five ways to make progress in your training
Written by Celeste Mayor-Hollins
1. getting more rest
You may think progress is made from training hard at the gym, but in reality rest days are just as important!
After a training session, our bodies need to recover. Muscles need to repair and regrow in these periods of rest, which is key to making progress. It’s recommended to take 24-48 hours in between training the same muscle group. Training over-worked muscles will result in little to no progress.
2. fuelling your body
You need to make sure that you’re fuelling your body with the nutrients it needs to get through your workouts. A healthy, balanced diet enables our bodies to perform key functions; for example, it provides us with energy and promotes growth and repair of muscles. This will make sure you feel energised during your workout and is key to making progress in the long-term!
3. doing less in your workout
It’s a common misconception that spending hours in the gym or training the same muscle group every day is going to create amazing results… in fact, it’s the opposite. Spending anything over an hour and a half in the gym is too much for your body. Choose your exercises wisely, starting with compound movements (any movement where you’re using more than one muscle group at a time, such as squats) and ending with isolation movements (any movement where you’re using one muscle group at at a time, such as bicep curls).
Please ask our trainers for any more tips on how to structure your workouts!
4. challenge yourself in different ways
Whatever your goal may be, whether it’s to build muscular strength and endurance or improve your cardiovascular system, you need to ensure you’re challenging yourself every week by gradually increasing the intensity of your workouts over time. This could be through upping the weights you’re lifting, running for an 5 extra minutes, or increasing your reps or sets. This is called ‘progressive overload’ and is a key component to sustaining progress.
5. building habits and consistency
Consistency is key! Making progress takes time and effort; inside and outside of the gym. We know that the gym isn’t the only thing you’re fitting into a busy schedule, but here are 3 tips that could help you build habits around your workouts:
1) Create a workout schedule. Set a time each week to come to the gym. It doesn’t matter how long you may train for, it’s a small step towards consistency.
2) Join a class. Coming to one of our classes is a great opportunity to learn and offers a straightforward, time-efficient workout where you don’t have to plan your own session. Plus, you’re surrounded by others for motivation!
3) Try something new. Maybe what you’ve been doing until now just doesn’t work for you and continuing with that won’t help you progress. Try some new forms of exercises and experiment with different classes, and find out what work for you.