First Step: Exercise

Lifting weights and being strong, fast or lean is super sexy. However, that's not where we start. We must start from a place of planning because the human body is a complex piece of living, mechanical machinery, and doing things improperly or without rhyme or reason can cause your "body-machine" to function poorly or worse than before you stepped foot in the gym. The first step of exercise is planning or goal setting.If you walk up to a personal trainer or exercise "enthusiast" and they ask you about your goals, and your answer is vague and not specific, it's going to be a crap-shoot of if they can help you or not. People want to see results in the things that are important to them. For instance, let's take "Ryan" and "Jennifer". Ryan wants to get bigger arms and a six-pack. Jennifer wants to lose some excess body fat, but overall maintain her current weight and body composition. These are two vastly different people, with vastly different goals. Training them the same way would probably piss one of them off. You might not, but the chances are high.

You need to be specific. You should say things like;"I want to lose 15 pounds over three months.""I want to decrease my body fat by three percent.""I want to increase my one rep maximum squat by 30 pounds.""I want to go down one pants size by May."

Things like this give your trainer an insight into the types of exercise you need to do. Whether it's heavy weight and low reps, or high reps and low weight, lots of rest, no rest, etc... All of these things are extremely important variables to consider when training or exercising. The first step of exercise is to ensure that your goals are actually realistic, attainable and specific. Going in without a plan almost guarantees less than ideal results.