How a Reliable Partner Will Help You Lead a Healthy Life
Achieving happiness in life is a journey of a thousand miles, but the most important question is not what to do to be happy – it’s how to make the first step. One of the best ways to feel happy every single day is to work out, and it could be even better if you included someone in your workout sessions. Here’s why a good fitness partner is irreplaceable.
Pushing Harder
Wanting to succeed simply isn’t enough and you can’t lose weight, build muscles or fix your posture just by going to the gym. In order to make actual progress, you’ll have to work hard, which can be challenging if you’re feeling down. This is precisely where a good workout buddy comes in handy.
Having someone by your side is helpful on several levels. You can engage in a friendly competition, push each other harder, make sure you don’t get hurt and inspire one another to do more. You can’t understand the value of encouragement until you’ve really experienced it, but, when compared to working out alone, being a part of a training pair makes a huge difference.
New Exercises
There are a lot of exercises you can perform only if you have a partner. These differ from the usual moves you are used to, which makes them more beneficial. Working on all parts of your body is vital, and some of these partner exercises will engage areas you often ignore when working out alone.
The most helpful partner trainings include variations of the exercises you already do and love, so the adaptation to this change is not something drastic. You can update your regular sit-ups by passing the ball to your friend, and instead of those boring push-ups, try doing wheelbarrow push-ups and squats that will result in a much better workout.
Better Results
Speaking of results, it’s been scientifically proven that partnering up with someone at the gym makes more sense than doing everything alone. Most people, when working out with gym buddies, put in more effort than usual and take less breaks because they don’t want to be the weaker link. Therefore, it’s only natural that their intensity is much higher, which, consequently, results in a more visible outcome.
However, you don’t have to beg anyone to join you at the gym and search high and low for a friend who’ll accompany you. If that’s a problem, just train alongside a virtual partner instead and don’t worry too much. This could even be a more beneficial option, as a 2011 study claims.
Keeping the Score
Now, if you really want to upgrade your gym experience, rely on technology. Although some people don’t like apps that track their performance and count their calories, they can’t deny their usefulness. If you choose a trustworthy body tracker app, you’ll start noticing improvements after just a few training sessions.
What these helpful apps actually do – besides measuring your performance and keeping score – is boost your motivation, show daily improvement, provide feedback and show what you’ve accomplished during each training. All of this will eventually make you train even harder, which is always a good thing. That’s why these apps are among the most effective workout partners you could find and something that will definitely help you on your path to a healthy life.
Other Perks
Apart from these, making friends, having more fun and being able to share your success with someone are just some of the other benefits of partnering up at the gym. Even if you haven’t done this before, try it – you might like it!