How to make the most of your workout

Lift weights

Don’t just do cardio as your metabolism will stagnate, making weight loss more difficult. Resistance training builds muscle to increase your metabolic rate. In a Harvard School of Public Health study of 10,500 adults, those who spent 20 minutes a day weight training gained less abdominal fat over 12 years compared to those who spent the same amount of time performing cardio.  

Listen to music

Pumping your favourite tunes can fire you up for a workout, make you happy and boost your body’s levels of serotonin and dopamine, hormones that help you recover. Putting on a few relaxing tracks as soon as you finish your workout can help you lower your blood pressure and bring your heart rate get back to normal.  

Have a good warm-up

Instead of a gently stretch, give your body a warm-up geared to the exercise you’re about to do. If you’re about to go for a run, for example, it’s better to spend about five to 10 minutes doing lunges, knee raises and leg swings before hitting the treadmill or the road.  

Eat carbs before you work out

We all used to think of carbo-loading as something we used to do before running a marathon. But eating carbs before your workout keeps your body fuelled during any high-intensity workout and helps you burn more calories compared to exercising on an empty stomach. Eat some toast, porridge or a banana before you start.  

Train in intervals

High-intensity training followed by short, low-intensity periods has great cardiovascular and fat-loss benefits. In a study at the Human Performance Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin, people who performed a 20-minute interval workout with exercises including pushups, burpees, squats and lunges burned an average of 15 calories per minute, nearly twice as many as they did during long runs. Her’s what you do: perform as many reps as possible for 20 seconds, rest for 10 seconds and repeat for a total of four minutes. Rest one minute, then repeat for a total of four rounds.  

Drink water

Many people are dehydrated before they even start working out. Make sure you drink enough before, during and after your exercise session.  

Use free weights

Exercising with free weights like dumbbells, kettlebells and barbells are believed to lead to greater hormonal responses compared to similar exercises performed on exercise machines, according to a 2014 Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research study in the United States. The reason is that free-weight exercises use a wider range of muscles plus you don’t have anything guiding or supporting you like a machine so all of your synergistic muscles have to work to help you.  

Get a good night’s sleep

Lack of sleep hinders performance and the number of calories you burn, plus your body’s ability to recover after your workouts. Aim for seven to nine hours of sleep every single night.  

Have a massage

A post-workout massage helps with inflammation and recovery so treat yourself to one.  

Switch things up

Varying your exercise works different muscles and keeps them guessing. Try to include different variations of the same exercise in a single workout too, such as doing planks followed by side planks, for example.  

Have a workout buddy

In an American Behavioral Medicine study, cyclists who exercised with a partner pedalled almost twice as long as those who rode solo. A workout partner pushes you to perform at your best so you exercise longer and harder.  

* Source: Adapted from time.com