When you’re in the gym, you should only have one thing in mind: completing your reps and sets, pushing yourself as hard as you can, and making the gains you deserve.
However, having a hardcore workout that gives you the results you want begins way before you step into the gym. It begins with your sleep the night before, and the last two meals you eat before training. Getting enough sleep is vital to your performance, be it strength, endurance, or agility. Eight hours is ideal, but many can still perform well on six or seven. Don’t sleep too long though – more is not better when it comes to performance. When you wake up without any alarms, that means you’ve gotten enough sleep and it’s time to get up. Right after waking up, you should already be moving about and getting your blood flowing.
You need to be a savage when you hit the weights.
If you work out in the morning, try to get a small scoop of coconut oil in before your session. Be sure to drink lots of water. If you work out in the evening, you should be getting enough protein throughout the day, and some additional carbohydrates to help fuel you up for an intense session. Just don’t eat right before training, since you’ll be needing all your blood for optimal muscle function (digestion requires a lot of blood flow into the digestive system, leaving you with less blood to transport oxygen and other vital nutrients to your muscles). If you train you need to eat 1.5 to 2hrs before your workout for ample digestion.
Once you finally enter the gym, it’s time to get warmed up properly. However, proper warm-ups do not involve static stretching like you used to do in PE class. You should be doing dynamic warm-up which consists of inch warms with alt leg up, Lunge reach back, lunge twist, Walking Knee’s to chest grap, Figure Four walking, Franken Steins (Walking Power Kicks), Side lunge with side skip, Walking Quad Stretch kick, Lunge elbow down twist twist to other direction and lean back, Leg Swings. You may also perform your exercise that your doing so your doing a very specific movement before adding weight.
The important thing is to gradually move up the weight so that your muscles are ready to lift heavy, but making sure that you’re not fatiguing yourself early by using too much weight.
An additional step you can take to improve your workout is to listen to music that pumps you up. There is nothing quite like having an adrenaline rush from great music and using it to complete a difficult rep.
Of course, the best way to have a great session is to lift with other people. Hire a Trainer to push you. You can have a gym buddy, or you can go to the gym at a regular schedule so you’ll catch the same people each time. Having people spot you when you’ve just added weight to the bar increases your confidence to push yourself, and will give you more room to eke out gains you would not have gotten by lifting alone. Here is an article on the benefits of exercising with a group.
Photo Credit: Just2shutter, freedigitalphotos.net
