Over time, many people notice a plateau when it comes to the effectiveness of their workouts. The reality is that your body will get used to working the same muscles and body parts in the same way, and your workouts will become less effective, meaning you need to spend more time to get the same results.
No one wants to put in even longer hours in the gym, so finding a way around this plateau and supercharging your workouts can help you to get back on track. This is why personal trainers will mix up activities to ensure different body parts are targeted in different ways, so you always get the Benefits of exercise.
Unilateral Training
The most popular unilateral exercises are split squats, one-legged deadlifts, lunges, and one-arm dumbbell rows. These exercises can assist you in developing a solid body and correcting muscular imbalances. They improve stability and range of motion, increase muscle strength, and maximise performance when done correctly. Unilateral training stimulates your muscles more than bilateral training, resulting in more significant gains.
Change Your Diet
The food you eat can make or break your ability to make progress. Even if you’re trying to lose weight, you need carbs and fats in your diet. The key is to plan your meals correctly. Consume carbohydrates before and after exercise, consume a high protein intake, and limit sugars in the evening. Dinner should include lean protein and heart-healthy fats. Get your daily calories from whole foods and avoid processed foods. Fish, lean meat, eggs, vegetables, nuts, and seeds should feature heavily in your diet. After all, you can’t out-train a bad diet.
Add-In New Lifting Techniques
Have you ever experimented with supersets or drop sets? These lifting techniques can help you take your workout to a whole new level of difficulty. To become more substantial, for example, you should include forced or assisted reps in your training. Drop sets are used to increase hypertrophy, sometimes known as muscular size. Supersets are an excellent alternative for those who want to improve their size and strength. You can also experiment with different sets, such as strip sets, negatives, large sets, and leap sets.
Focus on Your Core
Even highly trained athletes focus on core strength training. After all, a strong core can support your body during other exercises and help you maintain correct posture and reduce injury. Activities such as yoga and pilates can be highly beneficial to anyone’s workouts and the ability to make and hold a pose requires a lot of strength and control. Control can help you push through for more effective training. So before you write these types of exercises off as “gentle” or for those scared of exerting themselves too much, try a workout and see how well your core holds up.
Quality Not Quantity
Naturally, for many people, the intensity of a workout decreases after 40 minutes. This is due to muscle exhaustion and cortisol increases. You are also more likely to cause an injury too.
Keep workouts brief and vigorous to avoid these difficulties—exercise intensity trumps exercise duration. If hours at the gym were the answer to muscle and strength, you might already have it.