Just about everyone understands the importance of regular exercise. However, not all workouts are created equally. If you are spending time working out in a low-quality way, your results are likely to be disappointing. Luckily, fitness trainer Austin Alexander Burridge has a wealth of experience in this arena and over the course of his career has pinpointed specific things you can do to improve the quality of your workouts.
1. Pay attention to form
Form simply refers to the correct way of performing an exercise to maximize effectiveness and avoid injury. There are several ways to improve your form including ensuring your feet are flat on the ground during a squat, aligning your back during lifting exercise, engaging your core during abdominal exercises and ensuring that you warm up and cool down before and after your workouts.
2. Start with the most challenging exercises
Your energy, stamina, and motivation are highest at the beginning of a workout. As a result, you should ensure that you start with the exercises that you find hardest to do. For example, squats, lunges, pull-ups, and push-ups are generally considered to be the hardest exercises, and you should schedule these for the beginning of your workout.
Getting these exercises out of the way lets you leave your favorite moves for the end, which results in a highly effective and enjoyable workout.
3. Incorporate interval training
Interval training alternates high and low-intensity exercises to ensure an effective workout. Interval training has several benefits, including improving cardiovascular health, providing a total body workout, and burning more calories. Adding interval training is a great way to improve the quality of your workout while ensuring a fun, boredom free session.
4. Use compound exercises
Compound exercises work for multiple muscle groups and are great for improving flexibility and intramuscular coordination, burning calories, elevating your heart rate, and growing bigger muscles. They are also great for people with limited time to exercise as they allow you to work many muscle groups at once. Top compound exercises include squats, deadlifts, pull-ups, and push-ups.
5. Get enough rest
Scheduling a rest day or two per week is essential to ensuring sufficient muscle recovery and growth. Getting enough rest also reduces the risk of injury, helps you keep your motivation up, prevents mood swings and insomnia, and generally ensures that you are rested enough to take on even more challenging workouts.
Ideally, you should rest every third day if you are a beginner and once a week for more experienced exercisers. You should schedule more rest if you have muscle pain, are experience nausea, or find it difficult to sleep.
In Closing
When it comes to working out, quality is arguably more important than quantity. By following the advice laid out in this article, you can ensure that your workouts deliver high-quality results.
About Austin Alexander Burridge:
Austin Alexander Burridge is a professional fitness guru and personal trainer from Columbia, South Carolina. A healthy lifestyle has always been at the core of Austin’s values, and his focus on implementing a well-balanced diet with an adequate amount of exercise is a passion he imparts onto his clients as well. When he is away from the gym, Austin Alexander Burridge can be found hiking outdoors with his two dogs and enjoying all that nature has to offer.