1. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail
There’s nothing worse than heading into the gym without a clear plan of action. Have you fuelled up with the right food? How much time have you got? What muscle groups do you need to target?
There are lots of questions that need to be answered before you dive straight in to a workout that’s going to pay dividends. If you take five or 10 minutes to plan before you arrive, you won’t have to waste time once you get there or make it up as you go along.
2. Keep your muscles guessing
You might think that doing hundreds and thousands of press-ups and sit-ups is the best way to that killer six-pack but research has shown that compound exercises (the ones that target multiple muscles at the same time, like squats) are the most effective.
If you fall into a set workout pattern day after day, as well as you getting bored, your body will become less responsive. Mix it up with a few variations every so often to keep your muscles on their toes.
3. Push it!
Especially with weights, it’s important to start off slow and the importance of a few warm-up sets can’t be underestimated.
But once you’re into the swing of things, you should be constantly pushing yourself to improve. The last two reps of any exercise should always be tough but doable without losing the proper form.
Watch and see how your muscles respond to the extra exertion.
4. Dear Diary…
Every time you start an exercise, you should know where you stand. How many sets and reps did you do the last time and at what weight?
Unless you’ve a memory like Jimmy Magee, you’ll never be able to remember all of the different numbers — and if you don’t know where you left off, how can you squeeze in an extra rep or two or add an extra couple of pounds this time around?
It might not look cool to be carrying a notebook and pen around the gym with you, but you know it makes sense.
If you like, this can double up as a food diary to make sure you’re hitting all those tasty macro targets (carbs, protein and fat).
5. Pump up the jam
Any gym worth its salt will be pumping out the tunes to keep you fired up but more often than not, this will be some combination of Top 40 floor-fillers and synth-laden Ed Sheeran remixes. That’s all well and good if that’s what you’re into… but equally, you might be sick of OMI ‘Cheerleader’ at this stage.
Know yourself what tunes are going to take your mind off those aching muscles and drive you on through those last few reps. Make a playlist with all the Taylor Swift/Nine Inch Nails mashups your heart desires and feed off the music.
6. Ditch the phone
This might sound like a contradiction considering you will probably need your phone to listen to your carefully-crafted playlist but apart from that — and using it as a stopwatch — your phone is a distraction that really has no place in the gym. Those Whatsapps and Facebook updates really aren’t that urgent, they can wait for an hour.
Airplane mode is your friend here.
7. Enjoy the well-deserved R&R
You can push yourself as hard as you like during your workout session, but if you’re not taking care of your body afterwards, you’re really wasting your time.
Before you hit the showers you need to stretch out all of the muscle groups that you used (you’ll thank us for this one in the morning).
Make sure that you eat well, including some high-quality protein to feed your muscles.
And get plenty of sleep. Glorious, glorious sleep.
For more great training tips visit Avonmore Protein Milk’s training hub on beready.ie
