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Gym Workout Tips

Gym Workout Tips

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– In gym try to use each rest interval in an active way: stretch the muscle you are training, imitate the exercise workout without weight to train its performance technique, take a small walk, rub worked muscles with your hands. The main idea of  time between sets is to make rest more efficient.

– When do gym workout exercise, you should  follow two  rules:
1. Don’t be worry  by anything unimportant;
2. Everything but the training is unimportant.

Such psychological set will help you to gain the required mental mood for gym workout.

– Speed of an workout exercise movement should be average. Weight lifting (the positive phase) should be quicker than its lowering (the negative phase). While the first one lasts approximately 2 seconds, the second one – approximately 3-4 seconds. Breathe out during the positive phase; when lowering the training weight, breathe in slowly through your nostrils. Don’t reduce an workout exercise amplitude; don’t help yourself by ‘jerks’ of the whole body (don’t cheat). It’s better to reduce the weight but to perform an exercise in the required way. Correct biomechanics of an workout exercise  excludes hurry.

– When do gym workout exercise, it’s very important to reach muscle failure. Remember: “What does not destroy me, makes me stronger”.  That means that having completed a set, you are to be sure that your last repetition was the last one you were able to do correctly. If you are not sure in this, it means that you are trying to deceive yourself and need to increase the basic weight. When do gym workout exercise, always remember about the overload principle. I can often hear such excuses like ‘I just do fitness’ but I think that this case represents no fitness but self-admiration. Any kind of activity (including fitness gym workout) needs to have its final goal; but if your goal is just to visit a gym and show other people what a great person you are – it’s no useful for your body.

– Use your rest intervals between gym workout exercises  also to write down in your workout schedule log the weight and quantity of reps you managed to perform. Compare the current numbers with the previous ones and get ready to overload them. Don’t be sad if your present weights are rather light; think about how good it is that you are sticking to this system and understanding your progress. With such persistence you’ll be able to catch up with local fitness gym favourites who got used to work with heavy weights but haven’t changed them for years and leave them far behind in short time. In comparison with them your gym workout achievements will be constantly increasing. Still, it’s very important that you never lose your self-confidence.

SEQUENCE OF GYM WORKOUT EXERCISES

Muscles building better if we workout them  in a certain sequence.

You need to start a gym workout with compound (multi-joint) exercises and finish with isolation (single-joint) ones because strength growth is especially important for muscle building. These two parameters appear to be in direct proportion; and if you tire one of muscles that participate in a compound exercise by performing an isolation one you’ll not be able to achieve the maximum result. For example, if you’d trained front deltoid muscles by means of Dumbbell Shoulder Raises before performing Bench Press they will limit your basic weight for this exercise because it engages not only chest muscles but also triceps, biceps and front deltoid muscles as well. Remember the following rule: ‘The strength of a chain is defined in accordance with the strength of its weakest link’.

Always start your gym workout exercise  program with big muscles groups that are the following: legs, back, chest; small ones – deltoid muscles, biceps and triceps. Here is the descending body parts size list:

1. Legs
2. Back
3. Chest
4. Shoulders
5. Arms

You should take into consideration the fact that many gym workout exercise engage not only a target muscle (muscle group) but also other muscles (muscle groups). For example, you are training your back without even thinking that your biceps muscles are working hard as well. If you schedule biceps exercises for your next gym workout session you risk to over-train these muscles because for them it’ll be the second training in a row. This is the list of small muscles that work together with big ones:

BACK – biceps and rear deltoid muscles

CHEST – triceps and front deltoid muscles

SHOULDERS – triceps

It’s better to workout certain muscle groups in pairs.

For example, if you complete a triceps set before a biceps one it will be no good because when curling your arm you’ll have to overcome additional resistance of contracting triceps; and it means that you won’t be able to train your biceps with 100% efficiency. What should you do then? – It’s very simple: interchange the sets. First, complete biceps Barbell Curls, then – Barbell (Dumbbell) Triceps Extensions.

Such gym workout training of antagonist muscles is very effective. Antagonist muscles are such muscles that take opposite effects on our body. By performing a set to engage an antagonist muscle between basic sets you additionally extend a basic training muscle, help it to recover quicker and increase its blood supply. These are examples of  workout antagonist muscle pairs:

quadriceps – hamstrings
back – chest
back – former and middle deltoid muscles (presses)
chest – back deltoid muscles (raises)
bicep – tricep

These are fundamental rules of composing a gym workout exercise  program and splitting  schedule. Any successful athlete knows about these questions and understands their importance.

GYM WORKOUT EXERCISE: HOW MANY SETS?

The question about the quantity of gym workout exercise sets is rather important. Some body builders  say that 1-2 sets till muscle ‘failure’ are enough for muscle growth and all additional sets will only spoil it. Others are sure that an efficient  gym workout training requires numerous sets. Who is right, after all? – Nobody is, as usual. The truth always lies somewhere in the middle.
There are people who need only 1-2 sets; there are others for whom 5 sets isn’t enough. It all depends on genetic and (even more often) on psychological features that allow an athlete to get ready for maximum efficiency of the only but the most important gym workout set. The absolute majority of people (and especially beginners) are not capable of such 100% efficiency.

Besides it, even if you are a lucky man who can workout effectively performing such a limited quantity of sets, you’ll have to do at least two more sets to warm up (otherwise you’ll definitely traumatize yourself). Ligaments and muscles are to be warmed up before hard gym workout; besides it, light-weight warm-up sets prepare not just our body but also our mental state for maximum efforts.

From a practical point of view, you shouldn’t run to extremes. You should do neither minimum nor maximum quantity of an workout exercise sets: stick to the middle. For example, do 2 warm-up sets, then 3 basic ones – it’ll be enough for the first exercise. So, if your basic weight for 8 reps of Bench Presses is 250 lb  it’ll look something like this;

Bench Presses

120 lb X 15 reps (warm-up)
200 lb X 10 reps (warm-up)
250 lb X 8 reps (the major workout exercise set)
250 lb X 6-8 reps (the 2nd workout exercise set)
200 lb X 10 reps (the last workout exercise set (‘pumping’))

The first two sets we complete with reduced weight and numerous reps. This technique assists safer and more efficient warm-up of muscles and ligaments. This warm-up is followed by the first workout set. It is the most important one. Try to increase the barbell weight for this set regularly. The following (the 2nd workout) set is also a power one; it additionally stimulates your working muscles. Most probably, you won’t be able to complete the same quantity of reps in this set because you muscles are be rather tired after the previous one. The third (the last workout) set is the finishing one; here you should increase the quantity of reps in order to feel your muscles and pump them with blood to the maximum extent. To do it you’ll need to decrease the barbell weight because the working muscles are extremely tired.

What comes to the following (2nd and 3rd)gym workout exercises, we are not doing two warm-up sets with light weights because our muscles are already warmed up enough. We’ll need only one preliminary light weight set before basic ones in order we feel the movement biomechanics and get ready psychologically. For example, if our second exercise is Dumbbell Presses it can look like this:

Dumbbell Presses (50 lb and 8 reps (our maximum))

25 lb X 15 reps (warm-up)
50 lb X 8 reps (the major workout exercise set)
50 lb X 8 reps (the 2nd workout exercise set)
25 lb X 15 reps (the last workout exercise set (‘pumping’))

Why do I insist on several workout exercise sets? – That’s because beginner cannot feel  muscles well. That’s why, if you are not advanced body builder,  you’ll simply not be able to achieve 100% efficiency of a single set; but several workout sets will enable you to do all what’s to be done.

It is quite possible (if you are beginner) that you’ll learn how to workout efficiently in gym using only one set of high-intensity power work; but now the time hasn’t yet come. There are successful body builders who prefer gym workout exercise  program with limited quantity of reps; and there are those who like multi-set trainings; but all of them started with the same time-proved fitness gym workout routines like the one described above. I believe that you’ll be able to feel its efficiency as well.

Tags: gym workout exercises, Gym Workout Tips


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on Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 at 6:23 pm and is filed under TRAINING.
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