7 Ideas to Supercharge Your Fitness Workouts
By Garry Everrett
January 10, 2024 • Fact checked by Dumb Little Man
Everyone wants to do amazing workouts to help lose fat, gain muscle, and promote our overall health and fitness. Increasing weight to your exercises, performing more sets, doing more reps, and even resting for shorter periods are all standard strategies to “level up” your routine. You can track your progress with convenience by using the health and fitness features of your Apple device.
Find new ways to improve your workout regimen to continue seeing results and remodel your physique. Here are some of the easiest and most efficient techniques to take your exercises to the next level.
7 Ways to Supercharge Your Workouts
1. Set specific goals
Most people go to the gym without a training plan. They most likely know which body parts to train, have a sense of the exercises to do (usually the ones they do all the time), and have a vague aim of giving their best effort or getting a pump. That’s about as thorough as they get, so it’s no surprise that their routines are uninspired and meandering.
Even if you know what you’re going to do on your workout, you may improve it by writing down exactly what you’re going to do, including the sets and reps. Set clear goals—either you meet the goal or don’t. Get a small spiral notebook or use your phone to keep track of your workouts, but you should have at least one particular goal for each workout.
2. Incorporate a warm-up set
Mastering what you do before you begin will help you take your workout to the next level. Warm-up properly with the ideal blend of foam rolling, dynamic stretches, and activation drills. This prepares your body and mind to give it all every time you go to the gym, which can help you avoid injuries and possibly increase your performance.
Following that, your warm-up sets should be short and simple. People typically perform too many reps and sets before reaching their “working weight,” wasting energy and strength. Start with smaller weights and gradually raise each warm-up set by 30–45 pounds. Also, do no more than five reps at a time, and gradually reduce the number of reps as you approach your working weight.
3. Diversify your resistance
Most people associate “resistance” with traditional weights such as dumbbells and barbells. But that’s only one technique you can use to make your resistance training more interesting. Here are a few excellent methods to improve standard exercises:
- Try band-resisted pushups instead of bench presses, which make the workout more challenging as you push up and help build explosiveness.
- Try front squats with two kettlebells instead of a barbell for additional core activation, upper-body development, and total-body stability.
- For arm exercises, use cable machines for consistent resistance throughout a movement due to their pulley system. However, when doing a bicep curl with a dumbbell, the resistance should be the highest in the middle and easiest near the beginning and end.
4. Look for a new gym
Poorly maintained equipment, locker rooms, bathrooms, and showers are common gym complaints, as is a bad environment not suited to the type of training you need.
Look up amateurs or even pros in your area on Instagram and discover where they train. They’re probably in gyms with a ton of great equipment, all the heavy iron you could ever need, and a membership full of people who work hard every day to gain muscle and lose weight. Be surrounded by people you want to be associated with.
5. Hire a reliable trainer
You may think you know what you’re doing and that hiring a trainer or coach is a waste of money. However, an experienced trainer or coach with a track record of improving physiques is likely to know something you don’t and can pass on training and diet tips and tactics that can help you go to the next level.
This doesn’t have to be a long-term commitment. A few sessions may be all you need to spark fresh ideas and enhance your technique. Many fall into routines having poor form, with no one to correct them. Without realizing it, you could be limiting your range of motion. A skilled trainer or coach can help you overcome these obstacles and get back on the gain train.
6. Consider unilateral exercises
Squats, deadlifts, and pushups are examples of workouts that engage both arms and legs simultaneously, known as bilateral or compound training. However, by performing exercises that target each arm and leg separately or unilateral training, you can significantly improve your fitness and body.
For starters, using one side at a time makes each exercise more difficult right away because you’re using a smaller foundation of support. This also improves your body’s general strength, power, and balance by activating your core and stabilizing muscles. It also aids in the elimination of any asymmetries or when one side or limb is stronger than the other, helping prevent injuries and develop movement patterns.
Additionally, since you must perform each exercise twice—once on the left side and once on the right—it burns more calories.
7. Put a time limit on your workouts
Setting a time limit is a great strategy to increase the quality of your workouts. You may not enjoy being rushed, but hustling can be precisely what your exercises require. Once you’ve got a pump going, you should be able to keep it going until the end of the workout. You should be sweating and resting only for as long as it takes to restore regular breathing and change the weights.
Final Thoughts
These seven hacks can instantly improve your workout, and they’re all simple to incorporate into your training. To keep your motivation levels high, switch up a few of these elements and keep your workouts as interesting as you please. Of course, monitoring your progress can also boost your drive to be better.
You have the opportunity to make a difference with your training regimen, and the best time to do so Is now.
Garry Everrett
Garry Everrett is a Tech Geek who is a writer by passion. Mostly he writes about topics revolving around the latest gadget and technology. On his free time, he likes to read sci-fi novels and play golf.