It’s easy to get discouraged by your lack of results. You’ve been training consistently, eating right and yet the scale mocks you. You may resort to desperate measures such as cutting even more calories and exercising like a madman. Maybe you’ve even dreamed of smashing the scale into a million pieces.
Doesn’t that sound like fun?
Sometimes small changes are all that are needed. Next time you’re in the gym, stop being frustrated by your lack of progress and start making these exercise swaps in your current routine.
1. Out – Straight sets. In – Supersets
Gym-goers often do one set of an exercise, rest, do it again and then repeat this sequence for their entire training. Straight sets are great for building strength with exercises like squats, deadlifts, bench presses and rows. However, when you’re looking at building muscle or burning fat (or both), supersets are perfect.
Supersets are two exercise done back to back with little or no rest in-between. An exercise pairing of a leg exercise with an upper body move will allow you to:
· Increase your workout intensity
· Cause your heart to work harder to push blood from your lower body back up to your upper body, increasing your overall calorie burn
· Save time and hit the showers early
For example
1A. Squat, deadlift or single leg exercise 8-12 reps
1B. Upper body press or pull variations 8-12 reps
Rest 60-90 seconds and repeat once or twice.
Doing three supersets per training session, two-three times per week will have you well on the way to breaking your funk.
2. Out – Leg press. In – Goblet squats
First, let’s get this out of the way – there is nothing wrong with the leg press machine. You’re able to move massive amounts of weight will little or no risk. That’s because the machine supports your body and there’s little or no core engagement.
Enter the Goblet squat. Holding the weight at the front of your body acts as a counter balance that prevents poor squatting form and also provides resistance for your muscles. You’ll be moving less weight, but you will be working more total muscle, which is win-win for your fat loss efforts.
3. Out – Sitting down. In – Standing up
There’s nothing wrong with sitting down and exercising. However, we spend the majority of our day sitting down at work and sitting down watching our television, smartphone and laptop computers. Sitting for prolonged periods of time is one of the biggest culprits inhibiting your body’s natural calorie-churning engine.
Undo some of this by doing your whole exercise routine standing up. You’ll burn more calories and improve your core strength and balance.
You’ll be a lean mean calorie-burning machine in no time.
