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We have been sharing our knowledge and expertise with you in the form of health and wellbeing advice, and one our members has asked for some specific information; how to make the most of our workout time. As we pride ourselves on our bespoke, tailored programmes, we of course made sure that we responded to the request!
Prepare Your Body With Carbs We have spoken about warming up properly before, but there are other ways to prepare for your workout. According to 2013 research published in Sports Medicine, eating carbohydrates – such as sugars, starches and fibre – is also helpful before your workout. They are your body’s primary fuel for any high-intensity workout. When your body is fuelled, it is going to put forth a better effort and get a better value, both for losing calories and muscle growth.
Pace Yourself Correctly Don’t merely focus on cardio. Doing so decreases your metabolism, making weight loss more difficult.
Weight lifting, for example, helps to increase your metabolism. A study by the Harvard School of Public Health found that people who spend 20 minutes per day weight lifting gained less abdominal fat over a period of 12 years. Though you may presume that maintaining intensity throughout your workout would be preferable, the truth is that short low intensity breaks are actually more effective. In one study from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, people who performed a 20-minute interval workout with exercises including push-ups, burpees, squats and lunges burned an average of 15 calories per minute—nearly twice as many as those who maintained the same intensity throughout.
Get a Workout Buddy It can also help to get a workout buddy, especially when it came to cardio.
This is fairly typical human behaviour, as a workout buddy pushes you to perform at your best, and even makes workouts feel less difficult. As a result, you will be energised to exercise for longer and harder, and you will get more out of it.
This has been seen in many studies, such as the Annals of Behavioural Medicine, who found that cyclists who exercised with a partner would pedal twice as long as those who exercised alone. We hope this has been helpful, and if anyone else would like some specific advice, feel free to let us know!