Stop Making These 5 Mistakes If You Want to Maximize Your Workouts
Some people find it hard to get most of the benefits from their fitness routines because they don’t research their programs thoroughly. Some overtrain themselves while others skimp on sleep. The true secret to maximizing your fitness routine is by treating your body with care and not like a machine.
Let’s dive deeper into this topic by discussing five common workout errors that hinder you from reaching the fitness level that you desire.
1. Not breathing properly
Lack of proper breathing during an exercise will exhaust you easily, making it hard to complete sets and reps. In extreme cases, you’ll faint, develop muscle cramps, get a hernia, or pop a nerve. All of these conditions range from bad to life-threatening.
Each workout type has its proper breathing patterns. For running or general cardio, you should inhale through your nose using your entire abdominal area and exhale through your mouth. For core exercises, keep breathing and don’t stop even if you engage your core.
2. Skipping a warmup
When our muscles are at rest, they are cold and blood flow is slow. If you go straight to doing your exercises, your muscles won’t have enough blood and oxygen flow to perform with high energy output. You’ll end up feeling weak and easily tired even if your breathing pattern is correct.
As you plan your fitness routine, always schedule a 10 to a 15-minute period for a pre-workout routine and proper warmup. Never skip it. Avoid being late in doing your exercises as well. This is the #1 reason why people skip warmups is because their workout time is cut short.
3. Overlooking recovery
The human body is made of organic tissues. Each individual cell can be damaged especially during a workout where muscle fibers are torn. Failing to let your muscles recover will only make them easily exhausted, more inflamed, and swollen.
Instead of making you stronger, faster, or more flexible, you’ll get the opposite side effects. After finishing an intense workout session, take the next day off to do active recovery activities. Never forget to eat post-workout meals and focus on getting more protein.
4. Not hydrating yourself
The water we drink makes up a majority of our blood. Staying hydrated makes it easy to deliver calories from our digestive system to our muscles. Water is also responsible for our body’s metabolic rate. By working out dehydrated, calorie delivery and metabolism are slower. This means you’ll have a low energy reserve to consume for exercising.
Always include a bottle of water as part of your fitness necessities. Drink a good amount of water before working out. Drink small amounts in between your exercise breaks. And drink a lot after working out to replenish your fluids. Better yet, prepare homemade electrolyte drinks.
5. Skimping on sleep the night before
Muscle recovery doesn’t require protein intake alone. You must also sleep to allow your cells to repair those torn muscle fibers. During sleep, your body also conserves energy, promotes the production of growth hormones, and lets your mind recover from stress.
Without proper sleep, you’ll experience more body pain, feel even more stressed, and wake up even more tired. Turn off and put your gadgets away an hour before going to bed. Make your room conducive for a good night’s rest. And follow a consistent sleeping schedule. Make no excuses to stay up late.
Becoming more athletic and fit cannot be achieved by doing more sets and reps or finishing a longer workout session. It’s about warming up before exercising, using proper breathing techniques according to workout type, not overlooking muscle recovery, staying hydrated, and sleeping well. You must keep these in mind at all times.
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