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How to properly workout

Knowing how to properly work out properly is just as important as knowing what workouts to do. This article will go through a few methods you can choose for your workout routiene and how to choose what workouts to do and when Lets start by talking about one of the big questions most people have. How many sets of how many reps should I be doing? Well the answer is not quite as clear and obvious as most people think. Lets get started with the basics that most people know.

Workout methods (Strength, Tone, Endurance)

  1. High Weight: To increase your strength and bulk up do lots of sets with less reps. Using bench pressing as an example you can do 5 sets of 3-4 reps each. These should be done at a very high weight,
  2. Medium Weight: To increase you strength, tone you muscles, and build some endurance you should take down the sets and increase the reps. Again using the bench press, 3 sets of 8 reps each would be do the trick. You need to reduce the weight you are lifting, we will talk about determining the weight for this shortly.
  3. Low Weight: To tone your body and build muscle endurance you need to use lighter weight and go for a large amount of repetitions. So to stick to our theme, when benching you should do 3 sets of 12-15 reps.

These are the basic rules you would generally follow when you start working out, but is there a way to make our workouts better? Well if I couldn't say yes, then I wouldn't have asked the question. Let me start by explaining why we cannot simply stick to one of those three models. When you start working out, you body will experience things it hasn't felt in a long time, such as feeling muscles that haven't been used and sometimes extremely sore muscles. When you feel sore muscles (you know, the burn) it is a sign that you are doing things right. However after a while of the same thing, you body gets use to exercises and tempo of your workout. You will stop feeling sore and your workouts will become much less effective. This is why you need to throw your body off with something different and this can be done in a couple ways by mixing up your workout routine.

Mixing Up Workouts

Instead of sticking to the same type of workout, here is how you throw your body off.

  1. Timed Max Reps. Generally these are the kind of things you would do for a fitness test, like seeing how many push-ups you can do in a minute.
    • Push-ups
    • Bench press
    • Leg Press
    • Curls
    • 45 sec sprint
    • Sit-ups
    • Chin Up's (Max Out)

    Push to get as far as you can, and record your results so you can try to beat them next time you do it.

  2. Workout two muscle groups at the same time. Instead of taking breaks to relax your muscles and get ready for for the next workout, you can do two different workouts and take no break. A good example of this would be doing curls and switching to dips right after. Since you are working out two similar groups it will throw off your muscles from your regular routine and you will also get your workout done faster.

  3. Change Speeds. If you usually do slow reps, try going much faster and doing more reps then your normally would.

  4. Negatives. This requires a partner. You only do the negative part of a workout, for example: Bench Press => You slowly drop the bar until it touches your chest. Have your partner lift help you it back up. This is particularly good for muscle building because you can put more weight on then you normally would (you don't have to lift the bar, you just have to drop it slowly!).

  5. Change your workout. If you have general days to work out different parts of your body, change your workout routine and mix up which workouts you do which days. Example: Monday you do your chest and back, Wednesday you do legs and arms. Switch you workouts around so you do check and legs one day, then back and arms another.

  6. Try a different workout method. Every now and then switch one of your workouts method from muscle building, to endurance, or the other way around. You can also switch each individual exercise to really throw of your body. Example: High weight workout for bench press and endurance workout for dumbbell curls.

Water and Food

It is very important to drink a lot of water when you are working out and to try and eat properly. I will go into more detail about this in another article but for now just know that you need to constantly be drinking water while you workout and even after your work out. Also you need to try to get something good into your body so your muscles have something to build off. Again I will have a full article on what you should be eating and drinking.



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