There are lots of ways to get the most of your exercises. We will focus on the different paces in exercising. Most people exercise so that they can lose weight and stay healthy. Some do it to stay in muscular shapes and looks. Some people would quit exercising because they see no results. The way a person exercises can determine the results. Timing is crucial when exercising. You need to have the right mindset when it comes to doing the exercising.
What are the most effective ways to exercise and see the benefits?
—Fast pace exercises or HIIT
1)Fast pace exercises or HIIT
People take up exercise programs for many reasons. Their goals are to look good, feel good, lose weight, be active, etc. Personally, I’ve known people who find themselves to be overweight, and decided to join some kind of exercise program, expecting to lose the weight. Then after a month or so, they would quit the program, because they find it very difficult to do so. The reason why as I’ve experience, is not that the program doesn’t work, it’s the way they are doing it.
Let’s take a look at how to be effective with different approach when trying to get results. The first one is fast exercise programs. Fast exercise programs or HIIT(High intensity interval training) exercises can benefit you in many ways. It is a short burst of exercise usually in less than 20 minutes. I’d like to do it in less than 15 minutes. You can do a total body exercise in 20 minutes or less with fast pace exercise or HIIT.
To do fast exercise or HIIT, you need to push yourself to do as many reps as fast as you can of the concentrated muscle group to exercise until you reach failure. Then you would continue to do another muscle group as fast as you can to failure and so on. Keeping time in check, you must not do more than the 20 minutes mark time. The reasons for this, so that you do not burn yourself out or overworked the area. The whole idea is to exercise the muscle group as fast as you can to failure.
Examples of the 20 minutes or less exercise time would be: Sprinting as fast as you can for 30 seconds break do it again, Push-ups for 40 seconds as fast as you can break and do it again, Leg kicks for 30 seconds as fast as you can break do it again, Sit-ups for 30 seconds as fast as you can break do it again, etc. Just make sure your break in between is no more than 30 to 40 seconds.
—Lifting as heavy as you can
2)Lifting weight as heavy as you can at a normal pace.
The other way to exercise and see the benefits is weight lifting or training. Some people who join a gym to lift weight would quit within about 3 months time letting their membership expire. The reason for this is that they see no progress.
A solution to lifting weights is very simple but challenging at the same time. Let’s dig a little deeper into this. Your first day to workout will be your biggest challenge ever. That challenge is a decision on what to do. After finding that planted decision, you might choose the leg group to work on that first day. When starting out, you would want to lift the amount of weights where you can do a number of reps anywhere from 15 to 20 reps. That 15 to 20 reps would be one set. On a normal workout day you would want to do 3 sets of 15 to 20 reps. You would do this to break in your muscle.
After your muscle get used to weight lifting with any specific muscle group, you would want to increase the weights to stimulate more muscle fibers which would lead to stronger and bigger muscle size. As you increase the weights over time, you would want to drop the reps down anywhere from to 6 to 10 reps, keeping the 3 sets active. An example would be: If I do barbell curls of 135lbs for 10 reps max, the next would be 145lbs at 8 reps max, then 155lbs at 6 reps max. That’s 3 sets of muscle bulging reps of heavy weights.
The point in lifting as heavy as you can for certain reps is so that your last rep of each set should be a struggling one. Always remember that you control the weights, don’t let the weights control you. How do you know that you last rep in each set will be a struggle? The beauty about lifting weight is as you lift you will develop muscle memory. So that when you add more weights, you are tricking the muscle into doing 10 reps like the last time you lift. As long as you don’t add more than 5lbs to 10lbs on your next week’s session, you should be able to do 6 to 10 reps per set.
By far, weight training is one of the fasted ways to lose or burn fat and gain strength with muscle at the same time. For the weight training time, you would want to do no more than 25 to 45 minutes max of each muscle groups with 1 to 3 minutes break in between each sets. There was a recent study which shows that the amount of break time between each sets doesn’t matter as long as you lift until you reach failure.
3)A combo of fast and normal pace exercising
If you want the best benefits of losing weight fast, gaining strength, shredded muscles, stamina, speed, and increasing your metabolism, you would want to do fast or HIIT one day and the next day weight training. Just make sure that you do not do the same muscle group you did yesterday in today’s workout. You don’t want to have any serious muscle injuries which can take time to recover and would probably make you lose the courage to continue what you’ve started. This combo in a week will take you to the next level of self-improvement when it comes to being strong and staying in shape faster than any single program out there. Also, make sure you keep the timing of fast and normal pace exercises in check respectively as explained above.
Conclusion
My experience of working out with various programs for more than 30 years and still doing them today is due to by strong dedication and self-discipline. Whether you run, walk, crawl, jump, roll, push, or pull you want to make sure that you are doing it effectively. No resistance, no results. Training the body is a major factor for anyone to get in the best physical shape. However, you have to take a healthy diet into consideration. If you can master these two, your overall health will outshine most people who maybe younger or within your age group. I wish everyone a happy and healthy lifestyle.
Stay fit, stay strong,
john@healthy-and-wealthy-lifestyles.com
Hi John,
I really like HIIT and I recognize I initially didn’t like it, or it was too demanding for me. But I started to see results and I began to enjoy the adrenaline of going faster and with higher intensity.
I would like to test these other suggestions you have made in this post. It will probably take time to adapt to them.
Hello Ann,
I’m glad you are involved with HIIT. I have been putting those ideas together based on my experience. HIIT by it self doesn’t take a lot of time. Whether your do it in 10, 15, 0r 20 minutes max, you should get results. However, with the combo of working out with weights and doing HIIT in any given week, you will see better results. Just keep in mind that for overall benefits of health, the combo plus a healthy diet will be the best of everything. Also, you might want to keep track of time with each programs as outlined above. If you are going over the time limit, you are over exercising, which can lead to burn outs and discouragement. Thank you for your interesting comments. I appreciated that. Stay healthy, stay active, stay strong.
Thank you for your post John,
I have come across with HIIT recommendation; yet this is new to me to learn about the latter two. I have realized where I might have made a mistake in the past when I went to the gym. I might have increased too much of weight between sessions which made it hard for my muscle memory to adapt with the changes. It was aggressive and yet not effective enough to maintain in long run.
Regards,
Tam.
Hello Tam,
I have mastered the way I have for so long in exercising with just my own body weight and with lifting weights. Staying fit and keeping it is hard at first, but it becomes a habit as you “break in’ the muscle groups. There are pain caused by injuries and there are good pain caused by working out. Your body will always adapt to good pain, but not pain caused by injuries. Try to follow the workout ideas given above, and see the different it makes on your body. As always, keep time as your best friend for a better body. Don’t forget to stick to a healthy diet along with your training. Thank you for the comment. I wish you the best.