The gymnasium, a place of titanic struggles, classic distances, blood, sweat and sometimes tears! It's a place you go to boost yourself. As a coach I put 100% effort into my exercise programs and expect the same from my clients.

Do you know that a huge 60% of adults in the US are obese? That troubles me, seriously, how could things have got this bad. The fast food craze appears to have taken over. Folk more times than not will go for speed and convenience over planning and preparation.

With that in mind, the people that do attend the gymnasium and make the attempts to reduce this figure or at least not let it get any worse. Unhappily though it does take rather more than simply turning up to the gymnasium to actually get a hold of your fitness and health and improve it.

I am very aware that my readers are inspired, educated and active people. So our workouts will be pretty intense, involving heavy weights, long distances and fast movements. At the end of the session we are frequently the ones on our knees in a pool of sweat!! Does it annoy you when you look up and see 1/2 the folk in there looking fresh as a daisy and having a talk! Most of the time these sort of folk won't be in the very best of shapes.

You see it isn't about simply going to the gym or going for a run, it is what you do while you train. Many of us don't have the information on how to train properly, this is not their fault if they have not been shown. So in this week's post I would like to share with you 5 ways to boost your workouts, turning some of your gym sessions from a walk in the park to a relentless physical and psychological battle.

1] Do not be boring in the warm up - Try and avoid a simple 5-10 minutes on a cardiovascular machine followed by some lacklustre stretching. Use the cardio machines to really boost your heart rate and ready yourself for some physical activity. Do some mobility exercises and some dynamic stretching. Mimic the movements you will be doing in the session with your stretches. Also try 1 or 2 warm up sets using lighter weights to fine tune your system and get the muscles prepared for the movements.

2] Take a day off - It may seem strange that one tip in 'ways to power up your workout ' is to take a day off, but it's important. As you train you put your muscles through a bit of a extreme time, they pick up tears which need to be repaired. Rest and good nutrition ( protein ) helps to recover the muscles the most efficiently and enable them to return stronger. This is how we improve, we test our muscles to the limit, permit the muscles time to recover, then we go again.

If we do not permit our muscles enough time to recover then we are not coaching to our actual potential and we increase our prospect of picking up an injury. Folks combat this by coaching different muscle groups on separate days. If you don't want to rest just go out for a pleasant walk / jog / cycle or go for a swim.

3] Progression - Do you do the same workout all of the time? It's important in order to improve and to keep a healthy interest in exercise that things are mixed up a bit. When bench pressing sixty kilos ten times begins to get straightforward it isn't the time to pat yourself on the back, it's time to up it to sixty two / 64 / 65kg and try again. It actually is all about progression , your muscles need to consistently be adapting to new things and then pushed again. This is how we build and get better.

4] Go Intense - By adding some strong intensity interval training ( HIIT ) to your exercise routines you can truly increase your cardiovascular fitness. Varying high speeds with low speeds over a short time period will really test your fitness level and help to lift your VO2 max. This also means that you can get a full cardiovascular workout in 1/2 the time of your regular same paced run / cycle, and push yourself even more.

5] Go for massive movements - Machines in gyms are excellent for isolating muscle collections and give a great start to beginners studying how to use weights. When you want to actually test yourself then free weights will be better. Free weights training incorporate many various muscles into the exercise by driving them to work unflaggingly to stabilize the muscles round the joint to hold the weight up.

The best kinds of exercise are the ones which work the most muscles. If you compare a concentration bicep curl with a clean which one do you really think will involve more muscles? Yes manifestly the clean, it has several phases and will work your lower body and shoulders and chest.

If you haven't got weights then exercises such as burpees or certain adaptations of press ups are good exercising concerning the big muscles. These exercises will make you tired a lot more than your isolation exercises so it can be best to do them early on in your session while your muscles are fresh. [AJSCRB].