Basics Of Putting Together An Exercise Plan For Weight Loss, Muscle Building, and Mental Health

You’ve probably heard it many times throughout your life – exercise is good for you. Sure it helps if you go to the gym for half an hour every few weeks but to truly claim the benefits of any exercise you do, you need to exercise consistently. Now, many of us lead very busy lives with full-time jobs, side hustles, social lives, and hobbies, so exercise may be a side thought. This is especially true if you have things you’d rather devote your off-the-clock time to, such as streaming or content creation.

However, it’s very important to tie in exercise to your routine. A way to stick to that routine and keep your goals firmly in mind is an exercise plan. It’s harder to summon up the motivation to work out if your loosely-assembled plan is ‘to exercise’. When you have an exercise plan in place, you can integrate it into your routine and pursue your gaming goals without your health drastically declining due to sloth.

What Is An Exercise Plan?

Let’s start with the basics; what is an exercise plan? According to PT Direct, an exercise plan is a roadmap detailing the steps someone needs to take in order to reach their desired destination/goal. These exercise plans are often specific to your goal, so you can reach it in the most efficient fashion possible. Do you want to tone your body? Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to be able to run up 18 flights of stairs and not be out of breath? Exercise plans help you target and focus on your goal.

Through goal setting, your exercise plan can allow you to easily slot in your workouts alongside your content creation or streaming as well as to provide you with a list of items you need before you can proceed with all pistons firing. You may have created a similar list when it comes to setting up your streaming area – cameras, microphones, green screen, ergonomic chair. Creating an exercise plan lets you dive right in without distraction.

What To Include In Your Exercise Plan

So, what do you include in your exercise plan? You first want to detail your reason for getting physically active, including the long and short-term goals you have in regards to physical activity. Your goal may be to lose a bit of weight gained from gaming or streaming all day or even to get to a level of fitness that working out isn’t even an active focus in your mind, leaving more bandwidth to focus on your gaming-related career.

You will then need to focus on which activities you plan to do at the gym, whether they are more weight-focused, leaning towards high-intensity cardio, or just getting you out of the house. When creating your exercise plan, you can be as detailed or as specific as you like, specifying the duration of each individual exercise or just establishing a certain time that you’re actually going to go to the gym, yoga, or outside in general.

Finally, you can include the equipment you’ll need, where you’re going to work out, and if you’re working out with anyone in particular. Are you going to the gym to exercise with a personal trainer? Are you joining a pilates group that meets every second day at a nearby park? Are you walking your dogs twice a day? Find what exercises you enjoy doing that can help you accomplish your goal. But just remember, your exercise plan isn’t locked in and you can change it as needed.

We’ve compiled a few methods of exercise, targeted at different goals for you to take inspiration from.

Weight Loss

As gamers, streamers, or content creators, we all run the risk of putting on a few extra kilos, after all, we do tend to sit down for many hours at a time, with very few breaks. If you are aiming to shed some weight or keep it from being put on in the first place, you may wish to look into interval training, which combines high intensity and low intensity activity. For example, think about sprinting up a hill but walking back down. You burn a lot of calories through the burst while giving your body time to recover with the low-intensity activity. The best part? Your body still burns calories during your short, low-intensity sessions. Interval training doesn’t have to involve running, just any workout broken into periods of high intensity and low intensity activities.

Swimming is a great workout as it involves your entire body without any real pressure on the joints that you can encounter with running. Swimming requires you to use almost every muscle in your body, from your chest, your arms, your legs, and your core to move you through the water, for a great workout and full-body stretch; a welcome change from a more stationary lifestyle. What’s more, the simple act of propelling yourself through the water provides more resistance and a greater calorie burn.

Building Muscle

Gaming, content creation, and streaming are not only mentally taxing, but they also take a toll on the physical, which is why muscle is so important. The main function of the muscular system is to ensure easy movement and to maintain correct posture, which it does through contracting and stretching. The building up of and maintenance of your muscles can strengthen your body, prevent pain, and aid in burning extra calories. If you’re sitting at a desk or your gaming station for long periods of time, you may want to tailor your muscle workouts towards a few key areas.

When sitting in a chair, even with the most expensive, ergonomic chair on the market, you are still putting strain on your legs, hips, and back. Your muscle exercise plan can be tailored to focus on particular body zones on particular days. For example, squats are one of the best leg exercises, working your legs, thighs, glutes, and hips, which will aid in an improved posture, especially useful for long stretches of sitting. This can be combined with workouts to strengthen your back, such as deadlifts and pull-ups. The most important thing is to be wary of your limits and to not push yourself too far; you’re trying to strengthen yourself, not injure yourself.

Mental Health

It’s no great secret that working out can release endorphins that can make you feel better but the simple act of getting out of the house and being moderately active can be a great booster to your mental health. Boxing is great in regards to mental health, not only being a fantastic high-intensity cardio and muscle-building exercise but a medium for relieving tension and frustration. Whether it’s frustration at your progress as a content creator, annoyance at a lack of ideas, or just plain stress, boxing can help clear your mind and get the negativity out of your system.

But exercises for your mental health don’t have to be all high-intensity and sweaty, simple activities can slow you down, allowing you to think and get things done in the process. If you have pets, it might be nice to take them for a long walk or down to the local park to get some exercise and have some fun. You can even go for a walk alone or with friends, no agenda, just good company. Or you can even tackle some of the household chores that weigh on your mind, such as mowing the lawn or other yard work. It’ll be one less thing you have to worry about and you’ll get some light exercise done in the process.

We live in a very busy world, particularly when it comes to content creation and game streaming, where it can seem like you need to be on top of things, all the time. An exercise plan allows you to take a step back from your screen and put your health into perspective, so you can create to the best of your ability.