Working out alone, day after day, can easily get boring. You may find yourself quitting your fitness routine after just a week or two, and with no one to hold you accountable, you’re off the wagon again. A simple way to remedy this is to find a partner with similar fitness goals to work out with. Try some of these tips for working out with a partner to keep you on track.
If you want to build muscle mass, you must do resistance training. It’s as simple as that. Cardio exercise will not build muscle bulk, though it is healthy. If you wish to build visible muscles, you will need to do resistance exercises, preferably with free weights, not exercise machines.
One way to get the most out of your fitness routine is to be sure to feed your muscles carbohydrates and protein shortly after working out. This will ensure that your muscles are replenished and also that they are not sore for the next day. A good idea would be to keep an orange with you in your workout bag, and possibly a can of tuna fish once you are out of a public area.
Develop a fitness log that lists the exercises that you completed throughout your day. Note your regular workouts as well as any extra moving you do. Invest in a pedometer so you can track your steps throughout the day and add that information in as well. It’s always easier to stay on track towards your fitness goals when you have a written record of your progress.
Integrate exercise into your life so that it becomes normal and natural. Research has shown, that in order to be healthy, you need to be active on a daily basis. This is one reason why doctors recommend simple things like walking the dog, taking the stairs and doing yard work. Any amount of activity is worth doing.
If you are recovering from a muscle injury, you should aim to begin exercising it as soon as possible. You should start out at very low intensity for only a few minutes. When you feel pain, immediately cease the workout. Ice the area for around twenty minutes after the workout. Eventually, you should feel the area become stronger and stronger, as time progresses.
Don’t anchor your feet when doing situps. Anchoring your feet can cause you to “cheat” on your situps by using your legs instead of your abdominal muscles, limiting the effectiveness of your workout. Anchoring your feet can also cause injury to your back. Instead, try doing situps on a medicine ball.
Focus your stretches on your hamstrings, shoulders, and lower back. These tend to be the least flexible muscles in your entire body, and also the most injury prone, especially for men. Take the time to pay special attention to working them loose, or you may end up with a painful injury.
One of the best security measures that you can take if you are into lifting, is to protect your neck. Neck injuries can set you back a while and could have devastating effects on your performance. When lifting, try not to overdo it, so that you can stay as healthy as possible.
Workouts can be very hard to finish, especially if you do not enjoy going to the gym. The best thing that you can do is to find extra motivation and incentive to get to where you want to be. Think of all the people who said you could not get skinny and use that as fuel to your fire in the gym.
Although it may seem painful, it is important to to begin exercising a muscle injury as soon as you can. By not doing so, you are allowing other muscles to tighten up. You do not have to do any intense exercises. Go slowly and make sure to apply ice to the injured area when finished.
When doing calf raises, incorporate two different styles. Since your calves rely on two different muscles you want to target both of them. You can accomplish this by doing both a standing and sitting calf raise. This will build overall strength in the calves as opposed to leaving one group out.
Focus on a plan and stick to it. Working on plans such as a upper body/lower body split can be beneficial to serious fitness because it helps portions of the body rest on off days. Muscles are living cells and grow during periods of intense stress, exercise in this case. This growth, however, requires a rest period; the rest period is an important feature of our body that upper/lower splits make a note of.
If you have been sitting on the sidelines for a while, then getting back on the road to fitness is best accomplished in baby steps. Start small and add a little more every few days. For example, a newbie walker might simply walk 10 minutes the first day – 5 minutes in any direction and 5 minutes back. Add one minute every other day for a couple weeks. By the end of the period, you are walking 12-15 minutes every day. That is definitely long enough to make some serious lifestyle changes!
One great strategy for bench pressing is to squeeze inward on the bar as you workout. Squeezing the bar will help you get a better chest workout. But, if it’s the triceps you’re targeting, push the bar outwards instead.
If you find that your calves are tight when you wake up you should consider altering your sleeping method. Consider sleeping on your stomach with your feet hanging off of the bed. Gravity will slowly and gently stretch your calves throughout the night which should reduce any tightness you feel.
As you can see, there are many great options for working out with a fitness partner. By finding a workout buddy and incorporating some of these ideas into your fitness routine, you will be more likely to stick with your routine and have fun in the process. Soon you and your partner, will be on your way to achieving your fitness goals.