Prepare Your Body For Anything, And You'll Find It's Capable Of Everything

When you build a baseline level of fitness, your body is versatile enough to meet any new challenge. Working out multiple times a week, gives your muscles a break between sessions, and focuses on building your core. You don't have to kill yourself, but when you walk into that weight room you have to be ready to work. By following these examples and preparing your body for all kinds of work, you'll be able to achieve anything: You can grow bigger and stronger or be lighter and leaner; you can boost your athleticism and improve your overall conditioning. Here's how.

Start Small

Anybody can be fit but you have to be patient. Give your body some time to adjust. If you're just starting (or restarting), take on reasonable goals, that way you won't overwork your body, and you'll be inspired by early successes. Here's a good starting workout: Choose three exercises for your body's major muscle groups (try the squat, dead lift, and lunge for your lower body, for example), and do them once a week for 4 weeks. Start with 2 sets of 8 to 12 repetitions, and aim to improve your performance each week in every exercise, by adding either reps or weight. When you've reached your goals, reset them and make them harder. After 4 weeks, switch things around. Try new exercises or change the order in which you do them. Add a third set to each exercise. Each week, aim to improve your performance and add difficulty.

Embrace Unsteadiness

Stick to the basics: free weights, no belt. Your body should be able to control what you do Without a belt or spot, you have to focus on keeping your midsection tight and your lower back in its natural position (slightly arched) throughout the entire range of motion of each repetition. Not only is this a safer way to lift (provided you're not overloading your weight), but it also turns every exercise into a core exercise, adding strength and endurance to your mid body muscles.

Amp Up Your Reps

Do plenty of exercises with typical rep ranges but occasionally challenge yourself with a monster: For one move, choose an ambitious goal-50 to 60 reps, say-and do as many sets as it takes to reach it. On each set, stop only when you can't perform another rep with good form. Then rest and do another. Taking each set to the limit forces you to push yourself harder, which increases the size and work capacity of your muscles. Do this at the start of your workout, when you're fresh. If done properly, it should be the hardest thing you do that day. You can try it with body-weight exercises like pushups or dips, or with any traditional gym exercise. Start with a weight you can lift at least 15 times in one shot. Typically that's about 65 percent of your I-rep max. So if your best-ever squat is 210 pounds, you can probably do 15 reps with 135.

Lift Lighter and Better

The weight you use is less important than how you use it. Too many people in the gym just sling weight around. You can accomplish more if you squeeze the reps out in perfect form, instead of going big and trying to kill it every Anybody can be fit, but you have to be patient. Give your body sometime to adjust. time. Next time you're in the gym, try this: On one of your favorite exercises, drop the weight by 5 to 10 pounds-but do the same number of reps you always do. The lighter weight gives you more control, so lift the weight slowly and steadily and focus on the intensity of your muscle contractions at the end of every lift. Even with less weight, it should feel more difficult than a typical set.

Play Anything

You've heard it before: If you always do the same exercises and the same number of reps, your improvements plateau. Worked hard to avoid that by trying new moves and challenging yourself with different amounts of weight. Also goes a step further and takes your workouts outside the gym. Finding other ways to stay active is a good idea, no matter what you do: Every time you learn a new sport or skill, you make your body more versatile and widen the scope of physical feats you can achieve.

Pitch in with hours of manual labor. It's an incredible workout, especially in the summer when it's, like, 100-plus degrees and humid. That's sweat equity right there.