Have you ever heard anyone say that they workout because they want to get mediocre results? Heck no! We all want to get fitter, faster, stronger or better looking. In order to achieve these goals, we have to work out the right way.
Here are five workout tips to get better results while you’re at the gym.
1. Prevent Soreness and Injury with Stretching
Before you workout, it is advisable to get your body temperature up and to get the blood flow pulsing through your body. Start your session with five minutes of low intensity cardio before moving on to light stretching. Continue to stretch during your workout and afterwards to minimize the buildup of lactic acid and injury.
2. Isolate Specific Body Parts Once Per Week
If you are looking to get stronger and more powerful, isolating a body part and focusing on it one day a week should be enough. If you target the same areas multiple times a week and use intense training, you can suffer from overtraining. Stick to high weight and low reps and avoid overuse.
For example, you can work out your abs, chest, shoulders and triceps on a Monday, your hamstrings, glutes, quads and calves on Wednesday, and your back, biceps and abs on Friday (abs are ok to work out more than once a week).
3. Pay Attention to Form
You ever see the dude on the bench press whose back is arched like a rainbow as he finishes his set? This is no good and won’t help him get stronger or faster. Emphasize your reps by concentrating on the concentric (lifting the weight) and eccentric (lowering the weight) aspects of the repetition. The less jerky or cheating tactics you use in your workouts the better results you’ll get.
4. Perform Reps to Muscular Fatigue
Rather than approaching a machine or weight room thinking that you’ll go in and do a specific number of reps, understand that you’ll get better results if you perform reps until you hit muscle fatigue. Maintain good form and go through your reps until you can no longer complete them.
5. Mix up Your Workout Routine
If you are working out frequently and feel as if you have reached a plateau, this means that your current routine has likely lost some efficiency. To avoid these workout plateaus, mix up your workout with new exercises. You can do simple things like change the angle of the bench press, switch the order of your workout routine, or find new challenges altogether. If you are unsure what direction to take, consider doing a session with a personal trainer so that you have someone to bounce ideas off of who is taking your results into consideration.
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