It doesn’t matter if you have just started a regular exercise routine or you have been working out for years, there are always important things we either forget to do or choose not to, to save time.
When we exercise we need to do it safely and correctly to get the most from the short time we have for exercise, so let’s try and do it right from the start, we have put together 5 of the top daily exercise tips to help you on your way to a healthy well-maintained body.
Keep An Eye On The Time
Look at the time, if you are getting out of bed bright and early, you need to remember your body is probably less awake than your mind. If you like to work out in the morning start with waking up the joints slowly, loosening your limbs before moving onto the muscle warm up and cardio work.
If you start to sweat, take it as a good sign, this means the warm-up has done its job. Why is a warm up so important? The objective of the warm-up is to raise total body temperature and muscle temperature to prepare the body for strenuous activity. A good warm will also reduce the risk of injury.
Take Care of Your Feet
We ask a lot of our feet when we exercise, it’s important to wear breathable shoes to reduce sweating and prevent blisters and rubbing. Choosing the right type of footwear for different kinds of sport can help to prevent pain and discomfort as well as friction induced surface wounds.
And don’t go skimping on socks either, exercising barefoot can create the perfect environment in which fungus can thrive, you can manage this by spraying your shoes with a shoe freshener spray, but wearing a fresh pair of socks each time you exercise is the best way to avoid this problem.
Buying shoes with a good amount of cushioning will help minimize fatigue and relieve pressure on your bones that can fracture. Stress fractures are more common than many of us think and have a habit of troubling some of the most ‘in shape’ people out there.
Learn To Breathe
Breathe in and out – simple right? Not so fast, when you work out, it’s important to get your breathing right, and it’s certainly not the first thing many of us think of when hitting the gym, track or football field. But “smooth efficient breathing is crucial for delivering the oxygen our bodies need to perform functions properly,” says Jordan Shakelfit from the Greatist.com
The rhythm of your breath will influence your heart rate: if your respiration is all over the place, your physical capabilities will be affected. So the first thing to do is to find your ideal breathing rhythm and match it to the rhythm of your movements.
The preferred technique for this is breathing out at the most difficult part of the movement, for eg: when you bench press the barbell, the pushing up of the weighted barbell is the most difficult so we breathe out here, and when lowering the barbell towards our chest we breathe in. Not forgetting to be able to breathe in fully you first have to breathe out fully.
Use A Heart Rate Monitor
Shake Things Up A Bit
Dumbbell bicep curl, EZ bar Curl, hammer curl might be your regular exercises on bicep day, but are you performing the same exercises each workout, week in week out without knowing how to change the routine?
When developing muscle it’s good practice to vary your routine every 6 weeks or so, the reason for this is the body gets used to the routines and adjusts itself accordingly, once it has adjusted to the routines the body stops feeling challenged and when this happens progress will also stop.
Joggers can also benefit from changing routines, it’s a good idea from time to time to try interval training, alternating between a fast and gentle pace. This method helps improve stamina and racing technique.
Interval training on an incline is a great way to develop strength and stamina at the same time. It’s also an excellent way to build up the leg muscles.
Listen To Your Body
You should always be making progress in your workouts, but one of the biggest things that hinder progress is injury or some sort of pain. We all believe that getting hurt once in a while comes with working out but does it have to? I don’t think so.
There’s a good chance you’ve said this to yourself before ” I knew I shouldn’t have done that”, this isn’t just hindsight talking most probably your body sent out signs beforehand.
I had a bad shoulder injury a few years back, I knew the dumbbells I was lifting were 5kg heavier than I lifted before but I was sure I could lift them for the number of reps I wanted, on benching the dumbbells I could feel the strain in my right shoulder, each rep was getting more painful, my body was shouting at me to stop! But I wanted that last killer rep, and it’s that last killer rep that completely messed my shoulder and resulted in an injury.
Instead of listening to my body as I should have, I ended up not being able to work out for 6 weeks and there’s still a bit of play in that shoulder today, 3 years later.
Listening to your body is a skill which needs to be
