You have probably already heard thousands of different tips on how to lose weight quickly, recover from diseases and get in good physical shape. Dozens of trainers promote the latest techniques and technologies of a healthy lifestyle, and some of them directly contradict each other. How not to get confused in this sea of information?
Site journalists Livestrong.com we interviewed the most authoritative experts in the field of fitness and compiled the top of the most useful tips.
The road to a slim and strong body is not much like a long monotonous walk. The best effect is given by high-intensity flashes, interspersed with slow, calm loads for recovery. In 15 or 20 minutes of interval training, you can burn as many calories as in an hour of a regular workout. And, unlike regular classes, interval training has an effect even after the end of the class.
Many people focus only on selected muscle groups, overlooking everything else. However, the human body does not consist only of cubes on the stomach, no matter how beautiful they look. A huge number of internal muscles are hidden from our view, but they are necessary to protect the internal organs and spine from injury, maintain the body in an upright position, and so on. Therefore, pay attention not only to specialized, acting on isolated muscle groups, but also to complex exercises that give a load on the whole body. It is especially good to use isometric exercises for this.
Simulators are designed in such a way that you have to move a given weight along a certain trajectory. However, if you are too short or too tall, your arms or legs are not as long as the average majority, then such exercises will not organically match your physiology, which can lead to a lack of progress or even injury.
Replacing simulators with exercises with dumbbells or a barbell may be more suitable for your body and will help to load even those muscle groups that are inactive on the simulators. And sometimes even a simple towel can help you out.
Unfold and lower your shoulder blades as if you had your hands in the back pockets of your jeans. This will not only help you improve results, but also protect you from injury. This position allows you to pull up more correctly, fully engage the pectoral muscles during push-ups, maintains the correct position of the body during squats. Do not forget also about special exercises for the spine.
To add more load to each repetition and increase the effectiveness of the workout as a whole, lengthening the trajectory of movements performed with each repetition of the exercise will help. Sit down a little deeper, when doing push-ups, stop literally a centimeter from the floor, pull up not to the chin, but to the chest. Get more out of every move and your body will thank you.
Slow exercise is best used only as an additional load. In the main part of the lesson, you should strive to perform each exercise as quickly as possible, whether it's pull-ups, push-ups, jumps or weight training. Even if you fail to do it really fast at first, all the same, the efforts made will teach the muscle fibers to contract faster, which will make your body more athletic.
There are a large number of special exercises aimed at developing individual muscles. However, if you are not a bodybuilder who is able to spend long hours in the gym, then it is more preferable to use exercises that load several muscle groups at the same time.
In many exercises, it is enough to change the grip a little so that it opens from a completely different side. For example, with pull-ups, push-ups, and many exercises with a barbell, you can place your hands more widely or narrowly. Such a slight change allows you to work out previously unused muscle fibers, and in addition to diversify the workout.
Since our body always strives for balance, the use of asymmetric loads will force those muscles of the body to work, which cannot be reached in the usual way. Try to do exercises with only one dumbbell or exercise on simulators using only one side of the body. A little unusual advice, but sometimes it works.
Push-ups are one of the greatest exercises. Their correct execution can be described in just one phrase: keep a rigid straight line from the crown to the heels in each phase of the exercise. Keeping this in mind, you should not round your back, bend at the waist or bulge your pelvis. The main value of this exercise is that it uses the muscles of almost the entire body. Different variants of push-ups will help you to load and work out a variety of muscle groups well.
According to the materials Livestrong.com
Read also: 20 best fitness tips of all time. Part 2 →
