1.
Don’t Skip The Stretches
Even if you’re not as flexible as the
person beside you on the mat, you should still spend time stretching. To get
the most from your session, don’t hold your stretches in conventional positions
-change the angle and range of movement. For example, if you’re on all-fours
and stretching your back, why not extend one alternate leg and arm to benefit
your legs, too? You’ll soon notice the increased levels of tension in different
muscles.
Even
if you’re not as flexible as the person beside you on the mat, you should still
spend time stretching.
2.
Don’t Overdo It
If you’ve had a couple of weeks without
training, you shouldn’t expect to stroll back into the gym and be able to train
as long or as hard as before. Pick up where you left off lifting weights and
you’ll feel the pain of overdoing it over the next few days. Focus instead on
varying the types of exercises you do, working different muscle groups and challenging
your whole body. You should always start slowly, doing simple exercises and
lifts to establish a base level of fitness, concentrating carefully on the
correct technique, and gradually increasing the complexity and number of sets
until you’re back to your original fitness level.
3.
Don’t Just Use Light Weights
To see improvements in your body shape,
it’s important you don’t simply push the same low weights for a high number of
three reps with a heavier weight instead of three sets of 10 with a lighter
one. This will get you used to holding heavier loads and make your body change
faster.
This
will get you used to holding heavier loads and make your body change faster.
4.
Don’t Plod Along
We know interval training boosts metabolism
and is great for fat burning, but it’s also a really time-efficient way of
working out. Pounding away for 40 minutes on a treadmill or cross trainer may
work briefly for relative newbies to exercise, but unless you run longer or
faster each time you go to the gym, you won’t see many benefits after four
weeks. On the other hand, just two weeks of high-intensity intervals improves
your aerobic capacity as much as six to eight weeks of endurance training
5.
Don’t Squat Up Through Your Knees
Squats may appear simple, but good technique
will not only protect your knees, it will tone your bottom, legs and abs, and
help you burn more calories. You probably know your knees shouldn’t come out
past your toes as you squat and how you shouldn’t drop much lower than 45o,
but did you know you should drive back up through your hips, not by pushing
your knees forward? Coming back up through your knees places a lot of pressure
on your knee joints and makes your quad muscles work really hard. Instead, work
your glutes and hamstrings (back thigh muscles) as you come up to standing.
Nail this move and you’ll be doing one of the best exercises for training your
whole body.
Squats
may appear simple, but good technique will not only protect your knees, it will
tone your bottom, legs and abs, and help you burn more calories.
