By eric777 on August 19, 2010
- Stretch before and after your workout. It helps prepare your muscles for the workout to come and will help prevent tight muscles.
- Don’t keep working your strong points because neglecting your weak points makes you un-proportional, cause muscle imbalances, and puts stress on joints.
- When doing squats, rotating your feet in different positions will stress different muscles.
- Form is very important. If you sacrifice form for strength you have a high risk of injury.
- The order of which you do exercise is as important as which exercises you do. Do multi-joint exercises before single-joint exercises.
- Want to tone up the ‘flabby arm” syndrome? Try adding tricep kickbacks.
- Adding cable exercises to your routine is beneficial. It adds tension throughout the whole range of motion.
- Are you a guy that has a puffy lower chest and a small upper chest? Try adding incline and decline chest exercises to even your chest out. Ask a staff member for advice.
- Make sure you alter your routine frequently to prevent muscle memory and hence a plateau in your results.
- To get the most of your workout try not to rest too long between sets. This causes your muscles to recruit new muscle fibres to help out.
- When doing cardio change up the speed or grade every so often to get an even better cardio workout and burn more calories.
- Want to lift heavy? If you don’t have a spotter you can use a power rack or smith machine to help.
- You shouldn’t spend more than an hour and a half lifting weights in a gym. Reason for this may be over training, talking to much, or resting too long between sets.
- Dips are wonderful compound exercises. You can target more chest and shoulder or more triceps depending on the position. If you cross your legs and lean forward you use more chest and shoulder. If you hang straight the triceps and shoulder are targeted more.
- Chin-ups should be performed by puffing your chest out and facing up towards the bar causing the Lats to be isolated more.
- Don’t neglect your hamstring in your leg workout. They are important for walking and posture.
- Free weights vs Machine: Free weights can be more beneficial because you have to use many more muscles to stabilize and control whereas machines work along a guided path and isolate a particular muscle or muscle group.
- Before getting to the gym, visualize your routine. This will help you focus during your workout and maintain consistent intensity.
- Strength training involves doing 2-5 sets of an exercise consisting of 6-12 repetitions. By about 10 repetitions you should be “digging deep” for the strength to push the weight.
- Power lifting involves doing a few sets of lifts at maximum lifting capacity 1-3 times. When attempting power lifts do not sacrifice form. Common power lifts include Dead Lifts, Clean and Jerk, and Bench Press.
- Want to lose weight but hate cardio? Try doing your exercises with minimal rest. This will keep your heart rate up and will cover some of your cardio. Don’t totally omit cardio from your workouts. It’s important for cardio to burn calories/fat and maintain a healthy heart.
- Don’t neglect those rear shoulder muscles! It adds more depth to your physique. To work them, add reverse pec flys or bent over dumbbell laterals to your workout.
- A “pyramid set” is when your start a set with a light weight and gradually increase in weight and reduce reps in subsequent sets.
- A”reverse pyramid set” is when you start a set with a heavy weight and gradually decrease in weight and increase reps in subsequent sets.
- When doing shoulder shrugs don’t roll your shoulders. It increases the wear on your shoulder joint. Instead shrug your shoulders up towards the ears and let it straight back down.
- Want to increase the distance in your golf shots? Do exercises to increase torso and leg strength. For the torso, add oblique crunches and torso twists to your routine. For the legs, add leg abductions and leg adductions.
- Want to increase strength in throwing that football or baseball? Strengthen your torso with oblique twists and back extensions. Strengthen your shoulder and rotator cuff with chin lifts and shoulder presses.
- Make your physique more dynamic by working your muscles from all different angles. Slight changes in angles make a big difference.
- A good way to warm yourself up for a chest day is a five minute bike warm up to get the blood flowing and then push ups. This will prep the body for exercises to come.
Posted in Articles | Tagged Health and Fitness Tips
