Have you ever felt incredibly motivated at the beginning of your workout and then your energy levels start to wither down when you notice the lack of progress? Motivation is one of the elements when it comes to working out and maintenance. Though, what do you do when you start to lose this motivation, when you see that you’re not progressing the way you want to?
Most of us exercise to be fitter and healthier, we tend to sacrifice a few hours or minutes of our day to work out. Sacrificing more time to work out to experience progress is not a leisure that everybody can afford. So, how do you effectively progress in your workout without adding more time?
Progressing in your workout means leveling up in the intensity of your exercise. However, a lot of people tend to stick to what they are accustomed to and experience little to no progress. Maintaining the same repetition, form and weights will hinder your progress.
In order to make progress in our body needs to experience different challenges or activities that will enhance the stimuli. When left as is, the body will start to adapt to activities stalling any muscle growth, endurance and strength.
We need to get comfortable with change if we want to progress. Try to incorporate some of these progression tips below to help you advance to a better, stronger and healthier you.
Stick To the Program
Consistency is key to making progress. It’s not ideal for you to keep changing your workout schedule in short periods of time. This is a common practice that people that have problems with progressing make. They tend to get turned off by their program and believe they are not making progress at all. To actually see and feel the difference you have to at least stick to a program for 4 to 6 weeks. Your program doesn’t have to be the latest and advance in the market for you to see any progress. Simply find one that you can do, but still challenge you.
Adding Repetition or Sets
This comes after you grow accustomed to your program. Once your body is able to adjust to the program and is starting to feel that repetitive, then it’s time to add some repetition and sets. Common repetition in programs is designed for strength and building size. Increasing this will help continue the progress once the muscles have adjusted. Start working your way up from the ideal reps.
Increase the Frequency
Once your body gets accustomed to the repetition and set, it’s time to add in days. If you work out 3 times a week, then start adding in another day. Our body is able to adapt to repetitive time and workouts. Adding another day can help it becomes stronger. The first schedule of your workouts is important to follow. This allows your body to adjust to working out and give it enough time to repair itself. When you stick to this schedule the body will be able to repair itself better, so adding another or two days of your workout won’t cause pain and muscle damage. It’s important to stick to a frequency that you are comfortable with, don’t go all out on your first month. This will only make you lose consistency.
Add Fruitful Exercises
The best exercises you can add to your workout are once that contain multi-joint movements. These moves will be able to use up more calories and muscles. These exercises are also great for improving balance and strength. Some of the best multi-joint movements are squats, deadlifts, military press, pull ups and bench press. The effort required to perform these movements require strength and cardio, making you work out twice as hard.
Decreasing Resting Period
It’s important to decrease your resting period too. Like we said the body is able to adjust, it will start to repair itself faster than when you first started out. Once you have decided to add reps to your workout, decrease your resting period. This will challenge you to recover faster and will burn more calories.
Workouts were designed to progress and change. Anything monotonous will become boring and cause you to lose your motivation in working out. Adding in simple things to your workout can help you progress steadily. We hope that these different ways can help you progress in your fitness goals.
