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The first step in improving your health is finding—or making—the
time to exercise. But just going through the motions won’t give
you the health benefits you’re looking for. Doing the same workout
over and over can get boring and you are unlikely to see improvements
because you are always recruiting the same muscle fibers. Changing things
up can bring amazing results. ACE, America’s Authority on Fitness,
shares the following top ten 10 ways to improve your workout.
- Change the mode or intensity of your training. Altering your routine
will help you avoid conditioning plateaus and force your body to adapt
to new movements and levels of intensity. Get creative and challenge
yourself.
- Hire a personal trainer. Working out with a certified personal trainer
allows you to focus on the exercise at hand and let the trainer worry
about the routine. A trainer will keep your workouts fresh and always
progressing.
- Eat properly and stay hydrated. Without proper nutrition and fluid
intake, there is no way you can have a great workout. Your body needs
these fuels to build muscle and repair damaged tissue.
- Emphasize quality over quantity. Although it may seem that working
out more often would be the best way to get fit, more intense workouts
performed less often will actually produce greater results. Your body
needs rest to recover and repair damaged muscle tissue and avoid injury.
- Incorporate mind-body training. Mind-body fitness has been associated
with improved muscular strength, flexibility, balance and coordination,
as well as increased mental development and self-efficacy.
- Exercise at the right time for your body. Work with your body’s
natural energy level—not against it.
- Exercise when you usually have the most energy, rather than putting
your workout off until a time when you might not feel your best.
- Get a workout partner. Exercising with a partner makes you accountable
to someone else for each workout and can improve adherence to a program.
A partner can inspire you to push yourself a little bit harder when
your energy level is not at its peak.
- Emphasize breathing. When strength training, take full breaths during
each exercise, exhaling on the exertion and inhaling as you release.
During cardiovascular exercise, full breaths will deliver as much
oxygen as possible to the working muscles, making them more efficient.
- Use a heart-rate monitor. A heart-rate monitor is a great tool to
gauge how hard your body is working and can help you stay within your
target heart-rate training zone.
- Listen to music. Music can make a workout more fun and give you
that extra burst of energy you need to work your hardest.
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About ACE
The American Council on Exercise (ACE), America’s Authority on
Fitness, is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the benefits
of physical activity and protecting consumers against unsafe and ineffective
fitness products and instruction. As the nation’s “workout
watchdog,” ACE sponsors university-based exercise science research
and testing that targets fitness products and trends. ACE sets standards
for fitness professionals and is the world’s largest nonprofit
fitness certifying organization. For more information on ACE and its
programs, call (800) 825-3636 or log onto the ACE Web site at www.acefitness.org.
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