Gym Motivation: How To Get Motivated To Exercise With Music

One of the main ways to get motivated to go to exercise is getting pumped up through music. There is a reason most athletes listen to music before they play because playing music that gets you going releases dopamine which is the go-getter chemical for our brain.

Aside from the dopamine release music also has some other benefits that help with preventing a loss of motivation through a few different ways which I’ve went into below.

When you walk into a gym you’ll usually see a majority of people with their earbuds listening to music.

There are 3 main reasons for this.

1. Keeping the social butterflys at a distance from starting random conversations.
2. The music in the gym usually sucks unfortunately.
3. With the most important being the effect that music can have on a driving motivation for us.

Music Keeps People From Talking To You During Your Workout (Hopefully)

There are always those types of people who just love to chat and being in the gym you have very few places to run (trust me I’ve tried everything).
Having earbuds in will definitely deter people from starting starting conversations with you.

*Please note that this can be a double edged sword here. If you’re next to a good looking girl/guy that you hope to chat you up then earbuds are a huge barrier for this.

Gym Music Usually Sucks

I don’t know how many times I’ve walked into the gym and my mp3 died and the next bieber song came on in the gym and I just do a 180 and head back home. No offense bieber fans just an example.

Reasoning behind me leaving is because I know how much of a negative impact on my motivation level that music I dislike can have on my overall workout. So I usually decide to not have a crappy workout and just come back tomorrow with a fully charged mp3.

The Motivation Power That Music Provides

At last the most important tool that music provides is the sheer overall effect it has on our motivation. I like to think of music while lifting is similar to how war chants before a big battle got everyone pumped back in the day.

Despite the intimidation factor war chants meant to possess it supposedly provided a mental surge of readiness. This is the best way I can relate music effects for motivation.

Now there are tons of articles on a more detailed level of music and the brain on endorphin’s and such but I won’t go into that because I’m not knowledgeable enough in that field.

However I did find this website for you if you would like to dive deeper into that field. Here is the link for it.

Any Other Ways To Get Motivated?

If music isn’t doing the trick or maybe just not quite enough to get you to the gym then look into other options such as a pre workout supplement.

This + music is usually a great combo to not only get you to the gym but it usually gives you enough of a  boost to really push yourself to do more reps or shoot for more weight.

Overall though these are just simply tools to help you, if you’re dead set on making excuses not to go then there isn’t anything that will make you do it. It starts and ends with you but if you truly are teetering on the line then give these things a try and it may just be enough to push you in the right direction!

Thanks for reading hopefully this helped some of you out.

What Are Reps And Sets In Exercise Workouts

Man Lifting Weights

If you haven’t already you will see the words sets and reps being used a lot if you’re in the gym or reading something related to fitness.

In this article I’ll break down what are reps and what are sets for working out, along with how they differ from one another.

So if you’ve ever seen this and didn’t have a clue what these terms mean then this article is written just for you.

Sets & Reps are the foundation for how we workout and how workout routines are created. If these were not in place then people would be just going into the gym and lifting till they felt like stopping or just using the clock to determine how long to lift.

Yes, you can go into the gym and just do your own thing and not worry about sets, reps or any workout routines in general but that’s only gonna get you so far. Eventually you will need to know these terms to get the most out of your workouts.

If you truly want to know how to gain muscle a solid workout routine is a must have and sets and reps are the inner blueprints for that routine.

What Does Repetitions Aka Reps Mean In Exercise?

Reps are how many times you’ve done a specific motion.

Let’s use push ups as an example.

When you do a push up and are counting how many push ups you do, you’re counting the reps, 1 push up = 1 rep, 2 push ups = 2 reps and so on.

Now reps is a universal term in fitness so it applies pretty much everywhere so don’t attache push up to the word rep, that was just an example here.

If you’re doing something like curls curling all the way up and back down to the starting position is 1 rep, don’t curl up and count 1 then lower it down and think that is 2.

I’m not sure why anyone would count this way but I just wanted to clarify to help prevent any confusion.

What Does Sets Mean In Exercise?

A set is how many cycles of the reps you do or are planning to do.

Going to use push ups here again as our example. Let’s say you plan on doing 25 push ups without stopping but you want to do 100 push ups overall. You have laid out that you want to do 4 sets of push ups at 25 reps per set.

Now you do your first 25 push ups and take a quick break for water. You’ve finished 1 set and now have 3 more sets of push ups left to do to hit your goal mark of 100.

Note this, you take a break in between sets, as in you don’t do all 100 push ups without stopping and say hey I did all my sets of push ups. What you did here was actually 1 set of 100 push ups.

Sets are laid out in workout routines to help you keep a stop, go, stop, go pattern to help you be able build muscle.

Another note here is when I say take a break in between sets, I mean 1 minute to 1 1/2 minute max between sets. You want to give your muscles a slight break but not to much, I’ll get more into that in another article.

You do not take a break in between reps, they are continuous until you hit your designated number you’re aiming for.

Hopefully this has helped clear up any confusion you may have had between these two.

How Many Reps And Sets Per Workout To Build Muscle

There is no magic number here when trying to determine how many sets and reps to choose for your workout. This is because everyone responds differently but there are some muscles that tend to respond better with certain workouts which I’ll be gladly covering here.

Something to remember is you never want to stay with the same rep/set type of routine for very often ( I change every 3 months) or your body adjusts to it, which means less muscle gains.

The reps/sets is key to what makes a workout routine effective and there is so many fitness sites out there that post their workout routines in great detail for others to use as a blueprint.

I recommend getting a routine, either printing it out or looking at it on your phone and follow it to the tee for at least 3 weeks to see how your body is responding to it.

Are High Reps Light Weight Or Low Reps Heavy Weight Reps Best For Triceps?

low reps or high reps for tricep growth
The triceps are probably the most complicated muscle, not because they’re hard to grow but having 3 different sections of the triceps make it a more commitment to get all 3 worked out properly.

Most people don’t realize that there are 3 different heads to the triceps and if they do they usually think that any triceps exercise workouts all areas of the triceps which unfortunately isn’t the case.

So what about the reps ranges?

Long Head Triceps: Generally long head triceps grow better with heavy weight low reps (4-8 reps).

Lateral Head Triceps: The Lateral Head varies greatly per person but most tend to notice better results with high reps (12-18 reps) low weight.

Medial Head Triceps: Lastly the medial head tends to get good reaction to a mix of both both heavy/light weight & high/low reps. Super sets work great for this muscle.

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Best Male | Female Fitness Youtubers Channels 2019

fitness youtubers

I’ve decided to put together a list of the top male & female fitness youtubers.

I’ll be breaking this article up into two sections: One for men & other for women.

Also if you stick around to the end, I’ll explain what I think about fitness youtubers in general.

Women Fitness Youtubers

Nikki Blackketter

First up we have of the Nikki Blackketter, who was one of the first female YouTube fitness channels I started watching when I was first getting into the gym.

She has grown to be one of the most popular fitness channels that you can find for women.

Dana Linn Bailey

Dana Linn Bailey or DLB has a YouTube channel that is closing in on 400k subs at the time of writing this.

You can find her & her husband Rob Bailey hitting the gym together in a lot of videos.

Major props to Rob for the music that you find in a lot of her videos!

Heidi Somers

Heidi Somers is very similar to Nikki Blackketter in terms of their channels in my opinion.

I’m not 100% up to date on the drama but as from the backstory of what I do know is that Nikki Blackketter was dating Christian Guzman who then started dating Heidi after they broke up.

This was actually a pretty huge thing for a lot of people so just wanted to give some sort of info on it.

Aside from that she has a big following with 540k subscribers on YouTube.

Men Fitness YouTubers

Christian Guzman

Christian Guzman is one of the biggest in the Fitness industry amongst YouTube with over 750k YouTube subscribers.

He also has his own gym, along with having his hand in other fitness entrepreneur type stuff.

He’s also the one I mentioned above with having the drama going on (past tense I think) when he was dating Nikki/Heidi (not at the same time).

You can read about it above under Heidi Somers.

Elliott Hulse

Elliott Hulse is a much different type of fitness YouTubers than most on this list.

Instead of competing, trying to get shredded he is more heavy lifting & motivational speaking/coaching type of videos.

He does a lot of videos where he basically just vlogs the entire time, where he’ll answer questions people have submitted to him, which is really cool.

Steve Cook

Steve Cook has become a big name in the fitness world in such a short time.

Unlike most of the people I mentioned here, Steve became well known before starting his YouTube channel.

With that being said he does put in a lot of work on his channel & it has grown to be a great resource for lifting/nutrition.

Bradley Martyn

I can’t do a fitness youtuber list & not have Bradley Martyn on it.

His channel has over 1 million subs & he pumps out videos (no pun intended) very often.

He gives a lot of tips that can be seem small like grip placement for example, but it can make world of a difference in your workout.

Calum Von Moger

In one of our recent articles we talked about Calum Von Moger.

This bodybuilder has surged in popularity in the past few years, with that he has made the most out of it with starting his own supplement brand, clothing apparel & putting out videos on his YouTube.