Tips on Effective Exercise

Some simple strategies can make your exercise routine more effective. People want to be fit and healthy, but many want to hit as many muscle groups as possible within as little time as possible. Before starting any exercise routine, check with your doctor to make sure that you are healthy enough to engage in intense exercise.

Choose Compound Exercises

If you're limited on time, pick exercises that work multiple muscle groups instead of isolating just one. If you have plenty of time to spend in the gym, then you can do bicep curls and quad extensions, exercises that isolate a single muscle group at a time. But, if you want to get the most benefit in the shortest amount of time, pick exercises that work multiple muscles at once. Some examples include push-ups, overhead presses, pull-ups, dips, squats and lunges.

Lift until Failure

Try to perform your weight lifting exercises to the point of failure. Instead of doing sets where you stop at a set number of repetitions, try to push an exercise to the point where you can no longer do any more repetitions without sacrificing proper form. By lifting weights to the point of failure, you will be exhausting your muscles more.

Use Circuit Training

The genius of circuit training is that it allows one set of muscles to rest while immediately working on another set. People who do multiple sets of a single exercise usually rest a few minutes between each set. Circuit training allows you to do one exercise, and then immediately move to a different exercise that works a different muscle group. This gives you a good cardio workout because it taxes your lungs and allows you to exercise your muscles in sequence while giving them enough time to recuperate.