Improve Your Gym Sessions With These 6 Simple Tips

Going to the gym without an effective plan can lead to no results or even injuries. Follow these 6 simple tips to improve your gym sessions, to make the most out of your time in the gym, maximise your results and achieve your health and fitness goals.

Set some goals

The first step to improve your gym sessions it to set some goals. Ideally think about a long term goal, where do you want to be in 6 months to a year from now?

Once you have your long term goal set some short term goals that will lead you to the end result. Review your goals and progress every 4 to 12 weeks, to keep you accountable to the goal and to make any amendments to your plan.

Make your goals SMART:

• Specific
• Mesurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time bound

Once you know your long term goal and your short term goal, make a plan you can follow through to achieve your first short term goal, keep track of the progress and celebrate little wins to keep you motivated.

Follow a workout plan

If you want your workouts to be efficient this is probably the most important tip to improve your gym sessions, follow a workout plan!

Avoid going to the gym and just doing what you feel like, this will probably lead to do less than what you could do, and reaching a fitness plateau, as not having a plan makes it difficult to apply progressive overload to your workouts.

If you are unsure on what is best for you, do some research on the best workouts to achieve your fitness goals, and of course the best option is to get a plan from a personal trainer or fitness professional.

A few things to consider when writing a workout plan:

• What is your current goal, and when do you want to achieve it by?
• What is your current fitness level?
• How many days a week can you commit to exercise?
• What is your current level of stress?
• What exercise do you like, is there any exercises you can’t or don’t want to do

Apply progressive overload to your gym session

Your workout plan should be following the principle of progressive overload, which means the intensity of your workout should be gradually increasing each week!

When doing your workout keep notes on how you felt when performing an exercise to ensure you increase the intensity in the best way possible. For example if on week one you where not able to complete all repetitions on the last set, it would not be a good idea to increase the weight on the following week, instead you could aim to complete all repetitions on the last set and/or add 1 more set on that exercise.

Here is some variables to increase the intensity of your gym sessions to apply progressive overload:

• Increase the weight
• Increase the repetitions
• Add a set
• Decrease rest time
• Use advanced training techniques, for example supersets
• Add an exercise
• Increase the complexity of the exercise, for example adding a resistance band when performing a hip thrust.
• Increase the range of motion of the movement
• Change the tempo

Schedule your workouts in advance weekly

Recovery is as important as the workout itself if you want to make the most out of your workouts!

If you are looking to gain muscle but don’t allow enough time for the muscle to repair, your workouts are probably wasted, it can lead to injuries and inability to perform at your best on your next workout.

Doing high intensity cardio without allowing enough recovery can lead to an hormonal imbalance due to the production of cortisol produced during high intensity training, which can lead to high stress levels and weight gain if not kept under control.

Also too much time between one session and the next targeting a muscle group can lead to ineffectiveness of your workouts.

Plan your workouts a week in advance to avoid any of the above, taking these things into consideration:

• Allow 48-72 hours recovery for the muscles targeted between workouts.
• Target each muscle group 2-3 times x week.
• Schedule your cardio after your resistance training if you want to do those on the same day.
• If you want to do high intensity cardio keep it to 2 x week to avoid overtraining and too much stress for your body.
• Don’t go for more than 3/4 days before targeting a muscle group again.

Switch your workouts up every 3 to 4 weeks

While following a plan for up to 4 weeks is a good thing, switching your workouts every 3 to 4 weeks is another important factor, to keep your gym sessions effective and challenging for your body.

It is proved that our bodies generally adapt to a new stress within 4 weeks, which means after 4 weeks it is time to switch things up, and challenge our body in a new way. Remember, if it doesn’t challenge you it doesn’t change you!

If you are new to the gym a linear periodisation plan is probably best , which means moving from a muscular endurance plan to hypertrophy loads in your second plan. But this depends on your goal. Book a consultation to find out what’s best for you.

If you have been training for a while you can get creative and challenge your body in different ways, creating a non linear periodisation plan, or blocks. For example you could be doing a split routine for 4 weeks where you focus on muscular hypertrophy, and switch the focus up to improving your range of motion or conditioning the following 4 weeks. Again it all depends on the individuals current goals, but make sure each 4 week block has a focus and goal, even if that is recovery.

Add in a recovery week

As I mentioned earlier recovery is essential to reach health and fitness goals, sometimes quantity is counterproductive, if it leads to overtraining.

Especially if you are following an intensive training plan, add recovery or de-load weeks to your gym plan every 4 to 5 weeks. This sometimes occurs naturally for example when going on a holiday or due to other events.

This doesn’t mean not exercising at all, but it means decreasing the intensity for a week to allow the body to recover, come back stronger, and be able to handle further progressive overload.

A simple way to do this could be returning to the loads of week 2 on week 4, or decreasing repetitions or sets of your gym plan.

Find out what time of the day you train best

There is no magic time of the day, when it comes to scheduling your gym session into your agenda, as we are all different.

If you haven’t found your favourite time of the day yet try morning sessions for a week and reflect on how you feel, do you feel energised during your session? Do you feel happier during the day? or do you feel tired? Do you still get enough sleep?

Then try to exercise in the evening for a week, do you feel energised during your session? are you motivated to go to the gym after work? does it help you de stress? Are you able to sleep better afterwards or do you have trouble sleeping after a workout?

It will come naturally to have a preference depending on our current lifestyle and how our body reacts, stick to the time your body reacts best to, to improve your gym sessions results!

Conclusion

6 simple ways to improve your gym sessions:

• Set some goals
• Follow a workout plan
• Apply progressive overload to your gym sessions
• Schedule your workouts in advance weekly
• Change your workouts every 3 to 4 weeks
• Add in a recovery week
• Find out what time of the day to train