10 Ways To Boost Your Workout For Greater Results - Part 1
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20/12/2018
Written By: Ryan Chan |
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Everyone wants to be fit and look a certain way but after weeks or months of training, things just aren’t progressing the way you want. So how can we make the most out of our workout?
Here are 10 ways on how you can effectively boost your workout for greater results.
Here are 10 ways on how you can effectively boost your workout for greater results.
1. Keep A Log Book
Keeping track of your workout routine, be it digitally or in hard-copy, which includes the weight you use, repetitions and sets, allows you to visually see and plan your progress. It also acts as a reminder, especially on your “bad days”, to push yourself to reach at least the intensity level of your previous workout or if not, more intense. The main goal when you enter the gym is to beat your previous workout to achieve constant stimulation for your body to grow and adapt. However, that cannot be done if you don’t even remember how much weight you used, how many repetitions and sets you did or even the exercises you did previously. So start keeping track of your workout and aim to out-perform your previous workout be it by weight use, repetitions, sets or even rest time.
2. Pre-Plan Your Workout
Planning what are the exercises that you are going to do and at what intensity before a session allows you to have a clear goal when you work out as well as the awareness of your program efficiency and how your body reacts to it. This enables you to refine your workout program in the future, based on your experience, to achieve better results. I do understand that most people skip this step mainly due to the unexpected demand of certain equipment which results in you not able to complete your planned workout in sequence. However, you will be surprise at how most of the gym-goers are really friendly and if you were to ask politely to share the equipment and practice proper gym ethics, there is no reason for them to reject you. After all, it’s meant to be shared. Subsequently, you can also skip to your next planned exercise and come back to the previous one after the demand subsides.
3. Do The Compound First
It is often recommended to do exercises that includes multiple muscle groups and joints first, aka compound exercises, mainly due to the energy required to perform them as well as the safety aspect. These exercises require a large amount of energy to perform due to the amount of muscle group involvement as well as a greater intensity which you would be able to perform at as compared to an isolated exercise thus would be best to tackle them when you are at your freshest during a workout session. Subsequently after you are fatigue from the compound exercises, you can always finish off your workout with isolated exercises to greater fatigue muscle groups which might not have been recruited as much during the compound exercises and burn off remaining energy in a safe manner.
4. Work On Your Weaknesses First
If you have a good grasp on your body’s strengths and weaknesses, a good tactic to improve those weaknesses is to start your workout targeting your them first as you would have the most energy to perform those exercises at a higher intensity to stimulate them better for growth.
5. Use Different Repetition Ranges
This point has often been explained very generally as one would want to train a muscle more holistically thus varying different repetition ranges would help to achieve all 4 key aspects of muscle growth which are power, strength, hypertrophy and endurance. Diving deeper down on a more scientific aspect, all our muscles contain mainly 2 types of muscle fibres – Type I which are slim and long in general and have high endurance, and Type II which give us greater power and strength and are larger in size compared to the Type I. Thus from the different muscle fibre’s properties and the fact that ALL muscles contain both Type I and II fibres, you would now understand the importance of using different repetition ranges to bring out the full potential of your muscles.
For your general information, the different repetition ranges for different types of training is shown below.
For your general information, the different repetition ranges for different types of training is shown below.
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10 Ways To Boost Your Workout For Greater Results - Part 2
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