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Get the Most Out of Your Work Out
By Jennifer Glover
You put in the effort to go to the gym or work out at home. You wake up early or get up the energy after work and sweat your buns off. But are you making the most of your efforts? Going through the motions is one thing – but you can probably be burning more calories with some slight adjustments.
Consider the following to take your workout to the next level and not waste a second of your precious time: 1. Mind control. Think about the muscles that you’re working during the exercises. It’s surprising how much more you’ll feel the muscles working when you concentrate on the muscle that you’re targeting. If you’re just going through the motions you may just be wasting your time by burning minimal calories. It sounds simple and yes you sometimes want to avoid thinking of the ‘pain’ go get through it… but you’re there to burn calories so use that time to the max and you’ll thank yourself later. 2. Warm up, work out, then stretch out. It’s essential to warm up your muscles before working out but contrary to past information you don’t need to fully stretch out. In fact, stretching can weaken the muscles so you don’t want to stretch before strength training. An ideal work out plan would be to do a good warm up, then strength training intervals followed by cardio intervals then stretching.
The warm up should ‘warm up’ the muscles you’ll use during the work out. This means doing the exercises that you plan on doing during strength training but with much lower weight or no weights at all. For example, squats and lunges with no weight, push ups from your knees or use ¼ of the maximum weight you use for that particular exercise. You want your muscles and your body to get ‘warm’ and get used to the movements before you work them much harder. 3. Take a deep breath. Control your breath and be sure to keep breathing through the exercises. If you breath out during the ‘work’ part of the exercise then breath in during the ‘rest’ part, you may find yourself able to do more repetitions as you power through the exercises. For example, during a squat you should breathe in as you go down and breathe out as you push up. Breathing ensures your muscles get a consistent supply of oxygen so should be able to work harder for longer. 4. Intervals. Alternating hard work and light work while exercising is a way to maximise calorie burn. It’s been said that the body burns calories for longer after a workout if you work out in intervals. That’s getting your heart rate up for a set time like one minute, then bringing it down for a minute or two then up again, then down and so on. This can be done during cardio sessions or strength training.
Cardio intervals could be running at 80% or your max for one minute then jogging at 40% of your maximum ability for one minute and alternate. In strength training, intervals could be doing a couple exercises directly following each other (like squats and bicep curls) then resting one minute before doing the set of the two exercises again, and so on with other pairs of exercises, varying the number of repetitions and sets to your abilities. And to maximize stretching…
5. Opposites contract. There are muscle pairs throughout the body – muscles that are across from each other and support each other. These include the tricep and bicep, the hip flexors (front of the hip) and the buttocks, and the quadriceps (front of the thigh) and the hamstrings (back of thighs).
When you are stretching one of the muscles in the pair you can contract the other muscle to get a deeper stretch. For example, when you’re in a lunge position stretching the hip flexor (front of the hip) if you squeeze the buttocks on that side you’ll feel much more of the stretch and take your stretching to the next level. Same goes for squeezing the quad when stretching the hamstrings and bicep/tricep.
I hope these tips will help you supercharge your workouts and make the most of your time. You might find that a shorter workout with more focused efforts is actually serving you better than the long sessions you’ve been putting yourself through. Note: These tips come from experiences over time and information learned from personal training and exercise programmes. Of course you should always consult with a doctor before starting any exercise routine.
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Pushing to the max_photo by EdYourdon
Stretching_photo by quinn.anya
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I have an exercise program I call installing and refinishing wood floors Plenty of stretching and resistance exercise.
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
Definitely more efficient to get the work out done doing something productive!
Isn't it great when your work can also be your exercise routine? Unlike all of us that sit in front of a computer all day.
 |  | noline Oct 24, 2011 05:55 |  appreciated |
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
Yes the desk jobs are a downer on the daily calorie burn aren't they? 
My daughter is a personal fitness coach with a mission. Here's the back story. My daughter was born premature she fit in the palm of my hand when is was in the incubator for 4 weeks.Given a 50/50 chance of living she pulled through. Through the adversity in her life she chose to live life to fullest.I believe your health is your life.
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This intel was contributed by Glover
Glover
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