Last year saw the rise to a host of fad diets, new types of workouts and crazy supplements with claims to boost weight loss and performance.
We never want to tell someone that what they are doing is bad or unnecessary, but we are quite confident in saying that the methods that work are ones that have been tried and tested.
Here are three things to forget about in 2017
Fitness Trackers
Let us not forget that the reason we are getting fit and active is so that we can lose weight, feel great and improve strength.
Fitness trackers are great in the sense that they provide some detail to your heart rate and steps in a day - but they are generally overpriced and many people stop wearing them after a couple of weeks.
In all honesty, if you asked experts in exercise physiology, they would tell you that these devices are inaccurate and don't really provide us with the information you really need, especially when weight loss if your goal.
The most accurate way to track your fitness is to actually record your training results. Grab yourself a workout tracking book from the dollar store and start writing down your workouts.
Competitive HR training
These are the workouts where you are taken through a series of exercises while strapped up to a heart rate monitor. The rationale behind this style of training is to compete with the person beside you in an effort to burn more calories, lose weight and have a higher HR.
We must say, although these workouts are a blast if you only go 1x each week, it provides you with little to no progress. This style of workout only works if its consistent, and you measure your progress along the way.
Competing with your friend to see who can achieve a higher heart rate may seem fun and engaging, but if your goal is to lose weight and build muscle traditional steady state cardio is still king.
Hot Yoga
Yoga is a great way to reconnect with your body, improve mobility and optimize your breathing. The negative components of training come with countless sessions of hot yoga training.
Hot yoga is used to increase the plasticity of muscle and ligaments - thereby allowing for greater range of motion in a particular stretch. This is great if you are doing it 1-2x a week at most but research shows that hot yoga sessions can actually limit your athletic performance - when it comes to strength activities.
With this in mind, if your goals are to lose weight, especially body fat - hot yoga could be one of the most time effective low-impact methods.
Whatever your goal; weight loss, strength, improved mobility - there are a host of ways to improve each. The most successful people in the gym are ones that stay consistent.
Training is not inherently difficult, and forgetting about past trends can be an effective way to move forward in the new year and stay consistent with the workouts that actually work - strength training and consistent cardio.