Many of us are looking at different ways we can improve our fitness performance in the New Year. Even though it can be tempting to go full steam ahead with a new workout routine, it could be doing your body and muscles more harm than good. Making sure you have regular rest periods is a great initial way to make sure your body doesn’t tire too quickly, giving it time to adjust to intense workout periods before introducing new elements to your routine. With that in mind, we’re taking a closer look at how to safely progress and increase intensity in your workouts below.
Pre Workout
When it comes to safe progress and increasing the intensity of your workouts, consuming supplements before or after your routine can improve your recovery time. Not only will this help to fight fatigue the next day, but enable your muscles to recover quicker, helping you to get back into the gym faster without pushing your body to its limits which otherwise may increase the risk of injury. There are several of the best pre workout for women and men on the market, each designed to provide different benefits. Be sure to research one that helps you meet your fitness goals.
Increase Your Pace
Even though it can be tempting to follow the mantra ‘go hard or go home’, when it comes to reaching your fitness goals it’s important to increase your pace over time, not all at once, no matter how ‘ready’ you believe you are. By increasing your pace slowly, you will gain the strength needed to carry out other parts of your fitness routine more easily so the more you repeat your routine, the easier it will become. As it becomes easier, you can introduce different elements, such as increasing your rep number per round or running speed.
Reduce Your Rest Time
To get stronger, we need to give our bodies less time to recover between reps. At the start of your fitness journey, you’re likely to need greater rest time. However, as you get stronger, your rest time will reduce, allowing you to fit more in within a shorter amount of time. This doesn’t just apply during your workout but the number of rest days you have per week too. Whilst it’s important to not skip rest days to prevent injury and give your muscles time to heal, you may notice that your bodies need to rest for long periods of time as your performance improves, too.
Interval Training
Interval training is a great way to increase your stamina, helping to support other parts of your fitness routine. It also provides the chance to increase strength and burn more fat – even after you have finished working out. Because of this, interval training supports you in safely increasing your workout intensity, helping your body burn off lactic acid in a more efficient manner to improve your endurance, and increasing your ability to work out for longer periods of time before tiring.
