Establishing a consistent exercise routine is the key to long-term fitness success. Starting with simple habits like daily 20-minute walks can create a solid foundation for physical health. Over time, gradually increasing intensity, duration, or incorporating bodyweight exercises can help build strength and endurance. Prioritizing time for movement in your schedule ensures consistency, which is far more effective than aiming for perfection right away.

Proper form is essential to prevent injury and maximize results. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced gym-goer, seeking guidance from a trainer or workout partner can ensure exercises are performed correctly. Consistency in showing up, even for light workouts, is more important than intensity, as it builds momentum toward better health and wellness.

Highlights of the Podcast

00:04 – Introduction

01:11 – Building Habits Over Distance

02:24 – Progressive Workouts

03:27 – Prioritizing Time for Health

04:54 – Form Over Intensity

06:06 – Accountability and Spotting

07:25 – Consistency Beats Perfection

08:42 – Relearning Correct Techniques

09:50 – Learning from Experts

11:16 – Upcoming Podcasts and Resources

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:00:04] All right. So somebody once asked me where I was, like, where do you come up with all the ideas for what you’re going to talk about? I’m like, It’s just what’s happening around me. And so today I do the TV interview at 630 in the morning on walking 10,000 steps. So. That’s why we’re talking about walking 10,000 steps now. I’ve got a TV interview on that that the FDA later. So we’re really talking about the FDA tomorrow. We’ll say sorry when we talk about, you know, getting started with exercise, one of the most important things that we do is just start moving. You know, people I talk to people all the time who are exercising at all and they’re like, I’m going to go to gym for an hour every day. And I’m like, no, you’re not. Like, if you if you can do it, that’s amazing. Like, that’s fantastic. I love it. We can build on that. I love it. However, a lot of people aren’t there. And so what we usually start with is like, hey, let’s just start making, you know, the movements we can make. So like go outside and walk for 20 or 30 minutes. Do it every day. Here’s the cool thing about the do it everyday thing. What we’re trying to do is the 10,000 steps are fantastic. That’s great. Yeah. But what we’re trying to do is establish a habit.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:01:11] And the reason we’re trying to establish a habit is if you’re like, look, every day between 430 and 5 30 or 4, 436 and 630, like we find a time in the day, right? 830 in the morning, 6:00 in the morning doesn’t matter. But we find a time in the day and we’re like, we’re going to walk 20 minutes every day and you walk 20 minutes every day and you stick to that habit. You stick to that goal. You stick to that that slot in your calendar and you do for 20 minutes. Great. Why don’t you walk a little faster? Like, how many houses did you get by? Or how many meters did you go or how many feet? How we want to measure it. Like, how far did you go? Trying to go 10% more in the same amount of time. Try to go 10% more this and on time. And then you say, hey, do you have do you have ten more minutes you can give me like you give me 20. That’s amazing. Can I get 30? Yeah. All right, cool. I can. I can, you know, I can make it work in five minutes earlier. Five minutes late. Boom. 30 minutes. Perfect. Right now, we’re working out 30 minutes a day, and then we can start being like, Hey, yeah, dirty boxes or, like, little walls or anything you got around you. Yeah. All right, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to walk for 20 minutes again. But when you come back, I want you to do five single, like, squats or ten bodyweight squats or here’s we’re going to.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:02:24] And so you can slowly build up because, again, the most important thing we do is find the time because we can establish the habit of I work out at this time, we can take a I barely walk to I need to run balls out for 25 minutes. Deal. You can walk all the way up the thing. Right? Okay. Hey, now it’s 30 minutes, you know, Can you give me 45? Yeah, man, I feel pretty good. Yeah. Let’s do this. Like, now. Let’s incorporate weights. Now let’s incorporate bodyweight exercises that incorporate different stretches and yoga function. And like, we can build up all the things as long as we get the time. And so that’s the most important piece. You can talk about this from the mindset angle. You can talk about this from however you want to, but if you’re like, I want my health and wellness to go in a different direction, bang, the very first thing I do is you got to figure out in your head, When can I do this on my calendar and write it down and then move things around and get this in there because this is how we prioritize things, right? You know, if you’re like, Hey, it’s really important to be like, why do you wake up at 4 a.m.? Don’t you value sleep? I do. I love sleep. But you know what? I have questions and I need to research. And I have that. That’s my thing. And so I got to figure that out.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:03:27] So I prioritize that time in my in my day from 4 to 6 to do research, you know, whether it’s, you know, you know, doing continuing educational videos in Washington, much of watching that stuff and Jordan Peterson’s, you know, academy right now like psychology stuff and it’s fantastic fascinating. And I do other research than me because I prioritize that time to do it. And then, you know, between 1240 and 245, I work out because I prioritize that time to do it. Like, what do you do today? Well, it’s Tuesday of noon chest, you know, so but it doesn’t matter because the prioritize the time I can do a different workout. I can do whatever I want to I could you know, however I want to work up, but I prioritize the time for it. And so that’s the most important piece you want to get going. Now, the second piece, once you prioritize that time, is obviously the most important because you know how to walk and you can at least walk the next most important piece. And people blaze through this one all the time, especially guys who, you know, I worked out a lot in high school, so I have to go back to the gym. Great. Do go back to the gym. Do so at that time. Right. First most important thing is like, I want to make sure I’m beating that horse to death. Like that’s make the time that the most important thing we do after that is we make sure we’re doing the exercises we’re doing right. You know, form is super hypercritical to building the muscle you want, not damaging your body, strengthening your body in a functional manner that’s going to keep you moving for the rest of your times.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:04:54] So you really need to make sure your form is really, really good. And so what you want to do is you want to find a trainer or a lifting partner who really knows what they’re doing and can walk you through from a form standpoint. Like you could walk in and be like, I want to do flies. I like to like when I work with people, I give them exercises like videos of me doing exercises on the app and so they can be like, okay, here’s some stuff I should do. Here’s the thing. Even if I gave you those exercises, it would be highly beneficial that you go get a trainer to like, Hey, I’m going to do these exercises the charmers gave me, make sure I’m doing them right. And because if you do something wrong, it’s pretty bad. If you do it right, it’s fantastic for you. But you know, have somebody walk you through it. Like, you know, I think this is how I’m supposed to do it. Am I doing it right? And this is one of those biggest things people like, Well, I know how to do it now. I work with pro athletes who get spotters and trainers, make sure they’re doing it right. I guarantee you they know what they’re doing, too. They’ve done this for a living for a while and they still have people monitoring their form. A lot of times I will go out with listing partners like, you know, pros will take out the workout with other buddies and they’ll just going to watch each other’s form because you can’t see the things because you’re focused on lifting.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:06:06] You can’t see the things that the guy sitting next to the girl sitting next to you can see and be like to put your pelvis forward, You know, don’t lock your knees, turn your feet in like all this, Like, look up, man, Like all those things. And I think the thing that’s taught me this more than anything is trying to watch my kids workout. So what I do in the morning is I workout with my kids. But what we’re really do, we’re not really working out. What we’re doing is I’m establishing functional patterns, I’m establishing form. I’m making sure they do the exercises right. That’s the most important thing you can do. And so that’s how I start off. All of my young kids and all of my everybody, I’m like, Yeah, you got to make sure you’re moving, right? I want you move moving, but I want you to move. And right for the vast majority of people, just start moving. Then we’ll work on the moving, right? Because you’re going to work on moving right for the rest of your life. People ask me all the time, like you do the same workout all the time. How do you keep from being bored? Because I’m focusing 100% on how I’m doing the exercise. Is my elbow pinned down? Is my pinky coming up enough and my shoulder coming down? You know, like it’s my back swing or my arms. I do fly as my arms come up at the same point. Are they are they uneven? Yeah. So there’s a lot of things that are in that. That’s how, you know, you get through exercises that are repetitive, doing the same thing for six months or a year. But that’s one of those big things.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:07:25] So if you guys are like, I’m going to get back in the gym, do it like, and I don’t care if you get I talk all this all the time. I’m like, If you make, if you’ll just go to the gym, I don’t care if you fall asleep on the bench. I don’t care if you have to check some emails while you’re there. If you’re like, I’m going to be at the gym between time and time, be great. I can’t get you to work out at the gym if you’re not at the gym. So go to the gym, get there, have trashy, stupid, silly workouts, walk on a treadmill for whatever. Just do whatever you can do to just kind of get moving. Then we’ll accelerate the function from there. But like I said, like once you’ve kind of got in the habit of I’m going to be here, you need to invest in your trainers, you need to invest in somebody like watch you go through things even if you think you know, because, you know, here’s the thing. Especially I’m going to talk about, you know, guys in my my bubble, right. Like we learned to workout from our high school football coaches. Right. And here’s the thing. Some of our high school football coaches weren’t the very best at it. They didn’t they didn’t really know the form. They didn’t really know the exercises we needed to use. And that’s that’s for sure, a thing. And on the other side, some of us had really great coaches who knew exactly what they were doing and were phenomenal educators.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:08:42] And what they’re supposed to do. Having said that, if you knew something really, really well, five, ten, 15, 20 years ago and you haven’t used it, you’re going to get fuzzy on it. That’s one, too. Even if they taught you how to do it really well, and then they walked away and you didn’t have somebody there knowing what you were doing to instill those motor habits. You might not have done it on a percent the way they thought. They taught you how to do it, but you thought you were. So getting somebody to kind of check your form and check that type of stuff on a regular basis is a really, really good idea. Which is one of the reasons why I like when I go and I visit places like I went out to Vegas to hang out with two of the things I was doing, the cannabis deals. I called Max West and he’s a who’s a bikini pro and world champion. Bikini Pro. Sorry. And we worked out together. And it was it was kind of fun to have somebody, you know, kind of critique and kind of like tweak on that one. And she’s she’s fantastic. So, you know, a lot of times that’s why you talked to you see videos of like Jay Cutler and Arnold, and they’re always working out with like other pros. And you’re like, they just, like, hang out together. Well, yeah.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:09:50] But the other thing is, is that they need those guys in there to help them work out. That’s why we do it. Like, you know, to motivate and to like, you’re doing this wrong and like, Hey, man, you broke your form here. You need to drop your way. Like, that’s why they’re there. And so getting a trainer every once in awhile to walk you through stuff is really, really important. So I’ve got a couple of trainers. We’re going to do some podcast with in a couple days. But, you know, and when we’re going to start putting these up, probably tomorrow, maybe Thursday, don’t call me tomorrow on the website. And so you just go to children’s morningstar.com or pillars of Wellness started by taking the same place and going to blog. And then under blog there’s in the news and there’s podcasts, do the podcasts, and that’s where they’re going to be. So we’ve got we already done. Brendan six and we’ll post those like I said, tomorrow or seven, I’ve got 5 or 6 other people that were writing today. So if you guys, if there’s anything we’ve done to Dennis I’m sorry, to pediatricians, dentists, mental health specialists. Steve Scott We’ve done Lou for an LP and today we’re doing yesterday we did a Dr. Camille Reagan who’s like a world renowned Cairo buddy of mine and she’s a fantastic works on, you know, pro athletes. And it’s always fun to talk to people who do you know who we do the same type of stuff.

Dr. Matt Chalmers [00:11:16] So it’s like, what do you do with this? And so that was a very, very fun, lively podcast, but we’ll get those guys up soon. So check those out. We’ll tell you guys more about it as it goes along. But we’ll email you guys if you’re on our email list. But so that’s what kind of that is. Get yourself a good trainer if you guys need to figure out how to find one, that’s what the podcast is going to be with summer trainers. If not, I’ll go over that myself. But you know, that’s the big thing is you’ve got to find somebody to really watch your form and they don’t need to be there. Like you’re not sending for 75 training sessions, you know, 4 or 5 training sessions to get you where you want to go. Because like I got going to do Leg Day, watch that. And I do arm do I watch that, you know, And so kind of go through and just make sure you do what you’re supposed to. But finding a good trainer is a really, really important piece of this whole thing. So. All right. Talk to you guys later. See you tomorrow. Don’t know what we’re talking about. Like I said, we’ve got to segment to the doing to the FDA. So if it’s FDA tomorrow, don’t be shocked. All right. Thanks for your time.

As always if you have any questions, please send them to [email protected]

Check out Chalmers Pillarsofwellness.com for Wellness updates! And ask me any questions you have at [email protected]. I answer all of them and look forward to hearing from you.

The Chalmers Wellness Stubstack just launched. Comment, Like, and Interact with other people on their wellness journey. Communities can make a difference.     DrChalmers.substack.com

Dr. Matt Chalmers

Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only. Before taking any action based on this information you should first consult with your physician or health care provider. This information is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health providers with any questions regarding a medical condition, your health, or wellness