Workout Smarter, Not Longer

 Why do most of us give up trying to lose weight? What we don’t realize is that your workout maybe helping you lose weight at first and then you stop losing weight. This is normal, a beginner at first will lose weight on various diets as long as they increase their active. But in a few weeks, your progress usually stops. Why? Your body will become accustomed to the diet and your body will adjust to the activity level, so you need to change things up regularly.

The most common complaint that I hear from prospective clients is this: “I work out three times a week, but my body never changes.”

When I ask them what they do in the gym, I almost always know what I’m going to hear. They generally do two or three circuits of machine-based strength training and then 30 minutes on a treadmill or elliptical machine. And they’ve been doing this same workout three times a week… since the Dawn of Man.

“Your body has gotten bored at that point,” says Steve Zim, author of three best-selling fitness books and owner of ATighterU in Culver City, California. “It’s like reading a book. How many times can you read the same book before you find yourself just mindlessly flipping the pages? If you’re doing the same workout again and again, your body is just flipping the pages.” The same thing happens when your walking. When you walk to burn body fat walking at different speeds. Walk normally for 100 yds. and then walk as fast as you can for 100 yds. and then walk normally for 100 yds. and so on until you did the routine about 8 times and then walk normally for a while to bring your heart rate back down. This is a good way to keep your body from getting bored with your workout.

It isn’t all that hard to tweak your workout a bit to rekindle the challenge and get your body responding and changing. Heck, you’re already working long and hard, but if you work out smarter, you can make real gains that you’ll see and feel both in the gym and out.

Good: Lose The Machines

Machines are a great way to isolate muscle groups, but to make the most of your workout, you want to involve as many body parts as you can per exercise. The more muscles that are involved, the more calories you’re burning — and the more muscle you’re building.

Look at a typical back exercise. Using the seated row machine, you’re sitting down and being held in place by a chest pad. You’re working the muscles of the back, shoulders, and biceps, but your legs, core and everything else are on vacation. Compare that to a bent-over dumbbell row. Now, in addition to your back, shoulders, and biceps, other muscles are getting strong and burning calories while they stabilize your body during the movement. It’s strengthening these stabilizers — and not just isolating and strengthening the muscles of the back — that’ll keep you injury-free when you actually have to do some real-life heavy lifting like you might do cleaning the garage.

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