For terrific results from your training, you must have terrific workouts. Apply the following tips and you’ll boost your progress.
BEFORE GOING TO THE GYM
1. Find a training partner who has a similar recovery ability to yours, so that you can use a similar (if not the same) training programme. Push each other to deliver perfect workouts every time - intensive, progressive, and always with correct exercise technique.
2. Train at a time of the day that suits you physically and mentally, and try to avoid the gym’s busiest periods so that there are fewer distractions and delays. Schedule one workout on a non-working day so that you have at least one session a week at the optimum time of the day for you.
3. If you feel physically beat and are due to train, rest for another day. Then modify your training programme and lifestyle so that you recuperate fully between workouts without having to take unscheduled rest days.
4. Neither wait too long after a meal before training, nor train too soon. You don’t want your workout to flag due to insufficient energy, but neither do you want to feel nauseous in the gym because of having eaten too near a workout. Have a simple meal that you can digest easily, and train about two hours afterwards.
IN THE GYM
5. Before you use the weights, spend five to ten minutes doing some general, gentle warming up such as stationary cycling, skiing, or rowing, to break you into a sweat.
6. Spend this general warming-up time psyching yourself up. Switch off from the rest of your life. Move from non-training mode into training mode. Mentally go through some tough sets. Build yourself up to a peak of seriousness and zest.
7. Do sufficient specific warm-up work for each exercise. Better to do too much warm-up work than not enough. But don’t rush from your final warm-up set to the first work set of a given exercise - rest two to three minutes.
8. Keep a strong grip - use lifters’ chalk or leather gloves. Properly used, these are great aids to a secure grip, especially in back exercises and upper-body pressing movements.
9. Before each work set, check your training log to see precisely what you did the last workout you performed that particular exercise. Determine what you need to do in terms of poundage and reps to make today’s effort progressive - for example, an extra pound on the bar for the same reps, or an extra rep with the same poundage as last time. If you want a training diary click here.
10. When you get in position to do your next set, take care to take the right grip and stance or body position. Don’t charge into a set, grab the bar and then realise after the first rep that you took an imbalanced grip, wrong stance, or are lopsided while on a bench.
Source: Flex magazine
