Get off Your Couch!

By Staff Report
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Updated: January 17, 2015

By Jason Aaron Baca – If you read this article word for word, then one thing could be possible, you can change your body starting right now. The purpose of this article is to make it so that when you’ve finished reading this you’ll be practically jumping off your couch.

I remember as a teenager going to the movies with my dad. He took me to see Rocky IV. I remember seeing the giant Russian Ivan Drago and seeing the body he had on him. As a kid I thought to myself, “Someday when I grow up, I’m going to be just like that guy” He had it all, the body, the confident look, the attitude that said I’m the best. And when it came time for the big workout scene towards the end of the movie before the big fight I wanted to be like Drago. Stallone was in good shape too but my mind was gripped on the Russian. I wondered when the day would come when I could look like that.

Watching this movie would forever change the way I looked at health and exercise. It would stay planted in my brain that that’s the body I would have in my later years. For some reason an ordinary body just wasn’t good enough for me.

Find and fulfill your destiny! If you reached for this magazine at the bookstore then chances are you want to have a nice body. Maybe you want to make some muscles to show your girlfriend that you can still look the way you did when you first met her. Or maybe you are single and want to walk around the beach like you are the king of the world or maybe just turn a head or 2. Whatever the case is, exercise is good for you. Weather or not your muscles respond to lifting weights it will do you more benefit then harm.

As I was saying about the ordinary lifestyle and how I can’t stand it. I was always one of those little boys in the passenger seat driving to school with my Mom. She’s always catching my eyes lighting up when I’d see a Ferrari or Lamborghini drive by. Anything “Out of the Ordinary” was fascinating to me. The minds that grow rich are the minds that think outside the box. The minds that wonder what it would be like if I had this.

So you are sitting on your couch right now, reading this magazine. Let’s say you have a vision of wanting to get a ripped body. How do you do this? The first step of course is to find photos of a roll model you have in the fitness arena. That person may be here in this magazine. There are a lot of people I have found in exercise magazines that I wanted to look just like that I’d clip photos from and paste them to a large paper. I’d keep track of those body types so that I can recall what I want to look like on the low, drowsy days.

Let’s say you’ve already had a gym membership and have just been paying but not attending so you decide after reading this, you are going straight back in. When you arrive the employees have a shocked look on their faces. Not because you are buffed but because you’ve gained a lot of .Lbs since the last time they’d seen you. You can tell they said something about your weight as you walked away. That’s okay. That should be encouragement for you to get in shape all the more.

Now’s the easy part. Workout for 1 full hour. Concentrate on doing 1 of these 4 workout routines.

– Chest & Triceps

– Shoulders

– Back/Biceps

– Legs

After 1 hour is completed, get on a treadmill or stair climber for 15 minutes for your cardio. If you are lucky enough to have a swimming pool at your gym, do swimming for 15 minutes. I always like to swim because you use muscles that aren’t used in everyday life. Unfortunately, not many gyms have a pool and if they do, they are crowded and you have to fight for a lane.

Now comes the hard part. The next day you will wake up out of bed and will feel odd sore sensations all over your body. The aches and pains will feel horrible at first. Don’t feed into them. The sore stage will eventually go away after a couple of weeks then as long as you maintain your muscles, you won’t get that all the time unless you really crank out a workout one day. I remember my baseball coach in college telling me that it usually takes about 4 workouts on that particular muscle before the soreness ends. That means you have to stick with it.

I actually love the feeling of being sore because it means I hit the weights hard the day before. It means progress! When I go to the gym I strive to “Make myself sore” by trying to squeeze out a couple more reps. I strive for it but it rarely occurs now.

I’d have to say about 50% of the people that go to the gym and feel the soreness the next day will end it right there. “No More for Me” they’ll say. Why put my body through all this? They might add.

Hey this is what separates the guys that have good bodies from those that don’t. The guys that come up with excuses never last. They go back to their homes, head hung low and give in to a small mind. If they were to just allow their brain to imagine what things would be like on the other side of the mountain once they get past the soreness they’d probably start getting a better view of their goals. They may actually start to believe in themselves when they start looking in the mirror at home and see some muscles starting to pop up that they never had before.

All this stuff takes is just some adjustments of the mind. Why is it that one guy weighing 200lbs can bench press 225lbs. for 8 reps while the other guy weighing the same weight has the weight come smashing down on his chest? It takes time to get to that level but the first guy can do the lift no problem because he knows in his mind that he can do it. He’s already seen it happen. He has already convinced himself its possible. When I first started lifting weights I wanted to get strong. I started out at 135lbs. on bench but couldn’t get past the 225lbs barrier. Then one time a guy told me to sit on the bench and he’d put the weight on and spot me. I didn’t know how much he was putting on and so when it came time to lift I did 4 reps.

After putting the weight back I turned around and saw that I had just lifted 240lbs.! So not only did I get past my barrier, I went past it.

Remember, if you think you can, you can. From that moment on, I could lift 225lbs. no problem. It was no longer a limit to me anymore, it was just a milestone I surpassed.

If you are striving to get stronger in the gym like I was in my 20s that was a good technique that my friends and I used to help one another get past limitations and gain strength.

Those goes I had back then have changed to what I’m after now. Now I want the ripped, toned look. I am after a hard body that is well defined with good separation. Sometimes achieving good separation is equally as hard as getting stronger, if not harder. It can prove harder because now you must involve good diet with lots of protein and low fat and carbohydrates. Choosing to go this route also means that workouts are a little harder. Sure protein feeds the muscles and ushers in solid muscle but you also will get a weaker workout a lot of the time.

Without all those fats and carbs included in your diet you can feel lethargic if you go too hard all the time. The dense fats can usually push you through that last rep or 2 in your workout but if it goes unused or you don’t workout hard enough it gets stored in the belly. There is nothing worse then having great arms, shoulders, chest & legs but then having a belly too.

Those Strongest Man contests have guys that can carry a cow across a football field or lift a full keg of beer up a mountain using only their fingertips. Yes these guys are stronger then any creature I’ve seen. I’d think a Grizzly Bear would back down to some. But their body styles are not ripped. They have the big strong body for those types of contests. If you want that kind of body, I’m not the gym to teach you those techniques. This article is not for you.

I am a model and strive to have an ideal body. One that won’t intimidate someone or make it so people better listen to what I have to say or else! Greg Plitt is a good example of today’s ideal body. I believe a guy like this has set the bar for the majority of exercise enthusiasts. Whenever I start feeling good about myself or satisfied, I look at some of his photos and realize I have some serious training I need to do if I want that good of a body. I am pretty sure that he too has a roll model that he looks at photos of too and says “Man I’d do anything to have a body like this guy” and that guy does the same and so on and so on.

The moral of this story is in order to get motivated you have to have something visual to stimulate the mind. When you get stimulated enough, get to that gym of yours. If you get tired there, hey take a deep breath and count to 20. You can have a good body like that other guy you just have to not give into anything. From this moment on you have it in your mind that you will in fact look like him in 1 year. You will have it because you are going to eat a high protein diet, you are going to drink plenty of spring water and you are going to lift weights until your arms feel like they are falling off.

And at night you are going to dream about what all the people in your family are going to say to you when you come walking in the door at Christmas. You are going to dream about going to your high school reunion and seeing everyone else fat and out of shape while you are ripped and tan.

Make this a fun and rewarding experience for yourself.

For more information on Jason , visit http://jasonaaronbaca.deviantart.com

Photos courtesy of Jason Aaron Baca