Women 101: 7 Things to Consider For Pre-Workout
What you do before your fitness routine determines how hard your workout session will be and your ability to keep your mind focused at the gym, which affects how fast you will see the changes in your body. Below are seven things to consider while you are prepping for your workout, or, in other words, your pre-workout.
Define Your Overall Health and Fitness Goals
Defining your individual workout goals will help you customize your pre-workout routine. Specific pre-workout patterns will vary for each individual. A woman with goals to compete in the IFBB/NPC fitness, figure, and bikini competitions will have a very different prep workout plan than someone preparing to compete in bikini competitions separate from any bodybuilding event or someone simply maintaining her health and physical appearance. You must determine if you are exercising to lose weight, raise your metabolism, gain lean muscle weight, improve athletic performance, or focus on getting flat abs.
Prime Your Body for Ultimate Fat Burning
Everyone from the housewife working out at the gym to world-class athletes with 12% body fat constantly strives to burn body fat. This is just acknowledging the importance of being healthy to reduce the chances of a heart attack or stroke. Your fitness goals can be weight loss, muscle retention, lean muscle weight gain, or athletic improvement maintenance; using the time your body is in the best position to burn fat can determine what time of the day you work out. Your body is positioned for its most effective fat-burning when you first wake up from sleeping for eight hours. For most people, this means first thing in the morning. For others, it could mean three O’clock in the afternoon if you do shift work.Â
Your body starts using stored sugar to function after a couple of hours of sleeping because your body has been without food every two to three hours. However, insulin levels also block stored body fat, making it harder to mobilize that fat storage during workouts. You can work with this fat-burning cycle. You can do a light cardio session at home before you eat breakfast, then go to the gym. You could also take your breakfast to the gym to eat after a few minutes on a cardio piece of equipment to break the fast. If you aren’t keen on the idea of taking breakfast with you, you could purchase a protein powder at Experience Superior Isolate Protein at Biohealth Nutrition or another similar reputable vendor, this can be mixed into a shake and carried with you to the gym. This can be a great way to break your fast without feeling like you’re full of food. Furthermore, having a protein boost during your workout can help to improve protein absorption to help your muscle fibers grow and can contribute towards burning body fat.
Plus, you can always take a supplement to help with the fat burn. Many people choose to take supplements that assist fat burn alongside eating a healthy diet and exercising regularly to ensure results. Liposet is one such supplement that has gained popularity for its purported ability to support metabolism and aid in targeted fat loss.
Those who use them claim these products work great, but make sure to look into the benefits and ingredients yourself before purchasing any time of supplement, especially those that deal with fat burning.
Hydration
Even though you are working out in the comfort of an air-conditioned gym, your muscles are still sweating and dehydrating all through intense movement. Adequate hydration before, during, and after a workout is essential to keep your internal organs and muscle tissues functioning properly. Research shows workout muscle performance decreases when you are only hydrated at 2% of your body weight after the first few minutes of heavy weight lifting or intense exercise.
Water is the best drink for increasing and maintaining workout efficiency. You can also add some Branched Chain Amino Acids to increase rapid blood flow into your muscles and more oxygen into your lungs during intense training. A hydrogen backpack or fanny pack that keeps water cold all day long is a great accessory to bring with you.
Drink Beet Juice
Beet juice is a powerful lactic acid killer and a generous source of nitric oxide. Many beet juices for workouts are available everywhere. You can also carry a can opener with you, open a can of beets, and drink the juice right out of the can.
Pre-workout drinks
There are lots of very effective and very powerful commercial pre-workout sports drinks on the market. You want to make sure it is a pre-workout for women supplement. They all say to consult with a physician if pregnant or breastfeeding. The best place to take it is when you drive up to the gym.
Never miss a warm-up
Most people will spend about 15 minutes warming up to prevent injuries. You can walk on the treadmill to get your blood flowing, But your warm-up routine should always include some light stretching. You can start off with light resistance by using an exercise band or very lightweight exercises on the cable towers. After the warm-up, consider copper compression gear from a supplier like Copperjoint.com, as this gives your body the support needed during a rigorous routine.
Mental preparation
Get yourself motivated so that you will only have visual thoughts that contribute to your workout routine while you are working out. Mental preparation is more important than you realize on days when things are going wrong outside of your exercise routine. Many people are able to keep their minds focused if they look through a bodybuilding or fitness magazine or have an exercise video going on their television while getting ready for the gym.
Mental Rehearsal
Keep a small notebook and write down what you want to accomplish with this particular exercise session you are about to do. Every day, write down one to three goals. Keep them reachable. It can be an incline level higher on the treadmill, two additional exercises on the cable towers, or doing the cardio outside and the weights in the gym. Look at your notes from the last workout. Did you accomplish what you wanted to accomplish? If not, review what blocked your last workout. Your notebook will keep your workouts consistent and moving forward.
Applying these suggestions can dramatically affect all aspects of your workout. You can go to the gym or wherever you exercise for a year and not move forward in your results. Not making progress means not maintaining your current fitness levels. You can go lift a 10-pound dumbbell every day and still lose muscular strength because you have to challenge your body to even maintain your current health levels. Keeping the body strong and healthy is tricky. You must be even trickier.
