for a fitness beginner. This is because your current lifestyle may not allow you to go for a run or to gym.
And this may discourage or delay your fitness journey. But, you may not worry. This is the normal situation for any beginner. When I began my fitness journey in 2018, I had the same set of reservations!
To start with, all you need is 10 minutes out of your 24 hours in a day. . Mathematically, that boils down to saying that you need to just find 0.7% of time in your day to start with. And this time can be easily found in the gaps that you have through the course of the day.
For a beginner, you need to work on the mindset. So, look for that 10 minutes spot anywhere anytime. This could be simply your movement from a parking lot to your apartment or a small walk after you have lunch in the office.
Now, here are few of the mind hacks that may help you as a beginner in the fitness world.
1. 10 minutes is just 10 minutes.(don’t think too much)
So, if you spare 10 minutes today despite having a lot of do and with apparently no time to workout, you are only risking just 10 minutes.
So, what at the most may happen with your 10 minutes is.. you may get delayed by 10 minutes. You may reach your work late by 10 minutes. You may be finishing your breakfast 10 minutes late if you decided to do a litle workout in the mornimg.
Give your mind that freedom to think that 10 minutes is not gonna cost a fortune to you. And you would be allowed to find the gap.
2. Your 10 minutes is an investment into your well being. (Do you realize that!)
Being a banker, I look at the monetary value of time. Health is an asset. And to build that asset, you would need to invest litle time every day. So, treat your 10 minutes workouts as tiny SIPs into your health and fitness.
The world will take are of itself even if you don’t give those 10 minutes today. But, you are losing your 10 minutes of fitness forever. So, that can be a notional loss.
And no one, not a single soul can help you to make up for that. You lose your precious capital fo time for ever.
3. You are getting started so start small
10 minutes can change your life. 10 minutes may not look like a big deal for a day, but taking out 10 minutes every day, you can end up spending almost an hour in a week and 4 hrs in a month and 48 hrs or 2 full days to your fitness.
Now that’s a pretty handsome time investment into your fitness. Trust me, been there, done that!
4. 10 minutes daily is a habit building exercise
10 minutes may not look like a huge thing. But, it helps to build a solid habit. Habit to look after your health. You might have heard the phrase, “the longest journey begins with a single step”.
Let me share where I stand today in my fitness and health. Back in 2018, I started with running for 2 km. It was a struggle to push a bulky body of 106 kgs for more than that. And my journey began with 10-15 minutes of workouts every day. And those moments seemed like struggle.
And today, I am capable of running 42 kms long marathons. A marathon may take upto 6 hrs to finish the distance. But, it is all due to the habit formation that I have seen a huge transformation in my looks and the mindset.
And it all began with running every small distances. And the efforts compounded and now, I enjoy running and spending hours running.
Today, you may not enjoy working out 10 minutes. But, if you kept making this tiny commitment to yourself, you will develop a habit loop. That habit loop is what you should look for in the initial days of your fitness journey.
All that we do wires our Brain. So, getting into a new habit is about repetitions. (It has been said that you take 66 days to develop a full fledged habit.)
5. 10 minutes every day to yourself can give you self respect
We all feel guilty for not being able to take care of ourselves. And I know every single soul feels that way. But we are clueless where to begin.
So, begin with just 10 minutes. And as you would be giving 10 minutes every day, you will start seeing the rise in respect for the self. This respect then will motivate you and push you beyond your current capabilities. It will open a vast Vista for self exploration.
Doing and counting your 10 minutes of your time for fitness every day will gradually shift your identity. You will start seeing yourself as a person who is pro-fit. Your mind will see a paradigm shift and you will start to value health and fitness.
And this is what is the key takeaway of 10 minutes for fitness beginners. You will see the birth of a belief that you can do it. And once that is born, you will not struggle to find time for workouts or fitness, you would rather put it on your schedule.
No matter, what I do and where I am, running every day or spending 30-45 minutes on my fitness is always on my schedule. Others things can wait!
So, begin today! You have taken a giant leap of faith taking out few precious minutes to read this blog post.
So, let me know your experience as a beginner in fitness. I shall be waiting to hear for you in the comments below.
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