THE ARTICLE
By now you may have already established a regular exercise routine. You do your normal bench presses, shoulder shrugs, deadlifts coupled with cardiovascular and core muscle exercises. While this is good, adding a bit of variety to your exercise regimen will do you good in the long run.
Bear in mind that there are several ways of changing your current exercise routine. One is to boost the intensity of your workouts. If you’re into jogging, you may want to add a little bit of sprinting and hill work to your regimen. For instance, you jog for five minutes, sprint for the next five minutes, do hill work for three minutes, jog for another five minutes and then commence to a five-minute cooldown.
Another way to add some spice into your workout is by doing cross-training or circuit training. What this means is using different types of exercises to provide variety, train for sports and reduce the risk of repetitive injuries. One way of doing this is to try new activities, exercises that are completely different than what you are currently doing. Say you’re a regular at the fitness centre doing strength training and cardiovascular exercises. By simply joining the fitness centre’s yoga class, you are doing cross-training.
Other simple ways of changing your strength training programme involve changing the angles of the movements, changing the speed by which you lift, increasing or decreasing the intensity of the lift and modifying the number of sets or repetitions. For best results, it is always best to consult a certified personal trainer.
Let us probe deeper into what tweaking your workout routine can do for you:
1. It prevents boredom—doing the same exercises time and again may lead to boredom and consequently affect your motivation. By doing something new and enjoyable, the enthusiasm is always there.
2. It avoids or delays training plateaus—training plateaus simply mean getting into a consistent exercise routine but leading to no results or gains in fitness level. Incorporating new exercises to your routine challenges your body to reach a fitness level it has never reached before. Varying your exercise routine can help your body stay physically challenged.
Many of the body’s physiological systems adapt to an exercise programme within approximately six to eight weeks. Hence, this is the ideal period to tweak your exercise routine. Not varying your workout regimen can lead to you reaching a plateau because your body has adapted to the repetitive training results.
3. It makes you mentally sharp—by doing the same workout over and over again, your body isn’t challenged. So is your mind. If you get into that habit of tweaking your exercise programme after every six to eight weeks, you are doing your mind a big favour as well. Taking on new exercise routines is a sure-fire way to strengthen your mental prowess.
Conclusion
Doing the same workout each and every time isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There are people who are more comfortable getting into a predictable exercise routine to maintain good fitness levels. If, however, you determine that you are either getting bored or are not getting new boosts in fitness levels, then it’s time for a change. The change doesn’t have to be really big. By simply making a small change such as increasing or decreasing the intensity of your lifts, you have taken that all-important first step in taking your mind and body to levels they have never reached before.
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