How to get started with running (as someone who hates it)

For pretty much my whole life, I’ve hated running. I tried playing soccer when I was young and gave up because the running part was awful. For years afterward, I couldn’t even run a full mile. I could hike for hours, but the act of running was just so unpleasant that I couldn’t go more than a few minutes before quitting and switching to walking instead.

My dislike of running really frustrated me. It seemed like a great cardio workout and everyone kept talking about the health benefits, but every time I tried to make myself run I could only stick with it for a week or two before giving up or being forced to stop due to injury/strain. 

But within the last few months, I’ve finally cracked the problem. I can now run straight through a 5K without stopping and I’m continuing to increase my distance over time. It only took a few small adjustments to get there.

If you are facing the same issue–you want to start running, but just can’t seem to get over your dislike of it–I hope that the tricks I’ve learned can help you out as well!

Here is what I changed.

1. I signed up for a race to give myself a goal to work toward.

[Signing up for a race is a great way to give yourself an external motivator to get running! (Though as you’ll see shortly, this is not necessarily the type of race I would recommend)]

Every time I started running in the past, I did it without a goal to work toward. One day I would just decide “I’m going to start running now” and then I would do it. I never set myself a goal of a distance or mile-time I wanted to achieve, and I never had the pressure of a deadline (the date of an event) to get me motivated to keep running. 

Without something to work toward, the “I hate running” side of my brain took over and always convinced me to quit because I wasn’t really losing anything by doing so–I wasn’t failing a goal of any kind and letting myself down–but I was losing a lot by forcing myself to do something I didn’t like. So why keep going?

Once I signed up for an event, this changed. I had a date and a distance goal set–and since I’d already spent money to hold my spot, I felt pressured not to waste the opportunity. If you are a goal oriented person like me, signing yourself up for an event dramatically helps with concrete goal setting and can give you the push that you’re missing if you just jump into running without any specific outcome in mind.

There are a ton of different events out there, and making the right choice can affect your motivation to keep running and improving. I didn’t just choose something randomly, but made calculated choices to help give myself the best chance at actually sticking with running and being prepared when event day came.

I chose an event that would make running more fun.

There are lots of pure running events out there–a standard 5K for example–but if you’re someone who hates running, signing up for a 5K doesn’t exactly seem like a fun idea. Rather than signing up for a normal running race, I decided to pick something that involved running, but where it was not the sole purpose: obstacle course racing. 

[Obstacle course races are a great way to get into running because they distract you from the actual running part! Highly recommend.]

In an obstacle course race, you run a set distance and encounter fun obstacles along the way–a mud pit, monkey bars, a giant slide, or a jump over fire, to name a few (you can read more about what you might see during one of these races in the article I wrote about obstacles here). The obstacles are the main part of the fun, and running is just a way to get you between them. Races like this help you get your mind off the discomfort of running because it no longer is the only thing you are thinking about during the race. Instead, you’re thinking about the awesome slide you’re about to fly down. I did my first race last year (and wrote about what I learned), and the experience made me so excited to keep going–something I’ve never felt with traditional running races.

If normal running doesn’t sound fun to you, pick a more activity-focused race like an obstacle course that breaks up the running with other things. In my experience, it is way more fun.

I signed up for that event with someone who is a better runner than I am.

To help increase my motivation to prepare for my obstacle course race, I signed up do to it with someone who runs regularly. This provided another external source of motivation–I wanted to be able to keep up with (or at least not completely drag down) my teammate. If I didn’t prepare for the race, I would not just be letting myself down, but I’d be letting someone else down too. This made me try much harder than I would if I were just doing a race on my own. 

I picked a race that was within my ability.

If you’re starting from nothing, like I was, the biggest thing you can do for yourself is set a reasonable goal. If you set your sights too high, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. I have seen some people jump from not running at all to saying they’re going to try and run a marathon. Going from 0 to 100 may sound like a fun idea (who doesn’t want to be able to run a marathon?), but for most people, your body is just not going to be able to do that.  

Instead of making a big step, start small and work your way up. Sign up for a 5K before you sign up for a 10K. Then, if you get comfortable with these, you can start considering longer races like half marathons. Starting small helps you start to see your potential. As you complete these smaller steps, you can start to build confidence in your abilities, which will make it easier to complete longer and longer runs. If you start with something big and can’t finish, it is much easier to lose motivation and just give up.

I set myself a reasonable timeline.

When I signed up for my race, I scheduled it for a good 7 months or so away, giving myself ample time to prepare. If you are new to running, it can take you a while to get used to it and push past the discomfort stage, so you don’t want to sign up for a race that is only a few weeks away. 

When picking a race, give yourself a few months to prepare, but not too long. If your race is a year out, you may feel like you have ages to prepare, so won’t feel motivated to get started. 

[Whatever you do, don’t sign up for a marathon next month!! Just don’t do it!!!]

2. I decided to run less often.

This one is perhaps a bit counter intuitive at first. The more you run, the better you’ll get, right? That is perhaps true once you are experienced, but it is the opposite of what you want when you’re starting out. 

Going too hard is the easiest way to burn out and injure yourself. 

This is what happened to me in all my previous attempts to get over my hatred of running. Each time I wanted to try running again I’d try to run every day and I always ended up feeling winded after a few days or developing shin splints or some other pain injury. This then made it impossible to keep running, so I’d quit.  

This time, I decided to run way less often–I only run twice per week, usually about three days apart. This schedule has been much more sustainable. I have plenty of time to recover in between runs and haven’t faced any injuries yet. 

It also frees up my time, allowing me to keep my other days for exercises that bring me more joy, like weightlifting or rock climbing. 

When you are just starting, running can feel like a bit of a punishment. Doing it less often dramatically reduces this issue and can help sustain the habit long enough to reach the point where it can actually start to become enjoyable.

3. I found a way to limit excuses getting in my way.

I am someone who is prone to allowing excuses to get in my way of exercise, so to help myself stick with running, I decided to eliminate one of the excuses that was getting in my way the most: weather.

Unlike many other gym activities, running is very weather-dependent. It is very common to run outdoors, and if the weather is bad, you’re not going to want to do it. If you live in a cold or rainy climate, as I do, this can be a huge problem. Who wants to run when it’s pouring rain, snowing, or freezing? If you let those things get in your way, there will be a lot of days when you maybe should run but you don’t.  

[This person has way more willpower than I do. Can they teach me their ways?]

As someone who lives somewhere very cold and snowy, I knew I had to eliminate this issue for myself. I decided to find a gym that had an indoor track and decided to run there when the weather was bad. I would still run outdoors if it was sunny and warm, but otherwise the indoor track would be my go-to. 

After that, I never found myself quitting for weather except for when snowstorms made it physically impossible to get to the gym. 

If you live somewhere with good weather most of the year, this change might not help you much, but it is worth considering other areas where you find yourself regularly making excuses to get out of a run. Perhaps an excuse you use often is “I’m too tired to run after work,” in which case you could try running before work instead. It could be something else entirely–we all have different things happening in our lives–but whatever your excuses may be, it is worth taking time to consider how you might limit their effect.

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Making these small changes has led to a huge shift in how I view running. It is now just a normal part of my workout schedule, I don’t find it miserable anymore, and I genuinely look forward to some of the races I’ll be completing.

If you’ve found yourself hating running and want to give it a try, hopefully my experience gives you some inspiration to get started and stick with it.

How to Write New Years’ Resolutions That Actually Stick

It’s that time again–the start of a new year. January is a great opportunity to reflect on on your last year, understand your priorities, and set goals to keep improving.

If you’re not careful, though, it’s really easy to come up with a bunch of goals and then not be able to follow through with some–or even all–of them. To help you come up with better goals that you can actually achieve, I wanted to share a few tips I’ve come up with over the years.

Pick Some Goals You Don’t Share With Anyone Else

There’s a big culture, at least in the United States, of sharing your New Years’ resolutions with friends and family, but this can actually be detrimental to your ability to accomplish them. The simple act of sharing a goal can make you feel some sense of accomplishment, making you feel like you’ve already made steps toward your goal.

If you write down your goals and do not share them with anybody, then the gap between where you are and where you want to be is quite apparent, motivating you to take action, but as soon as you tell someone, that gap shrinks.

You should only share goals publicly that you know are easily achievable. Reach goals that are going to take a lot more hard work are best kept to yourself if you want to maximize your probability of success.

[Don’t be these people! At least not with ALL your goals]

Write SMART Goals

SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time Bound. The acronym originated from companies who were attempting to help their employees write quarterly or annual goals for development, but the idea can apply to any type of goal, not just one at the office.

A SMART goal achieves each of the five features mentioned above, which I’ll discuss in more detail below.

Let’s say you start with the generic goal “I’d like to eat healthier this year”. This is a good goal, but it’s not yet SMART. It’s somewhat vague, and doesn’t clarify exactly what “healthier” means or how much healthier you are planning on being, or how that is going to be achieved. By making some small adjustments, we can turn this into a better, more achievable goal.

S: Specific

A goal that is specific should answer the following questions.

• What do I want to accomplish?
• What steps do I need to get there?

To make “I’d like to eat healthier this year” into a specific goal, you might define what healthy means to you. It might mean reducing the amount of red meat you eat. Or, it could mean cooking more meals at home. Or it could mean eating multiple servings of fruits/vegetables each day. You can decide which direction to go, but you should be as specific as possible and include a clear explanation of how you will get there. For the purposes of this example, we’ll go with the last option and set our goal as: “I will increase the number of servings of fruits and vegetables I eat.”

M: Measurable

It’s important to be able to make your goals quantifiable so that you can track your progress. If you just say “I will increase the number of servings of fruits and vegetables I eat,” then there’s a whole lot of variation that’s possible. How many more fruits/vegetables? How often? Is this something you do every day?

You can make your goal measurable by adding some sort of number to it that you can track, often on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. For example, we can improve “”I will increase the number of servings of fruits and vegetables I eat” by changing it to “I will eat a minimum 5 servings of fresh fruits and vegetables every week.” That way, each week you can check off the servings as you eat them and know whether you are on track for eating your goals.

[Make sure every goal you have can have its progress measured in some way]

A: Achievable

When setting your goal, you need to really take some time to think about what you can actually achieve in the real world, and not in the perfect world. Ideally, we would all love vegetables, have a ton of time to cook at home, and be healthy as can be, but that’s just not realistic. You need to make sure to set your goals around your lifestyle and abilities. For example, if you work a job where you have to bring a lunch that sits out in the sun, it might not really be reasonable to bring fresh fruit or vegetables, so you can’t expect to get any servings of those during lunch on weekdays. You might also have limited access to quality fruits and vegetables due to cost reasons. If you can only afford 3 servings of fresh fruits and vegetables, and the rest has to be frozen, that is totally okay! Just make sure your goal is not that you’ll eat 5 servings of fresh fruits and vegetables.

When setting a goal that’s achievable, you should make sure that it is a challenge–meaning you will not just coast to the finish, and you’ll have to work for it–but also that it’s not completely beyond your means.

R: Relevant

Relevance is about why you’re setting this goal. Thinking about this can help give you motivation to push through when things are difficult.

Why is getting healthy important to you? Is it so you can go on more adventures and experience new things? So you can keep up with your kids? So you can spend less money on doctor’s bills? So you can live a longer life?

Make sure you understand why you are setting your goals and have a meaningful reason for each one. If you aren’t internally motivated by something, it’s going to be really hard to care about achieving them.

T: Time Bound

It’s helpful to set some sort of time limit on when your goal has been reached. Sometimes, if you try to set a goal for too long a period of time, it can be easy to fall behind and then just give up. For example, saying that you’ll eat at least 5 servings of fresh fruits and vegetables every week for an entire year is a long time to commit to something. If it’s only week six and you already fail, it can feel like you just have no hope to finish! Instead, try to pick something that’s more manageable. For example, the next month/four weeks. Then, once you’ve made it through one month, you can set a similar goal for the next month, or change it based on what felt like it was possible in the month before! For example, if you find that eating 5 servings of fresh fruits and vegetables was super easy your first month, and you averaged 8 per week, you might really challenge yourself for a second month and set a goal of 10 servings per week.

[Consider writing the start and end date of your smaller goal sections on a calendar to keep you motivated to get there!]

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Setting goals can be hard, and can feel especially overwhelming at the start of the new year when you hear about all these huge goals people have and wonder “how the heck am I ever going to come even close to that??” If you just focus on these principles, though, ignoring everyone else and just thinking about yourself, you’ll be set with some goals you can actually accomplish, and you’ll be a badass in no time!

[FAFQ] How Do I Stop Feeling So Out of Breath After A Workout? – The Science of Breathing

If you’re like the vast majority of the population, you’ve probably experienced the feeling of being winded after a workout. Riding along on a stationary bike, gasping for air. Panting after jogging half a mile when you haven’t done much running before. Feeling like your lungs are burning during a kickboxing workout. You get the idea.

It’s a really unpleasant feeling and it also limits you from reaching your full potential. If you’re winded you can’t keep trying your hardest, because to catch your breath you need to slow down. It can be a really frustrating feeling, and sometimes it can feel impossible to overcome. But thankfully, the solution is simpler than you think.

To get at how to solve the problem, let’s consider why you might feel out of breath. It’s likely one of two reasons, or a combination thereof:

1. You’re out of practice with exercise and your body isn’t used to managing so much exertion
2. You’re not breathing correctly

Let’s consider these each in turn:

1. You’re out of practice with exercise

When your body isn’t used to exertion, and you suddenly start exerting yourself a lot, your body doesn’t know what to do. Your lungs haven’t been used very much, so they’re likely smaller than their optimal size–and it hurts to stretch them–so you’re limited physically in what you can accomplish.

To get around this, the easiest solution is just to do more exercises that involve a lot of help from your respiratory system. This means don’t just lift weights–as this mostly strains your muscles, not your lungs–but also do some intense cardio for short bursts. Try biking or running up a steep hill, or maybe some kickboxing. It doesn’t need to replace weightlifting, but you will need some of it to help you expand your lung capacity.

(This is pretty much what I look like after I try to run any more than about half a mile as a complete non runner. Clearly I need to practice more! I look a lot more put-together after kickboxing, though, where I’ve put in a lot more reps.)

2. You’re not breathing correctly

Even if you’ve built up some breathing strength from consistent practice and working out–and you don’t think reason #1 is the cause of your breathlessness–you still might be doing something wrong. Something as basic as breathing!

It turns out there is a right way and a wrong way to breathe.

Most people breathe through their mouths, instead of their noses, which is suboptimal for many reasons:

• Mouth breathing leads to issues with sleep–such as snoring, sleep apnea, and dehydration levels–which can have a big impact on workout performance, as sleep is key to recovery and muscle group.
• When you breathe through your mouth, you do not produce Nitric Oxide (NO) the way you do when you breathe through your nose. NO helps regulate blood flow and blood oxygen levels, and can help get more oxygen to your muscles during a workout. When you breathe through your mouth, your muscles actually get less oxygen from each breath, which can lead you to fatigue quickly. But when you breathe through your nose, you’ll get maximum oxygen levels and can potentially perform better.
• Nasal breathing activates the part of your body that’s relevant to rest and recovery rather than the part associated with fight or flight, so nasal breathing can help you relax and perform your workout for longer.
• The posture required for optimal nose breathing is optimal for reducing injury, because it forces you to position yourself more upright rather than hunched over.
• When you breathe through your nose, you are able to perform fewer breaths and maintain a lower heart rate, which means you are able to sustain exercise for longer (increasing your endurance), and with less strain put on the body.

(Nose breathing can help with endurance and keep you going strong!)

How Do You Fix The Problem?

Now that you know that nose breathing is better than mouth breathing, how do you go about shifting the breathing habits you’ve had for your whole life and find a better strategy?

Here’s a few steps that might help:

1. Start by being aware of your own breathing. Notice when you breathe through your mouth or through your nose. What seems to be triggering the switch between the two? Are you mostly breathing through your mouth or through your nose? Is this the same when you work out? Different for different exercises?
2. When you catch yourself breathing through your mouth, try to stop yourself and switch to your nose instead. It will feel really weird at first, but if you practice (see step 3) it will start to become more normal.
3. Practice doing small nose breathing sessions for a few minutes at home, not under the stress of workout conditions. Take 5-10 minutes and just practice breathing in and out at a steady rate using only your nose. Keep your mouth shut the whole time. Some people swear by physically taping their mouths shut, and you’re welcome to try this if it helps you! Just be careful not to do it to an extreme.
4. Attempt to incorporate nose breathing into your workouts. The next time you’re doing cardio and start to feel out of breath, try to take longer, slower breaths through your nose instead of panting with your mouth.
5. As this gets easier, lengthen your practice sessions and make nose breathing a bigger part of your workout until it becomes second nature!

(Make sure to practice nose breathing in a non-exercise, breathing-focused situation before you integrate it into your workouts! Setting up a meditation-like session is a great way to do this!)

Nose breathing may feel uncomfortable at first, mostly because sometimes it can feel like you are not getting enough air. But realistically, you almost certainly are! Your body is just not used to the action, and nose breathing can feel like it produces a lot of resistance if you’re just getting started. But stick with it if you can. There’s a lot of science, dating back hundreds of years, that backs up the benefits of breathing through your nose.

How To Learn More

If you want to learn more about the importance of breathing through your nose, and how to train yourself to do so, I recommend the following books:

Breath: The New Science Of A Lost Art – James Nestor [Link]

“There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing…Yet as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences. Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it…Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is.”

Summary of “Breathe”, as written on the inside of the book’s jacket.

The Oxygen Advantage: Simple, Scientifically Proven Breathing Techniques to Help You Become Healthier, Slimmer, Faster, and Fitter – Patrick McKeown [Link]

“In The Oxygen Advantage, the man who has trained over 5,000 people—including Olympic and professional athletes—in reduced breathing exercises now shares his scientifically validated techniques to help you breathe more efficiently. Patrick McKeown teaches you the fundamental relationship between oxygen and the body, then gets you started with a Body Oxygen Level Test (BOLT) to determine how efficiently your body uses oxygen. He then shows you how to increase your BOLT score by using light breathing exercises and learning how to simulate high altitude training, a technique used by Navy SEALs and professional athletes to help increase endurance, weight loss, and vital red blood cells to dramatically improve cardio-fitness.”

Amazon book overview for “The Oxygen Advantage”.

So what are you waiting for? If you’ve been feeling out of breath, start looking into how you breath, and how often you do it! Just a little bit of work and focus and bring you a long way in the right direction.

What Is Creatine? Does It Actually Make You Stronger? – Supplements 101

Welcome to another installment of supplements 101, a series where I try to break down the complicated science of supplements and make it easy for you to understand!

This week we’re covering creatine.

What is creatine?

Creatine is an acid, typically found in the muscles and in the brain. It is used primarily in the process of helping your muscles produce energy during high strain, such as when lifting heavy weights or doing some other form high-intensity training. How does it do this? When you body’s energy source (ATP) is used up, it gets converted to another substance, ADP, and can no longer be used to boost your energy. Creatine works by taking ADP and converting it back to ATP so that it can be used again! This helps maintain your body’s level of energy-producing molecules.

Creatine is not essential to consume as a supplement, as it is already produced naturally by the body. Our liver, kidneys, and pancreas all produce it.

Plus, you can actually get a good amount of creatine through your normal diet if you regularly consume foods that come from animal sources (e.g. meat, dairy). On average, people who consume this type of food will consume about 1 gram of creatine per day. However, if you consume a primarily plant-based, vegetarian/vegan diet, you are unlikely to be getting adequate quantities of creatine from your food.

Why might you consider supplementing?

There are three main reasons why you might consider taking supplemental creatine:

1. You eat no or very few animal products, so your levels of creatine are lower than the average person, and you want to replace what you’re missing so that you aren’t limited in your fitness goals.
2. You have naturally low creatine for some other reason, such as the balance of hormones in your body or the fact that you are aging, which is associated with reduced creatine stores.
3. You eat enough creatine-containing foods, but would like to add some in addition so that you can attempt to improve athletic performance.

What are the potential benefits?

Proponents of creatine have claimed that it has a variety of potential benefits for fitness, including::

• Increased energy during high intensity exercise
• Increased potential volume during a workout (you can sustain your exercises for longer without getting weak), which is key for long-term muscle growth
• Improved muscle repair, which can help with growth
• Creatine draws water to your muscles, which can help them appear bigger and potentially grow faster
• Reduces muscle breakdown

Creatine has also been said to have some positive effects on mental health and brain function:

• Improved memory
• Reduced mental fatigue
• Improved reaction time
• Reduced brain fog

Does it really work?

There have been many claimed benefits to creatine supplementation, but how many are actually backed by science? Does creatine really help improve muscle growth and brain function?

Unlike a lot of other supplements, the answer is actually yes! Creatine has been studied for decades, and there is a great deal of scientific literature that has been published on its positive effects.

Let’s look at some highlights from a few studies:

• A 2008 study over 8 weeks of heavy resistance training found that individuals who supplemented with creatine had significantly greater increases in body mass compared to those who did not supplement (2.2 vs 0.6 kilograms)
• A 2010 study found that individuals who had supplemented with creatine had decreased markers of muscle damage after a high intensity Iron Man competition (however, note this was a very small sample size). Another study found similar effects of decreased muscle damage, this time when looking at a high intensity weightlifting set.
• Studies on older adults (in their 50s through 70s) found that creatine supplementation led to increased lean muscle mass, chest press, and leg press strength after resistance training.
• A 2018 paper found that “short term memory and intelligence/reasoning may be improved by creatine administration.”
• A 2021 paper summarized many of the positive mental effects of creatine, some of which are listed as follows:
  • In sleep deprived rugby players, creatine supplementation helped with passing accuracy
  • In healthy young adults, creatine use improved performance on a test of recalling numbers backward
  • A test of healthy, young, sleep deprived men and women found that creatine supplementation helped with movement, reaction time, balance, and mood.

What about side effects?

Creatine is generally considered quite safe. However, there are some potential side effects you should be made aware of.

• Weight gain–though this often seems to come through lean muscle growth
• Worsening of kidney dysfunction in those that already have kidney disorders. Those who have healthy kidneys do not seem affected. You should probably not take creatine if you have kidney issues (though of course, consult with a medical professional)
• Creatine can raise levels of creatinine in your body, which is one sign used to diagnose kidney dysfunction. This may make your doctor–or you–think that you have kidney problems even if you don’t!

What about pregnancy? Many supplements are deemed dangerous to pregnant women.

Creatine is a very interesting case in this respect. There is actually some evidence that creatine consumption could help with pregnancy in a few different ways:

• Increasing the survival likelihood of pre-term babies
• Lessened effects from issues due to hypoxia, where a baby receives inadequate oxygen to the brain during or shortly after birth
• Potential ability to decrease c-section rates by helping enable consistent labor through improved uterine muscle function

Of course, once again, it is important to check with a medical professional before using any supplements during pregnancy!!

What kind of creatine should you take?

There are a bunch of different varieties of creatine supplements that you can buy. These include:

1. Creatine Monohydrate
2. Creatine Ethyl Ester
3. Creatine Hydrochloride
4. Buffered Creatine (Creatine + an Alkaline Powder)
5. Liquid Creatine
6. Creatine Magnesium Chelate

While all of them are some form of creatine, they are not all created equal! Some options are much better than others. If you’re in the market for creatine, I recommend looking into Creatine Monohydrate. Why this one over the others?

• It’s got the best record of safety and side effects
• It’s one of the cheapest and easiest to find online
• It has the most scientific backing behind it, as most creatine studies focus on the monohydrate form
• It works just as well (or better) than any of the other options!

How often should you take creatine? And how much?

In order to get the most from the benefits of creatine, you need to make sure you are taking it in the right intervals and dose sizes.

There are two primary ways of taking creatine:

1. Using a loading phase, where you take heavy doses daily (20-25 grams/day–typically taken in four doses about every four hours apart) for about 5-7 days to build up your creatine stores, then cut back to a daily maintenance level of 3-5 grams/day.
2. Using no loading phase, and just starting with the maintenance level of creatine, taking 3-5 grams per day every day.

Both strategies work and are considered safe, but many prefer the loading phase strategy because it builds up creatine stores faster so you can start to get the beneficial effects earlier on. If you do not use a loading phase, it can take around three weeks to build up enough creatine to start experiencing any changes.

The evidence on timing is up for debate. It is not completely clear whether there is an optimal time of day to take creatine, though some studies have suggested that taking it post-workout is more effective than pre-workout.

However, with creatine, the thing that’s considered most important is just that you take it! Consistency is key, and over time it’s a lot more important that you’re taking it at all, than when you’re taking it.

Conclusion

So there’s everything you need to know to get started with creatine!

Creatine is generally a safe and effective supplement–and the one that I would recommend the most out of any! It’s relatively cheap, doesn’t taste bad or produce many significant side effects, and can have a lot of beneficial effects in some users.

For ease of your use and consumption, I’ve gone ahead and summarized all the information from this guide into a graphic below!

10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Working Out

I’ve been actively exercising for about four years now. It’s been a long–and sometimes difficult–journey, full of rough periods of plateau, injury, and frustration. But I’ve made it through, and come out at lot stronger on the other side (both figuratively and literally).

Along the way I’ve picked up quite a few lessons that have really helped me and that I wish I’d known more about before getting too far into my journey.

Today, I’m sharing my wisdom with you in the hopes that it will prevent you from making some of the same unpleasant mistakes that I went through.

So, without further ado, the best exercise tips for beginners:

1. You’re going to fail sometimes. It’s ok. Don’t beat yourself up.

When I first started exercising regularly, I would set myself lofty goals: be able to run a mile in a week or two (starting from nothing), or be able to do a pull-up after only 10 gym sessions–when I could barely lift anything.

When I’d fail to reach these goals, I would get frustrated and think that I should be able to do better, which was often not really the case. Then, as a result, I would lose my motivation and fall off the wagon a bit.

Even when you’re trying your best in fitness, at some point you will probably fail to reach a goal.

It’s just part of working out. You might get hit with a bad injury and be forced to rest, you might have a super busy work week that leaves zero time for exercise, or you might have a bad bout of depression and be stuck in bed. Whatever goal you had set–you’ll fail. But that’s okay.

Failure is bound to happen, and the most important thing you can do is control how you react to it. Don’t be like me when I started, and get frustrated (or like the guy below, give up completely). Instead, just realize that setbacks are a part of the fitness lifestyle. Use the opportunity to come back stronger next time.

[Don’t be like this guy!]

2. The biggest thing you can do for yourself is just start.

Overthinking exercise can stop you from doing it. If you’re trying to get into exercise for the first time, you may find yourself doing some of the following:

• Trying to research the best workout clothes
• Looking up protein shakes and workout supplements that you think you’ll need to succeed
• Trying to find the perfect exercises
• Setting up a full-on calendar for what your training is going to look like

If you see yourself doing these things, stop.

Trying to do everything in advance will just lead you to being overwhelmed, and if you’re like a lot of people–you might actually never get to the exercise part!

I had this problem early on. I tried to research a training plan and totally change my diet at the same time. There were way too many things doing on, and I ended up failing at both.

The best thing you can do for yourself is stop thinking about all the details and just start exercising.

You’ll have time to figure that stuff out later. It’s more important to just build an exercise habit first.

3. You don’t always have to try your hardest. Sometimes just doing something is enough.

One of the biggest roadblocks that many beginners face is turning exercise into a habit. When you’re just starting and it’s something you’ve never done before, it doesn’t come naturally.

And if you are lacking a strong sense of internal motivation, it’s going to be impossible to keep going unless you can turn exercise into a habit.

However, habits can be super difficult to build if you set an unreasonable goal. For example, if you’re coming from no exercise background and say that you’re now going to exercise every single day for an hour, you’re almost certainly going to fail.

A much better way to start is to set yourself a daily goal of just starting. Rather than say that you’re going to exercise for an hour, say that you’re just going to start. That could mean:

• Putting on a pair of running shoes, walking outside, and jogging for a quarter mile,
• Driving to a gym,
• Pulling out a yoga mat and doing a few stretches,
• …or anything else that is a very small goal.

[Just a few sit-ups is enough to get you moving. It doesn’t take much!]

You’ll probably find that once you start, you want to keep going. You’re already at the gym, so why not get in a good workout? You’ve already started jogging–why not go another few miles, even if you walk a lot of it? The great thing about doing this, though, is if you don’t feel like you want to keep going, that’s okay. You still achieved your goal of doing something. And over time, your body will adjust and start to recognize the act of something as a new habit.

Beginning something new this way is much more likely to lead to long term success than setting lofty goals for each day.

To learn more about habit building, I’d recommend reading Atomic Habits.

4. Exercise is one of the best ways of fighting off depression. Don’t let it fall by the wayside.

Exercise plays a huge role in mental health. Just take a look through some of the many studies on exercise and depression [For example: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].

In my own experience, exercise has been the single biggest help in fighting off depressive episodes. When in periods of struggle, right after I’ve finished a workout, I’ve felt the cloud of sadness lifting away. It’s never magically made things disappear, but it has had a significant and noticeable impact.

Even though I knew about the benefits of exercise and depression early on, and had experienced these improvements in my own mental health as a result of fitness, I still went through periods where I let my fitness fall by the wayside–usually when I had a lot of schoolwork to do or stressful exams/presentations coming up.

It was one of the biggest mistakes I made.

Whenever I let exercise slide, depression found a way to creep back in. And that made it harder and harder to fight it off because the more depressed I was, the harder it was to drag myself to the gym. It would have been so much easier if I had prioritized exercise and not let it slip from my schedule.

If you struggle at all with depression, make an extra effort to ensure that exercise is a priority. It will make such a huge difference on your well being.

5. Lift heavy.

While cardio and light weights are okay–and good in moderation–lifting heavy weights is one of the best ways to improve your fitness.

This is counter to what you see a lot of women doing, so it deserves some explanation.

Heavy weights are typically associated with men in the media, but they are great for everyone. This is for a few different reasons.

• If weight loss is your goal, heavy lifting actually helps you lose weight faster. Unlike cardio, building muscle speeds your metabolism. That means that even when you are not working out, you’ll burn more calories (a couple extra per pound of muscle you add)
• It can help you get stronger without developing extreme muscle definition. Lots of women are scared of the bodybuilder look, but the average woman who does strength training will never look like that. Why? Because women have low testosterone, which plays a big factor in men’s muscle growth.
• Strength training with heavy lifting can strengthen bones and slow bone density loss, which is really important for women due to the common nature of osteoporosis.

If you skip the heavy weights, you’ll never see these benefits.

[Aim for a weight where you can complete approximately 7 reps before you’re too tired to keep going. If you can do more than about 12 reps, your weight is too light for maximum strength gain.]

6. Don’t waste time on targeted movements. Instead, focus on compound lifts.

When you’re getting started, it’s easy to get excited about all the different machines at the gym. I know I did!

Ooh, a curl machine! That looks fun! And ooh, a tricep press! Perfect way to build some nice arms…

– My Internal Monologue

But they are not built equal, and some will give you much more benefit for your time than others. You want to focus on machines (or free weights–but those can be scary for beginners) that do compound movements, activating multiple muscle groups at once. That means, if you’re working on a right schedule, no bicep curl or tricep press machines!!

Instead, try some of these:

• Lat pulldown
• Row
• Leg press
• Assisted pull-ups/chin-ups
• Chest press

7. Don’t forget about your diet!

[Eating healthy plays a huge role in fitness! And if you’re focused on strength gain, you’ll need to watch your protein consumption as well.]

At first, I thought health and wellness were all about exercise–that if I just lifted weights and did cardio all the time, I’d magically be super strong, look ripped, and feel better. I was wrong.

Over the years, I’ve learned that the actual exercise bit is only half of the equation. Diet is the rest. You may have heard the saying that “abs are made in the kitchen.” It’s completely true. During periods where I had. abad diet, no matter how much I exercised, I never made much progress. But when I got my diet together, everything came much more easily.

Diet plays a huge role in wellbeing. It controls how much energy you have. It provides the protein your muscles need to grow. It impacts your sleep and your mental health, which both need to be in good shape for your body to get the most out of fitness.

Don’t neglect it. Although I went through many periods of wishing it worked that way, you won’t be able to get anywhere if you just eat cheeseburgers and fries all the time.

For some ideas on healthy eating, you can checkout my blog collection on the topic.

8. Exercise doesn’t have to be done solo.

One of the great things about exercise is how many different ways you can do it! At first, I was drawn to the fact that you can easily do it solo. As an introvert, I like to have lots of alone time and exercise is a great way to build that in, so for the longest time I only ever did it alone.

But exercise can also provide great benefits when done as a group activity! This is particularly true if you’re someone who has a busy schedule. If you do group exercise, you can build social activity and fitness into the same time slot and don’t have to sacrifice one to fit the other in.

Plus, exercise in a group has the added benefit of helping keep you motivated. After trying group fitness, I learned that it can be more effective than solo fitness for really pushing you. In front of a group, you always want to do your best.

I still do lots of solo fitness, but I have integrated some more group stuff into my training. They both have their own benefits and it’s good to try all your options out before settling on something.

[Even though I mostly exercise alone, a group fitness class every once in a while is a great way to keep me accountable for going to the gym.]

9. Exercising more will lead to so many great changes. Stick with it!

The awesome thing about exercise is that it doesn’t just make you stronger. The act of getting fit actually has a tendency to spill over into other areas of your life, pushing you to make improvements in all sorts of things.

After I started exercising for a while, I noticed that I wanted to make new changes in my life that I’ve never thought about before. I focused so much more on my mental health and got into meditation. I became much more interested in food/diet, and started digging into how to eat healthier. And I worked to try to find ways to reduce my screen time, which was causing headaches and adding anxious/depressive feelings to my day.

These changes don’t come immediately, though. You have to stick with it for a while. It probably wasn’t until year two that I really started noticing a difference in how I thought (year one, my exercise was pretty on and off, which could explain why it took so long).

If you’ve just gotten started haven’t found that much benefit from exercise yet, stick with it. In the long run, you’ll start to see big differences.

10. Some results are just unattainable. Set goals that work for you, and don’t base your success on what you see others accomplishing.

I wrote about this idea more in depth in my first ever post on this blog. When you get started in fitness, your main inspiration is often whoever you see doing fitness on the internet. At least that’s who it was for me.

But those people are not average. Fitness is often their day job–whether it be as an influencer or as a top athlete. They spend hours at the gym every day, have personal trainers, and are paid to be as fit as possible (which can sometimes mean that they take unhealthy steroids). Some were just born with incredibly good genetics.

Most of the time, their bodies are not attainable to the average person. With my schedule as it is right now, for instance, I’ll never look as muscular as someone like Simone Biles, whose entire job is to focus on gymnastics. No matter how much I try, it’s just not going to happen.

This can be hard to realize at first, and it can lead to setting unhealthy expectations. You can’t expect to go to the gym a few times per week for a year and suddenly have 10% body fat. It’s a multi-year process that takes a huge amount of effort, and some factors may be outside your control.

So don’t base your goals on what you see on the internet. Base them on what works for you–what makes you feel good, or what’s reasonable based on your rate of improvement.

It will help you feel so much more confident in your fitness!

[Tip: Spend a few minutes at the beginning of each month planning out what your goals will be for that month. This will help make sure you’re keeping on top of things. Base them on your current abilities and interests, keeping in mind that they should be realistic! Don’t base your goals off of anything you see on social media.]

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So there we go! My top 10 tips I wish I knew when I started to work out.

I hope they can help you out! If there’s any other tips I missed that I should consider, please share!

[FAFQ] How Do I Fit Exercise In On A Tight Schedule?

If you’re a full time student, work a job that has a demanding schedule, have a lot of parenting responsibilities, or have any other limitations on your free time, you’ve probably struggled trying to fit exercise in alongside everything else. You know it’s important–but it just feels so hard to find the time to get it done.

Know you’re not alone. I went through four years of an incredibly busy undergrad–working the majority of the day 7 days a week while trying to maintain a 4.0 GPA, conduct research, have a social life, be part of clubs, and work a part time job. Now, I work full time in the tech industry and am adding on some grad school classes to that workload. My life has been incredibly busy for a long time now, and at first, I had no idea how to make it all work. Exercise fell to the wayside as I prioritized my work. Slowly but surely, though, I found a way to fit exercise into my tight schedule.

I never found that much helpful guidance on the Internet while I was going through my own struggle with this, so I wanted to share some advice on what worked for me in the hopes that it will help you out.

1. Prioritize Your Health

The most important factor for me was prioritizing my health. The only way to reliably ensure that I got my workouts in was to tell myself that health matters more than the other tasks on my plate.

To be optimally equipped for whatever is taking up all of your time–and to live a happy and fulfilling life–you need to be healthy. Taking the steps to ensure that your body is in good shape–even if it can feel like a waste of time in the short run–is going to be a much better investment than spending that time on, say, adding the finishing touches to your essay for school.

I found that my performance in school and work did not diminish at all when I prioritized my fitness and made an effort to ensure I was getting adequate exercise. In fact, it actually seemed to increase because I felt like I had more energy, better focus, and fewer depressive thoughts.

So take action to prioritize your health. Rather than staying late at work, take 30 minutes to go on a run. Rather than perfecting your powerpoint, go lift some weights. Put exercise at the top of your priorities list and things will start to get easier.

One way to help make sure this happens is to physically add your exercise time into your calendar! This will help make your brain think it is on the same importance level as the rest of your appointments and calendar items.

2. Pick A Strategic Time To Work Out

I’ve found that the timing of exercise plays a big role in getting me to stick with it. If I try to exercise at the end of the day, I’m usually exhausted. I work extra hard to find myself an excuse not to go. But if I go first thing in the morning, before I head to work or school, then it’s way easier. I can cross it off the list and don’t need to think about it again.

What works for me, though, does not work for everyone! Some find it easiest to work out on a lunch break, in the mid afternoon, or even late at night. You should test out a few different times until you find out which time has you wanting to get out of it the least often.

To make this process even easier, I also recommend strategizing so that your timing fits with the location of your fitness activity in a way that promotes maximum convenience. What does this mean? For example, if you go to college, scheduling your gym workout right before/after class so you can just do the gym and class in one trip rather than make yourself have to take a separate trip for your workout. Or if you work an office job, find a gym between home and work and go on your way there or on your way home. This decreases mental resistance and can also help build in a routine if you stick with the same schedule.

Decrease resistance by scheduling your exercise alongside other trips, such as on the way to/from work or school.

3. Find Some Form Of External Accountability

Fitness classes are a great way to motivate you to stick with your workouts.

Some people have really strong internal motivation and discipline and–all on their own–can make themselves exercise every day even if they don’t want to. But for most people, it’s not that easy. External accountability can be a great way to get that extra push if you can’t motivate yourself.

Two of my favorite ways to promote external accountability are: 1. Find an accountability buddy, and 2. Sign up for a paid class.

The idea with the first is quite simple. Find another person–a friend, a coworker, or a family member–who is also interested in working on their fitness and agree to hold one another accountable. Tell your buddy your exercise goals and ask them to check in with you to make sure you’re achieving them and actually doing your workouts like you say you are. That can mean agreeing to share pictures from your workouts, having your buddy text you a reminder to go exercise, discussing your exercise plan for the day, or anything else you come up with. If negative reinforcement works for you, you can also ask them to tell you to do better when you fail. In exchange, agree to do the same for your buddy.

I’ve found that having someone else check in on me makes sticking with my habits really easy, because when I fail, I’m no longer just letting myself down–I’m also letting someone else down–and that provides a lot of motivation to keep me going.

Another option is to use a fitness class–particularly a paid one–as external motivation. The great thing about fitness classes is that they are on a set schedule. If you miss one, it’s over. You can’t make it up, unlike a normal workout that you might complete alone. That by itself can be a great motivator to exercise. You don’t want to miss out, so you take the extra effort to make sure you make it to the class. If money is involved, this motivational power is much stronger (at least it has been for me). If you pay $150/month for a class that happens twice a week, each class costs you nearly $20! If you don’t go, it feels like you’re just tossing a $20 bill down the drain. You want to get your money’s worth, so you’ll go to class even if you’re not feeling it. If it weren’t a paid event, you’d probably skip.

The one place you need to be careful with this strategy, though, is to make sure you don’t pick a class that’s too time consuming. If you sign up for a two-hour class three times per week, that’s a pretty big time commitment and will form a bigger mental block in your head than something shorter. If you’ve had. a busy day and don’t have much time, it’s going to be way easier to do some kickboxing for 45 minutes than to do a 90 minute weightlifting session. In my experience, the optimal class time is 45-6- minutes, no more than three times per week.

4. Use The 2-Day Rule For Habit Formation

In order to fit exercise into a tight schedule, it’s important to make it a regular habit–to integrate it so that it just becomes a normal part of your schedule.

One of my favorite habit-building tips to help facilitate this is to use the 2-day rule. I learned about this strategy from one of my favorite productivity YouTubers, Matt D’Avella. The basic idea with the 2-day rule is this: don’t allow yourself to take off more than one day in a row from the habit you’re building (in this case, exercise). If you work out on Wednesday, you can take Thursday off, but then you need to start back up again on Friday.

A sample workout calendar using the 2-day rule

This is one of the easiest ways to make exercise a habit. If you stick with the 2-day rule for a few weeks or months, exercise will start to come naturally to you. Once it becomes part of your routine, it almost takes more effort to not do it than to do it.

You can learn more about. the 2-day rule in Matt’s video here.

5. Consider Exercise Multitasking

If setting aside a long chunk of time just for exercising feels like a little too much of an ask, you can also try what I call exercise multitasking: when your exercise activity accomplishes more than just the goal of increased fitness.

What does this look like in practice? Some ideas include:

• Instead of driving to work/school, make your commute–something you already have to do–an opportunity for fitness. Bike, walk, scooter, or skateboard instead.

Skateboarding is my favorite alternative (and active) transportation method!

• Rather than having purely separate social time and exercise time, combine them. Sign up for a group fitness class or get a friend to go to the gym with you.
• Combine exercise and learning. Listen to an audiobook or podcast while doing your workout,
• If you work at an office that has conference calls or you have meetings on your schedule that can be completed audio-only, try a walking meeting, where you bring your phone and headphones with you and take your call while on a walk. This is an easy way to get 30-60 minutes of exercise in without adding any time to your normal schedule.

Fitting exercise in on a tight schedule can be difficult, but it’s not impossible. With some thoughtful strategizing, you can almost always make time for healthy habits.

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I want to hear what worked for you and what didn’t! If you found anything helpful–or even counterproductive–in these recommendations share your thoughts with me.

For more answers Frequently Asked Fitness Questions, see this collection.

Ronda Rousey and the Rise of Women’s MMA [Femme FITale #3]

Mixed martial arts (MMA)–a combat sport combining techniques from a variety of disciplines such as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Judo, Kickboxing, and Wrestling–was a men’s game until the 2010s, when its fate was forever changed by “Rowdy” Ronda Rousey, the women’s MMA superstar whose career ushered in a new era of combat sports.

Rousey’s career did not start in MMA, though. She grew up competing in Judo, performing well enough to get a spot in the 2004 Athens Olympic Games as the youngest athlete in her sport, and following in the footsteps of her mother–AnnMaria De Mars–who was the first American to win a gold medal at the World Judo Championships.

After her impressive 2008 achievement of becoming the first American to win an Olympic medal in women’s judo, Rousey decided to leave the sport in favor of MMA and began training in a variety of martial arts disciplines.

At the time, women were only competing in amateur leagues or in smaller MMA professional organizations–like Strikeforce–but were left out of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC): the heavyweights of televised pay-per-view MMA.

That all changed in November 2012 when Ronda Rousey became the first female fighter to sign with the UFC, a moment which set off a chain of events that finally brought women’s MMA into the spotlight.

Viewers began to tune into women’s fights and the UFC began to schedule more and more, reaching a peak of nearly 100 women’s fights in 2019-2020, a dramatic increase from the mere handful held in 2012-2013, after Rousey’s signing. Although women’s fights still make up a minority of UFC’s schedule, they are incredibly popular, with some headline fights viewed by millions around the world.

Rousey did not have to compete in a lot of fights to have a big impact. She only fought eight times over her four year tenure for a total of less than 30 minutes in the octagon, but she did more for her sport in those 30 minutes than many athletes will do for theirs in a lifetime.

Rousey destroyed her competition for six fights in a row, utilizing her judo skills to take out her opponents quickly with arm-bar submissions and the crowd loved the show, quickly growing interested in watching more women’s fights. Five of her six victories were incredibly dominant, lasting only one round, with two of them (versus Alexis Davis and Cat Zingano) taking fewer than 20 seconds each from start to finish.

However, Rousey’s winning streak didn’t last forever. Her UFC career ended abruptly and, as many fans would argue–in flames–after she attempted to take on Holly Holm, a much more experienced striker, and Amanda Nunes, one of the greatest fighters to touch women’s MMA, looking greatly outclassed in both fights. With no chance of getting her champion title back, Rousey retired from the sport soon after.

What made Rousey so dominant early on, and what failed her versus Holm and Nunes?

Below we look at a table of Rousey’s stats from her eight fights (with the exception of the 2015 bout versus Cat Zingano, for which the data was not available). Each number represents the proportion of attempts of each particular move that Rousey landed successfully: significant strikes, total strikes, takedowns, strikes to the head/body/leg, strikes from distance, strikes from clinch position, and strikes from the ground. Each number is colored according to the percentile that it falls into relative to measures of each statistic across all women’s UFC fights, with darker colors representing higher level performance. For example, in all of her victorious fights, Rousey’s proportion of successful body strikes was in the top 25% of all female fighters from all bouts in UFC history.

Rousey’s success in her early days was characterized by incredibly high success rates in many areas (significant strikes, total strikes, takedowns, head strikes, and body strikes). Rousey performed poorly at strikes from distance, but her takedown and grappling skills were enough to get her through with relative ease.

However, most of Rousey’s opponents early on were not particularly advanced strikers, and their lack of skill in that particular field gave Rousey the opportunity to put in a lot of successful hits. When Rousey finally fought against a strong striker in Holly Holm, it was all over for her. Holm easily handled Rousey with her superior striking power, taking her out with a powerful kick to the head and leaving Rousey with her worst ever performance–in the bottom 25% for most metrics, and in the bottom half for the rest. Although she did a little better statistically versus Amanda Nunes, Rousey couldn’t keep up with the never-ending barrage of right hand punches.

[Image: Proportion of Rousey’s strikes that were successful, colored by percentile relative to ALL women’s UFC fights: Significant Strikes, Total Strikes, Takedowns, Strikes to the Head / Body / Leg, Strikes from Distances, Strikes from Clinch Position, and Strikes from Ground Position]

Although Rousey may have lost badly to Holm and Nunes and hurt her reputation pretty severely in the process, across her career she was still an above average fighter overall in the UFC, performing in the top half for most metrics, and she definitely earned her place in fighting history.

How do you think Rousey ranks? Was she a great fighter, despite her sudden and dramatic downfall? I certainly think a case could be made.

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Data: https://www.kaggle.com/rajeevw/ufcdata

How Do I Get My First Pull-Up? Easy Strategies For Strength Gain

Welcome to Frequently Asked Fitness Questions [FAFQ], a series where I answer common questions asked by women embarking on their fitness journeys!

This week: the dreaded pull-up. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably spent a lot of time frustrated that you just can’t seem to get this seemingly simple move. It looks so easy, right?

Well you’re not alone. I spent years grappling with this too, unsure of the best strategy to get from point A to point B. But guess what? With enough time, effort, and dedication, I got there––and you can too!

To save you some time and struggle in your journey, I’ve compiled a list of recommendations on things that worked well for me and things that didn’t (and you should probably stay away from).

Try These Strategies (Pick Your Favorite)

• Watch this excellent intro guide by Meg Squats, which gives some useful practical tips for progressing toward pull-ups.

• If you go to a gym and it has an assisted pull-up machine, try doing 3 sets of 6-8 pull-ups each time you’re there, and decrease the assistance by a little bit each week until you can lift your own weight. In my experience, if you do this for a couple of months, then try to do a normal pull-up, you’ll realize it’s suddenly way easier than the last time you tried!

• Hang a bar in a frequently used doorway of your house and set yourself a requirement that you have to do x amount of any pull-up related exercise (pick one from the video above) every time you pass under it. I typically did 30-second hangs or a set of 3 negative pull-ups, but this is totally up to your preference. (Note that this step is optional, but the more frequently you practice your moves––which is really easy when the bar is right there and not at a gym––the faster you’ll get there). You can find a helpful list of the best home pull-up bars here.

• If you’re feeling burned out with standard pull-up progression techniques,  one way to keep progressing is to do a fun fitness activity that is heavy on back and shoulder strength. This will help you build muscle without even realizing you’re doing it, and you might have a lot more fun than if you just hang on a pull-up bar! Some of my favorites in this area are rock climbing (particularly bouldering, as it focuses more on big strength moves than other forms of climbing) and martial arts (with kickboxing––not the cardio kind, but the real martial art) being my sport of choice here. If you do these for long enough, you’ll go try a pull-up again one day and realize it’s suddenly super easy! However, a word of warning for rock climbing: be very careful, as it is easy to injure yourself if you don’t use proper technique. Learn how to safely fall first, slowly work your way up in climb difficulty, and watch a few simple technique videos before getting too far into it. The YouTube channel Movement for Climbers is a great place to start!

Me at the bouldering gym, building some back muscles!

Don’t Do This

In addition to things you should be doing, you should be careful to avoid some behaviors, as they may hinder your progress:

• Don’t put your pull-up training at the end of every workout. You’ll be exhausted and feel defeated! Do it earlier rather than later so you have maximum strength (or as a separate activity with the bar in your house).
  
• Don’t sag and just let yourself droop from the bar! Pull-ups are all about tension, and one of the reasons you’re struggling might be because you haven’t mastered this yet. While you’re doing your pull-up training, regularly review videos about proper form to make sure you’re following it.
  
• Don’t give up! You may end up getting stuck at a “plateau”, where you feel like no matter how hard you try, you’re not getting anywhere! This happens to everyone and you’re not alone. You can get through it and make progress again, but you can’t give up in the process. If you feel like you’ve gotten stuck and aren’t progressing anymore, the best thing I can recommend is to try a different technique from what you’ve been doing. If you’ve been doing assisted pull-ups, on a machine, switch to an active sport like rock climbing for a little bit. If you like the standard pull-up progressions but are slowing down, try to jump to the next step up. Your body sometimes needs a jumpstart of something new to be able to get you over the hump!

Have you or your friends tried any of these tips? What worked best for you? Share your thoughts in the comments so we can help everyone get their first pull-up!

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For more answers to common fitness questions, see the FAFQ page.

[FAFQ] How Do I Get My First Pull-Up? Easy Strategies for Strength Gain

Welcome to Frequently Asked Fitness Questions [FAFQ], a series where I answer common questions asked by women embarking on their fitness journeys!

This week: the dreaded pull-up. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably spent a lot of time frustrated that you just can’t seem to get this seemingly simple move. It looks so easy, right?

Well you’re not alone. I spent years grappling with this too, unsure of the best strategy to get from point A to point B. But guess what? With enough time, effort, and dedication, I got there––and you can too!

To save you some time and struggle in your journey, I’ve compiled a list of recommendations on things that worked well for me and things that didn’t (and you should probably stay away from).

Try These Strategies (Pick Your Favorite)

• Watch this excellent intro guide by Meg Squats, which gives some useful practical tips for progressing toward pull-ups.

• If you go to a gym and it has an assisted pull-up machine, try doing 3 sets of 6-8 pull-ups each time you’re there, and decrease the assistance by a little bit each week until you can lift your own weight. In my experience, if you do this for a couple of months, then try to do a normal pull-up, you’ll realize it’s suddenly way easier than the last time you tried!

• Hang a bar in a frequently used doorway of your house and set yourself a requirement that you have to do x amount of any pull-up related exercise (pick one from the video above) every time you pass under it. I typically did 30-second hangs or a set of 3 negative pull-ups, but this is totally up to your preference. (Note that this step is optional, but the more frequently you practice your moves––which is really easy when the bar is right there and not at a gym––the faster you’ll get there). You can find a helpful list of the best home pull-up bars here.

• If you’re feeling burned out with standard pull-up progression techniques,  one way to keep progressing is to do a fun fitness activity that is heavy on back and shoulder strength. This will help you build muscle without even realizing you’re doing it, and you might have a lot more fun than if you just hang on a pull-up bar! Some of my favorites in this area are rock climbing (particularly bouldering, as it focuses more on big strength moves than other forms of climbing) and martial arts (with kickboxing––not the cardio kind, but the real martial art) being my sport of choice here. If you do these for long enough, you’ll go try a pull-up again one day and realize it’s suddenly super easy! However, a word of warning for rock climbing: be very careful, as it is easy to injure yourself if you don’t use proper technique. Learn how to safely fall first, slowly work your way up in climb difficulty, and watch a few simple technique videos before getting too far into it. The YouTube channel Movement for Climbers is a great place to start!

Me at the bouldering gym, building some back muscles!

Don’t Do This

In addition to things you should be doing, you should be careful to avoid some behaviors, as they may hinder your progress:

• Don’t put your pull-up training at the end of every workout. You’ll be exhausted and feel defeated! Do it earlier rather than later so you have maximum strength (or as a separate activity with the bar in your house).
  
• Don’t sag and just let yourself droop from the bar! Pull-ups are all about tension, and one of the reasons you’re struggling might be because you haven’t mastered this yet. While you’re doing your pull-up training, regularly review videos about proper form to make sure you’re following it.
  
• Don’t give up! You may end up getting stuck at a “plateau”, where you feel like no matter how hard you try, you’re not getting anywhere! This happens to everyone and you’re not alone. You can get through it and make progress again, but you can’t give up in the process. If you feel like you’ve gotten stuck and aren’t progressing anymore, the best thing I can recommend is to try a different technique from what you’ve been doing. If you’ve been doing assisted pull-ups, on a machine, switch to an active sport like rock climbing for a little bit. If you like the standard pull-up progressions but are slowing down, try to jump to the next step up. Your body sometimes needs a jumpstart of something new to be able to get you over the hump!

Have you or your friends tried any of these tips? What worked best for you? Share your thoughts in the comments so we can help everyone get their first pull-up!

Who Are The Best Female Gymnasts of All Time? [Femme FITale #1]

In light of the 2020 (2021) Tokyo Olympic Games officially kicking off, I’ve got a bonus post today–the first in my new series: Femme FITale –– focused on recognizing women who have made a big impact in the fitness world (be it through competition, research, or business and entrepreneurship). 

For this installment, I’ll be focusing on the women of Olympic gymnastics––one of my favorite sports to watch (and one of the best parts of the Olympics!).

First, a quick history lesson. Women’s Artistic Gymnastics first became an olympic sport in 1928. There was only one event that year: the all-around team competition. It was not until 1936 that the games began to look more like they do today, with the individual all-around, balance beam, uneven bars, and vault events added to the schedule. The modern competition set was then finalized in 1952 with the addition of the floor routine. 

Since its inception in 1928, Women’s Olympic Gymnastics has been dominated by a small group of countries, with 10 teams taking home more than 90% of the medals.

Great Britain dominated the medal count in the early days but declined over time, the Soviet Union took over with a period of gold medal domination from 1952 to 1986 (performing worse, but still well, when it became Russia), and the United States and Romania medaled frequently, taking turns with each other and with Russia at the top of the medal count for several decades.

The Soviet Union’s run was one for the ages, with the team showing utter dominance throughout its reign. Even though the Soviet Union was only competing for just over three decades, they won 9 gold medals in the all-around––three times what the next two closest teams (The United States and Romania) have ever won after competing for around twice as many years.

Romania and the United States were bested by the Soviet Union in the race for all-around gold, but both countries have been dominant in their own right, taking quite a few silver and bronze medals––and together, nearly as many medals as all the other countries (except the Soviet Union) combined.  Romania has medaled in the team all around competition in 12 different Olympic games, followed closely by the United States at 9 games.

There has been clear dominance by the top three countries (The Soviet Union / Russia, The United States, and Romania) at the team level, but what about at the individual level?

Several gymnasts stand out for excellence against their competition–and they all come from the most competitive countries. In the table below, we see a list of the top 10 performing gymnasts who competed in a minimum of four Olympic gymnastics events throughout their careers, ordered by their medaling rate (total number of medals won / total number of events competed in). Each gymnast’s win rate (total golds / total events) is also included, alongside the percentiles of these rates compared with all other gymnasts who earned at least one medal in their respective category (at least one gold/silver/bronze for the medal rate percentile and at least one gold for the win rate percentile). Note that only 22% of competitors ever medaled in their Olympic careers, and only 9% won a gold. Non-medalists are excluded from percentile calculations to introduce a clearer spread between the best and the runners up.

So who are the best female Olympic gymnasts of all time, you might ask? It depends on the metric you look at.

Based on the data available through 2016 (the standings will likely change with the final results from Tokyo), a case could be made for Nastia Liukin, Marlya Kindrativna Horokhovska, Viorica Daniela Siliva in terms of medal rate. All three gymnasts medaled in all events they competed in, and each won at least one gold.
If win rate is more important than medal rate, however, different gymnasts stand out. Ecaterina Szabo and Simone Biles have the two highest win rates, each winning an impressive 67% (4 out of 6) of their events. 

There is no one answer, but if I had to put in my own two cents, I (and probably most others today) would  go for Simone Biles, who recently completed a vault so difficult (and theoretically all-time-high-scoring) and dangerous that judges limited its point value, likely to discourage others from trying it and injuring themselves.

Biles has already had an incredibly impressive career, and I can’t wait to see how the rest of it plays out (Go team USA!!).

Who do you think is the best of all time? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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For more posts on women crushing it in sports, see the Femme FITale collection.