3 tips to help you make the most of your gym time

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.