Engaging in regular physical exercise holds more promise of a long term health benefit than any drugs out there. To get the full benefit of an exercise, you need to know how much effort you are putting into your workout.
It is recommended in the national exercise guidelines to take about 30 minutes of aerobic exercise adding it up with a little of strength training four to five days each week. Having regular exercise is important but what is more important about it is having the right understanding of what you are doing while you are exercising. However, as we differ individually so is our ability to meet the requirement of engaging in these exercises. There are factors that influence individual ability to accomplish the exercise requirements some of which includes muscle strength, age, heart rate, and individual health conditions.
Any form of workout is good as long as it makes you feel strong and healthy, but getting the result you wanted may be difficult if you are doing it wrong. The first thing to do is to define your goal, identify your reason for going into exercise. Are you trying to build muscle? Or you want to shed down some weight, maybe your own goal is to feel more energetic or possibly it is flexibility you are looking for. Whatever your goal is to examine if they really align with your exercise routine.
If you are not sure whether you are working out enough, the following tips will help you identify where the problem lies and how you can fix it.
Soreness after workout
How your body feels the following morning after your workout can give you a clue on how hard you are exercising. Your muscles are expected to feel a little bit sore but not so much it affects your daily activities. If you don’t feel anything at all, it’s probably because you didn’t push yourself harder enough to get the maximum result. During exercise, your muscles undergo microscopic tears which need time to heal and grow stronger than they were. It is, however, important to take a day or two days break after few days of work out if you feel such soreness, this will help your muscles to adjust themselves and become stronger. Increase the intensity of your workout to challenge your body and extend your workout time to achieve better output.
Holding conversation during exercise
Being able to hold a conversation with your workout partner(s) during exercise is a sign for you to push harder on your exercise. There are workout routines where you can easily make a conversation but adding up a high-intensity exercise where such conversation will be difficult is a good way to get the best result in no time. Rigorous workout helps you enhance your aerobic capacity and improve your overall fitness. This will help increase your heart rate to health requirement and deliver more oxygen to the body cells.
Try to mix up different workout routines
Doing the same type of workout routine can be pretty boring sometimes, but mixing up your favorite routine with new ones will help you find exercising more fun and interesting. More so, it will help your body adapt to new challenges and achieve greater result. Your body adapt to whatever physical exercise you put it through overtime. Varying your workout routine will help you push your muscles to adapt to different directions and physical changes. It is essential to change your workout routine at least every four weeks.
If you are not seeing changes
If you are constantly working out and following your diet depending on your workout goals you should be able to see physical change after a month. Unable to achieve any physical different in your body means something is wrong somewhere. This doesn’t mean you should give up but reassess your workout routine and seek the help of a fitness instructor to check if you are actually doing the right exercise or you are not working out enough.