 |
|
| Category: Fitness & Exercise |
Date published: August 21, 2005 |
Wise Up and Invest in Your Workout Success - Six Top Fitness Faux Pas
by Karen B. Cohen
(Email: karen@rockbridgemag.com)
People make small but costly mistakes everyday in their workouts, and one tiny change can have a huge impact on the results. Time is valuable, and for each precious moment invested you want to ensure the best possible return. If your body is not as lean or toned as you would like, it may be that you are committing some key training mistakes. These errors can sabotage the efforts of even veteran exercisers. By learning about the most common fitness faux pas and their fixes, you will error-proof your exercise and see tremendous payoffs. Six of the biggest fitness faux pas are...
Faux Pas #1 Skipping Your Warm-up The Facts... Warming up prepares the body to work efficiently: longer, stronger and more safely. Skipping your warm-up may cause you to fatigue early, preventing you from realizing your full potential. Perhaps more importantly, warming up drastically decreases your chance of injury. The time spent in a warm up is much less than the time required to heal a muscle strain or joint injury.
Smart Fix... Invest 5-10 minutes in performing a toned-down version of your fitness activity or perhaps instead something like walking or cycling at an easy pace. Some gentle range-of-motion exercises are always encouraged. Save the deep stretching for after your workout.
Faux Pas #2 Getting Married to Your Strength Routine The Facts... Doing the same routine again and again will cause your muscles to simply adapt. You are likely to hit a plateau because each exercise stimulates only a limited number of muscle fibers. However, if you challenge your muscles from a variety of angles by adding or alternating moves periodically, you will get significantly more fibers into play and develop more tone and strength.
Smart Fix... For each muscle group, learn an additional 2 or 3 exercises, trying new angles and equipment. Expand your repertoire enough so that you can change your entire routine every 6-8 weeks. If you can't get instruction from a trainer, there are plenty of quality books, magazines and videos available.
Faux Pas #3 Performing Your Reps Too Quickly The Facts... Zooming through your repetitions when strength training uses momentum instead of muscle power. You won't get the same stimulus for muscle building, and you won't burn as many calories. You will also be more susceptible to training injuries such as torn muscles or connective tissue.
Smart Fix... Take six seconds to perform each repetition; 2 seconds to lift the weight and 4 seconds to lower it. Slowing down is the single most significant change you can make to get better results from strength training.
Faux Pas #4 Exercising Too Hard, Too Often The Facts... If you don't rest enough between hard cardio or strength workouts, you'll stop making progress and may even lose some of the fitness you have gained. You are also very likely to burn out on exercise.
Smart Fix... To keep your motivation high and your muscles fresh, alternate shorter, tougher cardio workouts (20 minutes, for example) with longer, easier days (40-60 minutes). Don't go all-out more than twice a week. The more intensely you train, the more time your body needs to recover. Take a day off completely after a couple of tough workouts and make sure that you take at least one day off between strength training sessions that work the same muscle group.
Faux Pas #5 Coasting on Your Cardio Workout The Facts... Getting complacent about your cardio workout can sabotage results as much as pushing too hard. To truly boost your fitness levels, you need to venture beyond your comfort zone a couple of times a week. This boost will enable you to burn more calories with less effort.
Smart Fix... Instead of zoning out or doing moderate-intensity cardio all the time, mix in some high-intensity intervals twice a week. This is a great area to add variety, have fun and play. Make a game of mixing your intensities over a six-week interval.
Faux Pas #6 Lifting the Wrong Amount of Weight The Facts... If you lift weights that are too light, you won't see improvements in strength, tone, or bone density. If you lift weights that are too heavy, you will compromise proper form, increasing your injury risk and diminishing your overall workout. You'll be forced to recruit additional muscles to help with the work, thereby cheating the muscles of a good workout. Unfortunately, a very common example of this is using the entire body to complete a biceps curl.
Smart Fix... For moderate strength building, perform 8-12 repetitions per set, for maximum strength building, perform 4-6 repetitions per set. The key is to choose weights heavy enough that you struggle through the final few reps, but not so heavy that you lose your form. If you get to your final rep and feel that you could perform another one, slightly increase the weight (5-10%). It's fine to drop a few reps as the weights increase. Just remember to fatigue the muscle by the final rep.
Take the time to analyze your workout routines and assess whether you are investing your time and energy for the absolute greatest results. Error-proof your exercise for a better workout and a much better body. Realize your body's full potential by using your mind to workout smart.
Karen B. Cohen C.L.C. RYT500 is a wellness coach and master yoga instructor, writer and speaker residing in a college town in rural Virginia. Karen leads people to their own limitless supply of creativity and vitality so that they can express their talent and abilities fully in the world. She incorporates her expertise in mind-body techniques to work with a wide spectrum of clients. Karen is currently teaching yoga and Chi Gung moving meditation privately and at a school in Lexington, Virginia. Karen provides seminars, workshops as well as individual coaching and training nationally and internationally. For more information go to KarenCohenYoga.blogspot.com and RockbridgeCoaching.blogspot.com.
Copyright 2005. Karen B. Cohen All Rights Reserved
|
[All work by author is copyright protected. If you would like to use this article, please contact the author for permission.]
Disclaimer: The Views and Information expressed on this webpage are that of the Author and do not necessarily reflect the views, data, policies, endorsement or support of HolisticJunction.com's Administration or its standards.
|
|
|
|
Articles
