3 tips to help you make the most of your gym time
TRANSCRIPT
3 TIPS TO HELPYOU MAKE THEMOST OF YOUR
GYM TIME
When you go to the gym, your aim isclearly to improve your fitness, but
you’d be surprised how much ofyour time at the gym is not spent
working out. Certain habits can cutinto your gym time and detract youfrom your fitness goals. Here are a
few ways to stop wasting yourprecious gym time.
Stay away fromyour phone
Any gym is bound to have a fewpeople who are more focused on
their phones than on working out.Whether you’re checking social
media, taking a call or choosing aworkout song, you’re not workingout to the best of our ability when
you’re looking at your phone.
Furthermore, looking down at yourphone affects your posture while
you’re exercising and increased thelikelihood of pain and injuries. Theeasiest solution is not to take yourphone with you. Perhaps you can
leave it in your locker.
If you don’t want to go that far,think about buying wireless
headphones. This way you won’thave to mess around with your cordand worry about your headphones
being pulled out of your ears.Wireless headphones also let you
keep your phone in a gym bagrather than in your pocket.
If you turn your phone to airplanemode, you can listen to music
without having texts or calls comethrough.
Plan yourworkout ahead
of time
One of the most common ways to lettime slip away from you at the gymis to walk into the gym and wing it.You end up spending time figuringout which exercise you want to do,
not to mention the amount ofweight, the number of sets and the
number of reps.
The workout can end up beingunfocused and unproductive,
according to Jessica Thiefels, ownerof Honest Body Fitness in San Diego.
A good way to fix this is to go intothe gym with a plan.
If you write a monthly workoutplan, you can write in the
progression that you need to meet acertain goal. If you want to write inyour workouts at the beginning of
each week, or the night before yourworkout, you can base your planaround how you’re feeling that
week or day.
Make sure that after you’ve comeup with a good outline, you saveyour workouts so that if in the
future you don’t have time to plan aworkout, you can use one of your
old ones.
Change ThingsUp
If you do the same thing every timeyou go to the gym, it’s a good idea to
switch up your routine. Whileyou’re not entirely wasting your
time, doing the same exercisesrepeatedly allows your body to get
used to those exercises.
As a result, you aren’t burning asmany calories as you possibly could.
Doing the same exercises everytime can also cause certain muscle
groups to get overworked whileothers get weaker.
This imbalance can cause aches,chronic pain and injuries according
to Sarah Hays Coomer, a personaltrainer and the author of Lightness
of Body and Mind: A RadicalApproach to Weight and Wellness.
Going to the gym is a great way tostay fit, but many people don’t
make the most of their gym time.Follow these tips to make sure
you’re spending as much of yourgym time improving your fitness as
you possibly can.