Top 10 Ways To Supercharge Your Next Workouts

Regularly working out is important for improving and maintaining your health. It’s not only good for you physically, but also mentally; by sticking to a regular exercise regimen, you’ll boost your mood, build your strength, and generally equip yourself better for dealing with life. It’s quite amazing how exercise affects your brain! Even if you’ve been working out for a long time, you may not know that there are ways to add to the benefits of each exercise session and unlock your true potential. Here are 10 of our top tips to supercharge your next workouts, and your approach to keeping fit, so that you get the most out of each session.

1. Nutrition is key

Weight loss and muscle maintenance are 70% diet and 30% exercise. That ratio may seem off, but it’s true; it’s more important to maintain a healthy diet full of nutrients than it is to lift weights everyday at the gym. This means if you’re not eating the right foods, then you could be sabotaging your efforts at self-improvement. Make sure to prepare healthy smoothies, breakfasts, and meals if you want to see real progress when you’re working out. You’ll see the difference almost immediately!

2. Make sure to take care of your muscles

After a workout, there’s a good chance your muscles will be feeling pretty sore. After all, you’ve just put them through some seriously grueling punishment. That’s why it’s important to massage your muscles and make sure they’re not knitting together wrong after a session. We’d recommend using a massage gun; they can help you to prepare for another session sooner, and they have real health benefits, too. Don’t know where to start? Check out Best Massage Guns for some expert reviews.

3. Be sure to lift weights and do cardio

If you overemphasise one type of exercise – whether that’s resistance training, weights, or cardio – then you’re not maximising your potential when you work out. Cardio is essential; it improves your heart health and your overall endurance. However, if you don’t pair it with weight training, you could be missing out on boosting your metabolism and strengthening your muscles, thereby ensuring that your body isn’t as strong as it could be with a balanced workout regimen.

4. Stay hydrated

We really can’t overstate the importance of staying well-hydrated when you’re working out. Not drinking enough water could cause serious health problems; you’re constantly losing fluids while you work out through sweating, so make sure that you’re drinking enough. Take an extra-large water bottle with you when you go to the gym or go for a run, and be sure to take regular sips from it rather than just downing the whole thing in a single gulp; your body will thank you for it.

5. Get enough sleep the night before

Getting enough sleep is incredibly important for supercharging your workout. The amount of sleep you get – and the quality of your sleep – could help you build muscle quicker, stay energised for longer, and generally get more out of every lift and every minute you’re on the treadmill. If you’re struggling to sleep, try cutting out screens for an hour or two before bedtime, ensuring you’re in a dark room when you sleep, and making your sleeping environment as quiet as possible to minimise disruptions.

6. Try interval training

If you’re pounding the treadmill and lifting personal bests every day but you’re not seeing any improvement, it could be time to move on to interval training. This method of working out involves bursts of high-intensity activity followed by short recovery periods, so you might sprint for 50 seconds and then walk for 30, for example. Interval training is excellent for weight loss; it has huge benefits for your heart health and will help you continue burning calories for hours after the workout is complete.

7. Work out to music

Listening to music while you work out isn’t just a great way to stay entertained. Studies have shown that it also has a positive effect on your stamina, so you can run for longer or lift heavier weights. Putting together a killer workout playlist boosts your mood, too, so you’re more likely to stay motivated across the course of a grueling workout. Try to pick higher-intensity or more energetic tracks; while working out to your favourite songs is good, a higher BPM will get your heart racing more effectively. And don’t forget that dancing is good exercise and an excellent way to supercharge your workouts!

8. Don’t take long rests between exercises

If you spend a long time recovering between exercises, you could be damaging your chances of building lean muscle or losing weight. That’s because you’re giving your heart too much of a chance to slow down and stop working hard, so you’ll lose energy and your workout will be less effective. Try to move between exercises quickly and without losing the momentum you’re building up as you go. This will ensure that your workout is more potent.

9. Allow yourself time to rest between workouts

While you shouldn’t rest for long between exercises, the same isn’t true for your breaks between sessions. It’s important to give your body time to recuperate, especially if you’ve been ramping up the intensity. You might want to hit the gym every day, but resting gives your body a chance to knit your aching muscles back together. If you overdo it, you could actually risk doing more harm than good, so no matter how tempted you are, don’t push the envelope too much. Although we are talking about ways to supercharge your next workouts, don’t get too carried away!

10. Keep going after you hit your goal

You might be tempted to call it quits after you’ve achieved whatever goal you started working out for, but it’s better to think of exercise as a permanent life change rather than just a means to an end. By continuing to work out and push yourself, you’ll maintain your body’s health and make sure that all your hard work wasn’t for nothing.

There’s always a new goal to work towards, so be creative and think about other reasons you could work out. Why not try training for charity, for example?

If you have a specific plan for something you want to achieve, you might decide you want to work with a personal trainer to help you accomplish your goals and supercharge your next workouts. If you decide to take this route, it is important to ensure you are working with a trainer who has the appropriate experience and professional personal training levels