A workout program should help you meet your fitness goals, whether building muscle, losing fat, improving flexibility, or maintaining cardiovascular endurance. But, not all programs are created equal.
Some days, you walk into the gym feeling indestructible and ready to crush whatever your program calls for. But other days, you’re simply not feeling it.
Strength Training
Adding variety to your workouts at gyms like Gym Kirkland can prevent boredom and encourage your body to make continual adaptations necessary for progress, such as changes at the muscular, hormonal, or central nervous system levels.
For example, if you have been performing the same exercises and increasing your weight for weeks or months, it’s time to switch things up. A simple change such as moving to a different rep/set scheme, exercise, or intensity level can break your muscle-adaptation cycle and allow you to continue progressing toward your goals.
Another way to keep your routine from boring is to alter the number of days you work for each muscle group per week or the amount of rest you take between workouts. Some strength programs alternate daily sessions for each muscle group.
In contrast, others follow a more cookie-cutter pattern of introducing new elements every four weeks with a de-load phase at the end of the training cycle to avoid overtraining and injury.
Cardiovascular Training
To program aerobic exercises, start by giving your client two quick assessments to determine their level of cardiovascular fitness. Based on these two scores, you can categorize your clients into low, average, or high levels of cardiovascular health. This helps you understand the training volume and intensity they can handle without burning out.
Beginners must start with low-intensity workouts and gradually increase frequency and intensity over time as they improve. Intermediate and advanced levels can handle more high-intensity training, but balancing HIIT with long, lower-intensity workouts is important. This allows the muscles to recover and prevents overtraining.
Flexibility Training
Many people are frustrated by their lack of flexibility. They try a few stretches and then give up because they can’t get the flexibility they want. However, stretching is easier than it seems. The secret is incorporating movement into your stretches to help your muscles relax and stretch. For example, if you are working on your hamstring flexibility, start by doing a few sets of bear walks (a movement where you bend at the knees and raise your legs into the air).
It is important to focus on the muscle and the stretched joint when performing stretches. Additionally, try to stretch both sides of the body equally.
Also, it is a good idea to combine mobility and flexibility training because improving quality movement is the best way to improve overall flexibility. For example, performing a standing toe touch and moving into a seated butterfly stretch will improve your flexibility and ability to control your movements.
Weight Loss
When you’re focusing on losing weight, it helps to have specific fitness goals in mind so that you can plan your workouts accordingly. For example, you should aim to lose one to two pounds weekly to promote healthy weight loss. You’ll need to create a calorie deficit of 3,500 calories per week.
To help you reach this goal, do circuit-style strength sessions, which burn more calories than regular cardio, and pair exercises that target different muscle groups, such as upper body with lower body exercises. Additionally, tack on a few short HIIT sessions to your weekly routine.
