Do you need a “jump start” to boost your metabolism and get you ready for your swimsuit? The ten suggestions below will enhance your workouts and rev up your metabolism. Try some or all of these suggestions, but watch out—when you put on that bikini or pair of trunks, you might get a lot of admiring glances and attention.
- Free-weight or cable exercises should make up the majority of your training.
Free-weight and cable exercises frequently demand more ability, build muscular balance, and have a higher metabolic cost than machine exercises. When using free weights, it can be more challenging to balance the weights and coordinate the muscles. Although it could seem like a drawback, this has advantages. You are using more muscles via a wider range of motion by balancing and stabilising free weights or cables, which leads to more muscles being developed and more calories being burned.
- Focus on complicated workouts that involve several joints and muscles.
You shouldn’t worry about “specific” workouts when working on improving body composition; instead, choose exercises that will provide you the most benefit for your time. To focus on a particular area of weakness, isolation exercises can be utilised at the end of a session, but only to the absolute minimum.
Compound exercises recruit the most muscle groups for any particular body region, a fact that practically every knowledgeable fitness professional is aware of.
You must select exercises that allow for the most load if you want to build lean muscle and the corresponding improvement in metabolism. The fact that you can expose the quadriceps to a lot more load with squats than you can with leg extensions is one of the key reasons why squats are better for developing quadriceps. Because of this, triceps presses and dips will help you strengthen your triceps significantly, however triceps kickbacks will have less effect on triceps development and even less on metabolism.
Employ lifts that will let you use the most weight as a general rule. Your body will experience a cumulative effect from them that will support the maintenance or growth of your muscle mass and, as a result, rev up your metabolism.
- Group or superset workouts.
Train either antagonistic muscle groups or non-competing muscle groups. Performing a set of a lower body exercise and then an upper body exercise would be non-competing muscle group training. Alternating workouts that target different muscle groups is how antagonist training is carried out (e.g. chest and back). Quicker recuperation, increased strength levels, and shorter workout periods are just a few of the advantages.
This layout can greatly aid your efforts to burn fat. You can keep your heart rate up and burn calories like a furnace if you alternate exercises for opposing or non-competing muscle groups!
- Preferably, keep rep ranges between 8 and 12.
The optimal range for hypertrophy (muscle gain), according to research, is roughly between 8 and 12 repetitions. This rep range is ideal because the main goals of your resistance training are to increase lean body mass and speed up your metabolism. The “big kahuna” of all training misconceptions is “high reps for tone and fat reduction”! We have been led to believe by the aerobics, yoga, and pilates communities that by using bodyweight movements or low resistance training for a high number of reps, our muscles can miraculously transform into a beautiful shape without expanding or bulging. On the other hand, if you push yourself with weights that are only fairly heavy, your physique will look bloated and unattractive. You still most likely believe in the Tooth Fairy if you think this.
- Only take a 30 to 60 second break in between sets.
It’s simpler to stay concentrated on the activity at hand and maintains your heart rate raised to keep the rest intervals under one minute. It also keeps your nervous system stimulated and forces your muscles to recover more quickly between sessions.
If you perform squats as your first exercise in an upper/lower body superset, you may want to wait 60 seconds before performing your second exercise. For example, if you perform lat pulldowns as your first exercise, you may just need to wait 30 seconds before performing the second exercise in the superset.
- There should be six to eight exercises in each session. Why? The reason being that actual data has demonstrated that average trainees can continuously perform six to eight exercises per session without becoming fatigued.
Compound, multi-joint exercises should be the foundation of your training programme. You must perform compound exercises for seventy-five percent (75%) of the exercises in each session. Six exercises that isolate just one joint won’t cut it. You can practise a few isolated exercises, sure, but multi-joint activities should make up the majority of your training regimen.
- Exercise your entire body.
The idea that a muscle group can only be trained once or twice a week must be abandoned in the first place. The preceding generation of fitness aficionados didn’t train that way, and neither should you. The more frequently you can engage in exercises that build muscle and burn fat, the better.
- Cardio is not a miracle weight-loss method.
The caloric expenditure during cardiovascular activity helps to create a calorie deficit, however it is only temporary. By permanently raising the pace at which the body burns calories by growing muscle, strength training tackles the root of the issue. The most effective regimens will combine strength training with cardiovascular exercise, but resistance training is what makes them effective in the first place.
- Exercise your cardiovascular system in the morning.
Exercise your cardiovascular system first thing in the morning while fasting. Your blood sugar levels are at their lowest when you first awake because you haven’t eaten in at least 8 hours. You’ll burn up all of your leftover blood sugar after roughly 10-15 minutes of cardiac exercise on an empty stomach.
Your body can only use your stored body fat as a fuel source for your cardiac workout after your blood sugar is depleted.
- Change up your pace during your cardio workouts.
While using an elliptical or treadmill, don’t keep a steady, regular pace. Numerous studies have demonstrated that interval training increases fat and calorie burning.
Start by walking at your normal pace for one minute. Then, accelerate it to a run for the following 30 seconds. After the initial 30 seconds at a faster tempo, take another minute at a slower tempo. This is a recognised interval. For 10 to 20 minutes, repeat this interval-style cardio.
You can burn more fat and calories by doing your cardio in this “interval” style rather to merely maintaining a nice, steady pace. By doing this, you can get better results while spending less time on the treadmill, stationary bike, or another type of cardiovascular exercise.
John Deer
Holds degree in primary healthcare support and hygiene. Loved for his posts on Health and Lifestyle.