What if I don’t like it? What if it doesn’t work for me? What if I get injured? There are a lot of what ifs when it comes to health and fitness. My best suggestion is to experiment and try new things. If an exercise doesn’t feel right, for example, you might need to adjust the weight, your form or simply not do it at all. And that’s okay. Of the thousands of different exercises there is not one that you absolutely have to do to reach your goals. Having a variety of exercises in your workout arsenal, however, gives you more choices and allows you to be creative with your workouts.

A few years ago, I was at a fitness club warming up when a friend walked by. I asked him what his routine was for the day. He told me and asked if I’d like to join him. I said sure, but I’d do it at my pace. Jack is 15 years younger than me and is a kickboxer. Let’s just say I lasted less than 30 minutes. The shear volume of repetitions was amazing. We were doing resistance exercises and took no breaks between sets. It combined both anaerobic and aerobic exercises. At the time, I had not trained this way and it was a real eye-opener. Working out with Jack taught me that there was room for improvement, and in addition, reminded me to vary my work outs. Lesson learned.

Here’s another example of experimenting. My brother came out to visit a couple weeks ago, and we played tennis several times. On the first day we practiced with two demo racquets from The Tennis Shop. What a great experience! Each racquet affected our game differently. One racquet gave us more control while another more power. Not only could we see and feel our own shots, but each other’s as well. So we alternated racquets every 10 minutes to make comparisons. On another day, we played with two different racquets. Ken immediately fell in love with the Volkl Organix 10. His shots were clean and accurate. I preferred the Prince EXO Rebel and it was obvious to the both of us with my first forehand. So be willing to try things. Experiment. And remember with any new exercise or equipment to warm up properly and start slow.