Exercising smarter are better not harder

Going to gym or doing exercise at home and having a commitment to burn more calories and have your muscle toned or developed cardiovascular endurance, we need some guidelines and tips on how to efficiently maximize your time and goal do the workouts

1. Asking yourself "Why?". Knowing why you are exercising is paramount to having the motivation to continue. Make a list of at least 5 reasons (more is better) why exercising is important to you. Be as specific as you can.

2. Plan when you will exercise. It is important to schedule your workouts just as you would schedule any other important appointment. You have heard it so much because it works. Bottom line; schedule your workouts in your day planner each week.

3. Plan what you will do at the gym. For the most effective workout, it is best not to decide what you will do at the gym while you are walking into the gym. Instead, decide what activity you will do prior to hitting the gym doors.

4. Bring Water. With even modest water loss (1%-2%) due to sweating, workouts feel more difficult and performance decreases. To replace the water lost through sweating, sip water throughout your workout.

5. Do some warm ups. Be sure to give your body and mind at least a 5 minute warm up. Warming up means hopping on a piece of cardio equipment at an easy pace and slowly progressing until you feel warmer and are breathing slightly harder for 5-10 minutes.

6. Set a time limit on all your workouts. End the workout if you run over. 1 hour of exercise is enough for the body muscles to function well, beyond that. you feel heaviness & exhausted easily. Considering that the muscles are being overstressed beyond that duration. Also have enough time to rest. You don’t need to  go to gym or exercise every day, muscles need rest for development. Remember, our muscles become big & toned when resting, not during exercise.

7. Change your workout plan up every twelve to fourteen weeks. Our muscles adopt to every load that we put and there should be an increased increment & program variations for us to keep up with adopting muscles & keep the excitement on exercise.

8. Monitor your heart rate all the time. We have a formula for the Maximum Heart Rate. That’s 220 - (age) = MHR. We can go for 60% or your MHR for starters and eventually increases as your body adopts to the exercise. For Athletes, you can do the 100% of the MHR while doing exercise. This is very important precautionary measurements to assess if our body is responding very well on what we do during exercise.

9. Reward Yourself. Give yourself something to look forward to at the end of the workout. This could be a simple mental high five, extra time to stretch, or a few minutes in the sauna. Reward yourself for exercising for over longer periods, too (i.e. a week or month). Consider buying yourself a new workout shirt or socks, downloading new songs, or getting a new magazine to read during cardio.

10. Efficiency is more important than length. Have a number of reps in your head before each time you do a set. I've seen some people go over the gym do some weights with those non sense and improper execution of exercise as well as stretching techniques. If you don’t know the how to of proper lifting. I have here proper execution on video format so just browse the articles and you see many videos. You may also have a professional trainer in the gym to work for you to give you instructions on proper executions.