It’s a New Year! Shake up your Training!

[admin]

It's a Brand New Year! Time for some new ideas for your workouts! Your workouts NEVER have to be boring.
There will be days you don’t feel like going. You’re human! But there’s never any excuse for doing the same old 10 reps, 3 sets. We ALL get bored with that. Strategically (one of my favorite words) modifying your training variables will maximize your efforts in the gym. What can you do to dramatically change your workouts and therefore dramatically change your results?

You can change:

The Order (Start backwards)

The Exercise Grouping (Try supersets or Circuit Training)

The Type (Just choose some different exercises)

The Number of exercises per workout (Try fewer with heavier weight)

The Amount of Resistance (Add it on, or take it off)

The Time under Tension (Try counting to 10 on the way up AND the way down)

The Base of Stability (Stand on a Bosu)

The Rest Period (Increase or decrease your rest between sets. For some of you, commit to stop talking to your friend in between sets)

The Company (Try a new workout partner)

This is a lot of variables!

One of my favorite quotes is, “We’re not exercising, we’re training.”

Every single workout you do should be progressing you further than the last one. Either complete another rep in a set, sprint 30 seconds longer than you did yesterday; Just do something better, faster, longer or with more intensity in today’s workout. Training is not about showing up. It’s about focusing on the task at hand with a strategy in mind.
Take a few minutes and outline a great new workout for yourself. Or consider hiring a professional.

Good Personal Trainers are worth their weight in gold. They are a experts in their field. Use their expertise! Ask for your workouts to be given to you in a written form so that you can save them in a notebook and use them as a base developing your own workouts as your gain confidence.

Here's a start for your Training Notebook:

Here's 10 New Techniques to Shake Up Your Training in 2010!

1. Try 10 sets of 3, with only 20 seconds rest between sets.

2. Try using a heavy weight and complete 6 sets of 6 reps doing a 3 minute treadmill sprint between each weight lifting set.

3. Try using a near maximum weight and do 10 sets of only 1 rep with 30 seconds rest between sets.

4. Try using a lighter than normal weight and do 1 set of 50 reps or each and every exercise.

5. Try a workout using only one full body exercise such as a squat to press and do nothing but that for an intense 20 minutes.

6. Try a workout based on all body weight exercises such as push ups, pull ups, chin ups, dips, body weight squats, lunges, stair running, etc.

7. Try a circuit of 12 different exercises covering the entire body with no rest between exercises.

8. Try the same circuit listed above but do it in reverse order.

9. Try completing six 30 minute workouts one week, followed by three 60 minute workouts the next. Keep that body guessing.

10. Try doing drop sets. Drop the weight between each set and perform as many reps as possible (AMRAP).

This ought to get you started!

Shake it up!

by Whitney Cabrera

Have fun

[Bonnie Gray]

Excellent Article!