3 Methods To Improve Your Workout

Improve your workout with a variety of different training methods when normal resistance training seems not to be working as well.

Your body develops a habit when you are training long enough, and changes need to be taking place.

Easy changes would be using free weights instead of cables or fixed machines or switching the number of repetitions performed with higher resistance.

However, you can incorporate these 3 methods on top of this to see maximum results:

• Unilateral Training
• Banded Power and Strength Exercises
• Supersets, Giant Sets, and Compound Sets

Importance of Resistance Training

Adding resistance to your training is the most recommended way to improve your workout, and along with this, your quality of life improves more effectively as well.

The great thing about this is that there are lots of exercises and methods to choose from, which keeps your workouts capable of always being fresh and fun to execute.

Even doctors recommend at least 75-150 minutes of resistance training per week, the lower end being more intense workouts, and the higher end being basic strength activities.

Resistance assists with muscular development and endurance, strength, and supports stronger bone health as well.

Resistance training followed with some cardio does a whole lot for your health and future. Then adding in other methods to resistance training carries your progress even further for the look you desire.

3 Methods To Improve Your Workout

• Unilateral Training

This is resistance training using weight for only one side of your body opposed to making the load be equal. The benefits of this are using more stabilizer muscles and strengthening your core effectively.

You activate your core muscles better because the weight being on one side causes you to engage them to stay in position and not fall over.

There are free-weight machines that allow you to accomplish this task, but kettlebells and dumbbells account for more freedom of exercise choices.

Unilateral Training Examples:

• Standing shoulder press dumbbell in one hand
• Incline chest press dumbbell in one hand
• Single-arm kettlebell swings
• Single leg Romanian deadlift weight in one hand
• Machine single arm pull down

You can see there’s an assortment of exercises to choose to range from standing, seated incline, and even machine use.

Fixed machines can be incorporated if that’s all there is available, but most are designed for two hands or feet to move the mechanisms smoothly.

Unilateral training is also great for affordable home workouts as well. Instead of buying pairs of dumbbells, you can simply purchase one for a variety of weights and save on costs and space.

Essentially every dumbbell exercise you perform with two hands can be made more difficult executing with one dumbbell instead. The main thing to remember is not leaning to counterbalance the weight on one side.

• Banded Workouts For Power and Strength Exercises

Resistance bands are normally used for mobility training or doing some type of glute exercises.

However, you can do much more with them by incorporating into your resistance training to add tension at different points of exercises.

What this does is cause the muscles fighting the tension to work even harder while also moving the free weight load.

For example, place a pull-up assist band on the ends of the barbell for back squats.

When they are anchored to the floor by means of a heavy dumbbell or the likes. You have to use your muscles significantly more to control the weight going down, and explode against the tension on the way up.

Another variation for banded resistance is placing a hip circle around your thighs and then performing a weighted squat movement, adding more training to your abductors and hip flexors.

Victorem resistance bands are great for this because the latex mixed with fabric makes them durable and less likely to snap.

• Supersets, Giant Sets and Compound Sets

People often confuse the different sets as being multiple terms for one concept, but they are actually all different for training purposes.

Supersets are when you combine two exercises focusing on opposing muscle groups. An example would be overhand machine rows followed by the dumbbell shoulder press. Shoulder and back muscles.

Giant sets are three or more exercises in the same manner. This is not the most common method, but if you want to get more done in a short time frame, then they do come in handy.

Compound sets are different because you are performing two exercises focused on the same muscle group. This example would be the chest press followed by the chest fly exercise.

All variations have minimal rest times ranging from 0-60 seconds. The purpose is to accomplish more time under tension with less workout time needed to isolate individual muscle groups.

A great way to look at this is if you only want to train three days a week, but want to see muscle development and fat loss increase.

In order to isolate big muscle groups by training day, you need 4-5 days of training.

Eliminating a day and doing supersets after isolated movements goes a long way to completely not need a day of training.

Initiate Change To Improve Your Workout

In the end, change is necessary to see results as time keeps going. Routinely doing the same exercises and basic movements can hinder your progress and cause you to feel discouraged.

The three movements discussed don’t have to all be incorporated all at once. Make the changes weekly or monthly as opposed to every day having all brand-new exercises.

The best way to achieve this is this current workout week perform 2-3 unilateral exercises. Then the second week perform one unilateral exercise and add two banded exercises.

See how you just alternate the uses while still performing some of your usual training regimens?

This simple change is going to do a lot for your progress, and you should definitely try a few today just to get an understanding of how they feel!