Get More Out of Your Visits to the Gym...Quicker!

It sure can be tough getting all your workouts in during the week. Whether it is school, work, kids or alack of desire, it can be difficult to get yourself to the gym.  Luckily you can get a good workout in much more quickly than you may think. 

The keys to fitness are functionality, variability and intensity. So, how can you turn those three words into a workout pattern that is repeatable and affective but doesn’t take up all of your time? 

1.       Functional: You need to work out in a way that shocks your entire body.  Functionality means that you need to work all of your muscles. The idea of isometric, single muscle lifts isn’t relevant for most everybody, except bodybuilders. The great news is that full body, functional lifts will help you build lean muscle, which boosts your metabolism and helps burn fat more quickly. Some movements that you can do are back squats, Olympic lifts such as cleans and jerks, and plyometric moves such as stair climbs and jumps.  All of these movements will help you get into shape and they will help you in your daily life when you need to lift and move things

2.       Variable: You need to change your workout patterns all of the time. Your body plateaus when it realizes that you are performing the same movements over and over. To avoid these plateaus you not only need to change the exercises that you perform, you need to change the structure of your workouts. One day you can do high reps with very low weights on many exercises, the next day you can do low reps with high weight on one exercise, and the next day you can do a combination of bodyweight movements, metabolic conditioning movements, and resistance lifting movements. Not only will your body continue guessing, you will enjoy the change in “scenery” from the different workouts

3.        Intense: You must program workouts that will challenge you into moving more aggressively. Standing on a treadmill will not get you to the goals that you are hoping to achieve. When you get your heart rate up while also working resistance movements you will see a much stronger body response because you are increasing your entire threshold of work and power. It is when you safely test your body that it will make improvements for the better. Instead of doing one set of sit ups and then relaxing, why not do a set of sit ups, then move immediately into air squats, and then immediately into pushups? You don’t even need weights to perform these movements, but together, performed quickly, they are a powerful workout that will challenge your body. If that is too easy go ahead and perform multiple rounds. The more you can intensify your workouts the better and the less time they will take

When you couple these three thoughts together you can shorten your workouts in a focused manner that will be effective. Add in a good, clean diet, and you will see even faster results. Remember, it isn’t about the amount of time that you spend at the gym; it is about how you spend your time there!