Discover 7 Secrets to Achieve a Stronger, Athletic Body

In my years of training as an athlete, I have had many experiences of friends and family asking me how I got a body like mine and I find it distracting knowing that I trained without even thinking of a a nice lean body in the first place. It just came with all that training. With some knowledge and experience, I began to understand why exactly it was so easy for myself to build a strong athletic body through these well known secrets.. 

1. Do Pull ups. Period. There was a reason why armies around the world believe that pull ups are the most effective exercise for gauging strength in the upper body for its recruits. How else could they have tested thousands upon thousands of recruits coming through its doors? It is the best compound exercise that involves the arms, traps, lats , shoulders and even your abdominals, so nothing else really beats it. If pull ups are not in your regime, you can really forget about building strength at all. Just get a pull up bar start pulling. Period!

2. Eat your greens. Eating vegetables have always been a part of my diet ever since my mum told me its good for me. Yeah and I really ate anything that looks green because I know it is good. A good balance of fruits do just well and it does help in the overall immune system. If you're not a green person, you better start now. 

3. Do not think about the outcome. It is ok to think about your goal of becoming the lean, mean, fighting machine that you want to be, but its easier if you take it one step at a time. I think you should be looking forward to creating a new experience with your body with every training that comes along so that you will feel more pumped and regenerated, looking forward to the next workout. If looking at the mirror and seeing that extra few inches is so important to you, the trouble is, it will never be enough. 

4. Do interval training, I hate it but its good. Nothing else in the world gets your body to sweat, your heart to race and your testosterone pumping than a good old interval workout. Studies have shown tremendous results in  athletes engaging in interval training for increasing VO2 Max, muscular endurance as well as just general aerobic conditioning for the fitness enthusiast. It can be done through weights, running or just about any cardiovascular activity. So what you waiting for? 

5. Get yourself out of the couch more. Move, just start moving. Do anything other than sit down. The human body is created in such a way that sitting down on a chair is the most unnatural thing to do but people do it for more than 8 hours a day. So what is the problem? When you sit down, you disengage the back muscles from doing its work, which is to stabilise the core. Your posture starts to sag and before you know it, TA DA!! Backpain! Which brings me to my next point..

6. Work your core. Stop doing crunches because they don't work. Yes of course, that's the easiest one you can do but why do easy when you know it doesn't work. There is a plethora of core exercises you can do that you can find on the internet. Wipers, L-sits, L-sit pull ups, superman, back extensions and many more. But that is harder to do you say? That's the point isn't it?

7. Have fun with friends. I think the one key ingredient to really working out and having that athletic body is really just to have a blast with your friends. Being in a team sport really makes it much easier to do this as everyone would have the similar fitness goals as you do and it makes training a whole lot more fun. Let your body experience new challenges and frontiers together with friends and you will reap the benefits as a RESULT of your efforts. 

Nothing difficult to think about really but these were really fundamentals that made me who I am today. Staying really active and getting into an atmosphere where training is fun. Give it your best shot! You really never know what your limits are until you go for it!