photo credit: patrick kiteley

Life is busy. Work, family, cooking dinner. It doesn’t leave us with a lot of time to workout. So when we finally make it to the gym we need to make sure we are getting the most out of our workout sessions. In this post I am going to show you 11 ways to get more from your time at the gym.

11 tactics to get more from your gym session

These tips are designed to help make your gym workouts more efficient, effective and result producing. If you have anything else to add please head over to the forum and leave your tips. You never know, your knowledge might really help someone.

1. Have a coffee before hand
Studies have shown that coffee helps you workout. It keeps you more focused and alert and it can even help you perform better physically. This is particularly true if you are doing a weight loss workout as caffeine speeds up your heart rate and metabolism.

photo credit: Joanne Probyn

2. Warm up correctly
A lot of women fail to warm up correctly. If you are doing a weights session that involves a lot of upper body work you need to make sure you warm up that part of your body. Running on a treadmill is no good! If you are going to be doing upper body weights perhaps start with some rowing.

3. Keep hydrated
When you workout your body loses fluids. This can end your workout prematurely because it starts to make you feel sick and tired. Keeping hydrated is extremely important if you want to make sure you are getting the most from your time at the gym. Keep a water bottle with you or make sure you constantly visit the fountain.

4. Workout the big muscle groups
There are two types of weight lifting exercise – isolated and compound. Isolated exercises only work one muscle at a time and as such do not have a lot of full body benefits. Compound exercises, on the other hand, workout lots of muscles at once. This is a much better option for saving time, burning calories and getting a full body workout in a short space of time.

5. Use heavy weights
Whoever it was that first said that light weights tone your muscles was a fool. Light weights don’t do much at all to be honest. If you want to tone up and lose weight then you need to use heavy weights. Don’t worry, you won’t get bulky. All you will do is burn calories faster and make a lot more progress.

6. Workout with a partner
Sometimes we can be a little bit lazy when we workout by ourselves. We wander around looking at the televisions or taking big breaks in between sessions. However, if you workout with a partner a lot of that is cut out. Similarly, you will be more likely to work hard when your partner is pushing you to do better. Try it out.

7. Have a fixed routine
A few years ago I used to go to the gym and spend half of my time walking around wondering what to do next. This is a big waste of time. Plan your sessions before you go by creating a fixed routine. Stick to that routine and you will find that your sessions become a heck of a lot more productive.

8. Take some music
There is nothing like a good loud song to get you working out harder. I always seem to run a lot further when I have a good hip hop song in my ear. Try and put together a workout playlist and crank it on whenever you do your cardio sessions. The added emotion will really get you moving.

photo credit: dongga BS

9. Have a set goal
One thing I noticed recently was that I worked a lot harder at the gym when I had a set goal. In previous years I would just go the gym out of some sense of needing to stay fit and slim but recently I decided that I wanted to lose 5 kilograms after spending too much time in the local cafe on an overseas trip. Once I had this set goal I did what I needed to do to achieve it and stayed on track. Find out what you want to achieve, write it down and go for it!

10. Cut your sessions to 45 minutes
Your gym sessions should not go for longer than 45 minutes. Any long than this and your body starts to produce a chemical that can actually hamper your progress. But that is not the only reason. If you cut your session times down you will be forced to fit more in and work harder. This is a fantastic way to work out – intensely.

11. Squat
The squat is the best wight lifting exercise there is. A good session of heavy weighted squats will burn more calories than any other exercise. But what is really cool about the squat is the fact that your body will continue to burn calories after you have finished the workout. If you really want to super charge your gym session you need to start squatting on a regular basis.

If you have any other suggestions please drop by our forum and let us know!

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Do you set your alarm for a 6am run but then hit snooze til 9? Do you plan on going to the gym after work but never seem to get there? Sounds like you’ve got a case of fitness laziness!

In this article I am going to give you some simple steps to overcome fitness laziness. For once you overcome this hurdle, the rest will seem like a walk in the park.

Admitting that you have fitness laziness?

The first thing you need to do is admit you have a problem. Once you have admitted you have a problem you can begin to solve it. If you never admit it, you will never solve it. Here are three ways to tell whether you have fitness laziness:

• You don’t last more than a month
  One surefire way to tell if you are lazy is if you begin a weight loss program or a new fitness regime and then quit after a month. This is lazy because you have not given it enough time to work and are giving up too early.
• You cheat all the time
  Another way to tell if you are lazy is if you cheat. This could be that you have a “cheat snack” every now and then or it could be that you blow the gym off to go to a party or watch TV. Lazy.
• You leave the gym early
  If you ever leave the gym before completing your workout or head home after only jogging a few blocks it is a big sign that you are being lazy. Successful people never cut their workouts short – they always follow through to the end.

If you do any one of those things then it is time to admit that you have a laziness problem. Now that you have done that we can get to work solving it.

How to overcome fitness laziness

Laziness is a habit. It is not an inbuilt personality trait. Laziness has become a part of your life because you have allowed yourself to slip into that mindset. This means that with a few simple habit changes you can reverse its negative effects. You can change.

1. Take a vow in front of someone you respect
One of the most powerful ways to overcome laziness in relation to weight loss or fitness is to take a strong vow in front of someone you respect, love or admire. Vows are very powerful things and, when done with a good motivation, can shape and change your situation.

The best thing to do is gather together your husband, parents, siblings and friends and then make the announcement that you want to achieve a certain goal. It might be that you want to drop 20 pounds. Once you have made that announcement vow in front of all of them that you will achieve your goal within a certain time frame. This puts the onus on you.

2. Think about the consequences
Another way to combat laziness is to think about the consequences of your laziness. This is often the most powerful way to spur you in to some new and more motivated activity.

For example, if you keep putting off your weight loss program there is every chance that you will become overweight. Being overweight can be damaging to your health and can cause heart problems, diabetes and several other serious illnesses. Think about these things the next time you want to put something off til later.

3. Start small
One reason people fail when it comes to fitness is because they start in the deep end. Instead of getting up 20 minutes early and going for a light walk they try to get up two hours early and do a full gym session. Not going to happen. If you want to overcome your lazy habits you need to reverse them slowly.

Start by changing small things with your diet and fitness program. Instead of going for a marathon run everyday try just doing a nice light walk for half an hour. Instead of cutting out all carbs cold turkey try cutting out a few items at a time; bread, then rice, then pasta, etc. When you do things gradually you are more likely to succeed.

Conclusion

As I said, laziness is a habit. And you don’t get rid of bad habits, you just replace them with better ones. Start slow, take a vow and think about the consequences of your lazy behavior. If you do these three things you will achieve your weight loss and fitness goals a lot faster.

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There is one question I know a lot of women are concerned about: will training with weights make me bulky? In this post I am going to give you a few things to think about. Hopefully it will solve your worries.

Why is this a concern?

It seems as though women are just as afraid of becoming big as they are of becoming fat. Women these days want skinny bodies with minimal body fat and maybe a few curves in the right place. Bulk and muscle is considered to be masculine and unattractive.

However there are women out there who are fond of bodybuilding and wish to become bigger. To these women I say “good on you!” and encourage you to delve deeper into the world of female bodybuilding. This article is aimed at women who wish to use weight training as a weight loss and fitness tool without becoming too muscular.

Will weight training make women bulky?

So the question on everyone’s lips is whether or not training with heavy weights will make you bulky. It is an interesting question and one that has several confusing answers. I will try my best to shed some light on the matter.

1. Most women cannot bulk up
The fact of the matter is that most women cannot becoming more bulky by training with heavy weights. The main reason for this is that the female body does not have enough testosterone floating around in it and thus not the correct “environment” for muscle gain.

2. Women can bulk up if they try
If you are reading this post with the hope that you will find some information about bulking up there is good news, it is possible. If you want to gain more muscle you need to start on a good protein supplement such as whey protein powder. This will help to create that environment that we were talking about.

Final say

If you are worried about bulking up I say, stop worrying. Weight training will help you get fit and burn a heck of a lot of fat and it will not make you muscular as long as you are mixing it with a good cardio workout regime.

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