There are more kinds of weight loss workouts out there than I can possibly list. What people often wonder is which of these workouts is the most successful and the most effective. Unfortunately, there is no answer to that. Twenty different workouts can all be effective. What matters really is the approach you bring to your weight loss workout, and whether you take the right steps to maximize its effectiveness. Here are some tips that should help you do just that.
1. Keep Your Body Hydrated
This is the simplest thing to do, yet it is remarkable how often people don’t do it. The next time you forget to carry a bottle of water or an electrolyte replacement drink, keep in mind the repercussions it will have on your weight loss efforts.
To begin with, when your body is not hydrated, you will fatigue faster and find yourself unable to recover. Where you may have been able to sustain an effort for 45 minutes, you won’t be able to go more than 30. This means less calories burnt. Also, when you are dehydrated, your body is less efficient at repairing and recovering your muscles. This means that you won’t be so energetic or eager when you hit your next workout. Your metabolic rate will also suffer with dehydration. All these factors bear heavily on the number of calories you burn and your overall health.
2. Rest is Crucial
If you wish to gain maximum value out of your weight loss workout, you cannot afford to ignore the value of rest. Your muscles grow, repair and become stronger in the period of rest that follows a workout. And when your muscles are stronger, your metabolism is faster and you are fitter. This directly translates to weight loss. However, without rest, you will only be risking fatigue and injury, and you will struggle to sustain your weight loss efforts. Make sure your body gets a day or two of complete rest every week.
3. Words of Wisdom
Don’t do ‘everything everyday’ or the ‘same thing everyday’. These phrases are easy to remember, and contain a crucial lesson. Your body will eventually adapt to a certain routine, and if you don’t challenge it with something new and different consistently, your weight loss workout will stop being effective. The best idea is to break up your workout into cardiovascular exercise and muscle strengthening, and emphasize on different objectives on different days of the week. This will end up being effective and time efficient.
4. Adding Effectiveness
A lot of people go through an entire round of muscle strengthening exercises by doing 2-3 sets of one exercise, interspersed with periods of rest, and then 2-3 sets of the other exercise and so on. This costs a lot of time. It is far more efficient if you do a nonstop circuit of just one set of each exercise. So, after one exercise is over, you immediately move on to another one targeting a different muscle group. In the meanwhile your earlier muscles recover. A non-stop circuit also keeps your heart rate high and burns more calories. After an entire circuit, give yourself rest and launch into another circuit if you have the strength!
Even for the cardiovascular part of your weight loss workout, you can add to efficiency. If you like running or cycling, try to incorporate some hilly segments or fast speed intervals into your session. This will boost your muscle strength and burn a lot more calories.
With these tips, you should be able to add a great degree of effectiveness to your weight loss workout.
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