5 Ways to Step Up Your Workouts

5 Ways to Step Up Your Workouts

1. TIME UNDER TENSION - Major training organizations coach the importance of tempo. Taking 4 seconds to lower a weight, but only two seconds to lift it is seen as optimal for beginning lifters. An occasional, exaggerated focus on your muscular time under tension can spur the new gains because it requires far more control that the usual rep and can extend the total time of muscular work with a simple tweak. Anyways try using weight that you can handle for a set of 12 on dumbell overhead presses, alternate reps from side to side, keeping one dumbell in the down position the entire time. One the next set, alternate while keeping one dumbell in the up position throughout.
   
   
2. GO HIGH VOLUME - Your typical routines of 12-16 total sets for large bodyparts like back and quads and 9-12 sets for smaller muscle like calves and biceps or triceps. This effectively stimulates growth while keeping you from becoming over trained. Of course if you stick with this routine your body will get used to this routine of sets and reps and you stop getting real results. So what you do is use a high volume approach that focuses on relative strength. Simply rack a bar with your bodyweight and press to failure for as many sets as it takes to reach a total 100 reps.
   
   
3. BODYWEIGHT FINISHERS - Doing this adds a bit of functionality to your routine while also providing a final and authoritative pump to already exhausted muscle groups, which can trigger increase in size. Finish off your next major bodypart day with a tabata set eight- 20 second segments of work, broken up by 10 second rest periods. For legs do bodyweight squats. For chest do pushups and for back do pullups.
   
   
4. TWO-A-DAYS - Doing this you will have dramatic bump in caloric expenditure not to mention greater hormonal response. Try in a morning session, hit a larger bodypart like chest , back or quads. In the afternoon follow up with a session that hits supporting cast muscles like triceps, biceps and hamstrings.
   
   
5. COMBINE LIFTING AND CARDIO - If you need to step it up do not rest at all in this workout! make it your mission for at least one workout a week to keep moving the entire time by following each staple lift with a short bout of moderate intensity cardio to massacre fat. For a mini full body workout do 10 deadlifts then 30 seconds of running in place, 10 pull ups, 30 seconds of bicycle crunches, 10 dips and 30 seconds of jump rope. Repeat 2-3 times.

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