5 Most Underrated Fitness Tips!
There is so much fitness information swimming out here in the online world but only people that live a fit lifestyle can truly know what really gets results. Today, I want to share with you 5 of the most underrated fitness tips that I believe are important and create the most effectiveness in your efforts.
These small tips can make big differences in your fitness, strength and over well-being if you become more aware of them. Practice these tips and see how much your fitness improves in a short period of time.
1. Posture FIRST, exercise second.
Posture and alignment is everything! When you are aware of your posture before you begin an exercise, every set you complete will become more effective. It forces your body to recruit more muscles to maintain perfect posture during every rep, making workouts more challenging and fun.
By maintaining better posture during exercise, you can get stronger, burn more calories and create a stronger mind to body connection. Your brain can even become faster at delivering messages to muscles creating a more responsive nervous system overall. The reason is because it takes way more muscle and awareness to maintain perfect posture during workout sets, especially under natural fatigue.
Being aware of perfect posture during exercise may yield better results from every workout session in comparison to the lack of attention to it. When your posture misaligns, its either a compensation that your body is creating to finish the work or you’re reaching close to the maximum capacity of your posture muscles
When you stand, stand with your feet shoulder-width-apart with toes straight. Unlock your knees and load your bodyweight to the heels of your feet. Engage your core by pulling your belly in and squeezing your butt together and through. Stick your chest out and squeeze your shoulder blades together. Keep your head straight and eyes forward. These cues create the most aligned posture and should be the beginning stance before any strength exercise.
If you’re seated, everything stays the same - just focus more on arching your lower back and keeping your stomach in and tight. This will ensure your spine stays stacked and upright.
2. Lift Fast, Lower SLOW.
Every strength exercise has a fast part and a slow part. Most people that lift weights think that lifting them as fast as possible yields the best results. This is untrue. Muscles can speed force up AND slow force down. When you train your muscles to do both, you get better results from strength training and your strength routine becomes way more effective.
When you lift weights up, thats the fast part. When you lower them down, that’s the slow part. When you lift weights fast, it should always be the fastest you possible can but when you lower weights down, it should be significantly slower than the lift.
Practicing slowly lowering weights down trains the “brakes” of your muscle. You can actually get very strong just by paying attention to lowering weights slowly. Slowly lowering weights also actually increase the strength of the assisting joints, bones and connective tissue used in the lift. Science has shown that lowering weights down slowly can improve joint stability and strength.
Slowly lowering weights can also lengthen muscle tissue. When you lift weights fast all the time, your muscles will look short and bulky. When you focus more attention on making the slow part slow, muscles look long and beautiful. You will have better shape in the definition of your muscles.
A good tempo to lower weights down is a 4-count speed. Lift weights up as fast as you possibly can, then lower down for 4 counts. You will create a bigger challenge to the muscle resulting in increased muscle strength, mass and definition. It actually takes more energy to lower weights down slowly so you’ll actually burn more calories at the end of every workout.
3. Breathe During Every Rep
Most people in the world are not great breathers but when you exercise, breathing is what determines how much energy your muscle can really produce. When you inhale, you’re up taking oxygen to deliver it to the working muscles so they can use that oxygen to create energy and contract muscles forcefully.
When your breathing rhythm is off or you don;t breathe at all, you are actually making your body build up carbon dioxide, which is the waste your body creates after energy has been burned. Breathing out or exhaling is your body’s way of expelling carbon dioxide. When you hold your breathe, your body becomes acidic and muscle can’t contract anymore in those conditions. This is muscle CRAMPING!
When you lift weights, you should always forcefully breathe out your mouth and when you lower weights down, that’s when you should inhale through your nose. When you get really good at lifting weights, your breathing pattern should have a rhythm that matched perfectly to the rhythm of your movement.
When you breathe well during every set, you will perform harder and longer during the entire workout and you’ll be less likely to experience quick fatigue and/or muscle cramping. Breathing well during exercise is a technique you have to practice and be constantly aware of but when you get it right, you’ll will achieve a new level of fitness and performance.
4. Perfect Form is King.
When you exercise, with perfect form, you exercise your muscles to its maximum potential. The potential of muscle strength, endurance, and hypertrophy (growth) are drastically improved just by moving your muscles through its full range of motion with maximum effort.
This is where the value of having a coach comes to life. When you have a professional looking at your form objectively, you can receive the critique and feedback to make any corrections or adjustments to maximize your muscles’ potential leading to better fitness results.
Maintaining perfect form even under fatigue is critical. As much as you want to compensate your body body to reach the full range of motion, maintaining perfect form is MORE IMPORTANT. Even if the range of motion is sacrificed, maintaining perfect form will induce the fastest and most intense nerve impulses and muscle recruitment of that set.
Proper training is pushing your body as hard as you can with perfect form because exercising with perfect form is the hardest version of exercise. If you’re able to physically and mentally push through it, you will unleash all of your spirit’s potential.
5. Connect Your Mind to Every Muscle
Exercise science and brain research are finding conclusions that there is such a thing as mind-body connection. As an experienced lifter, this is something I’ve always felt to be true and believe where most of my fitness results came from.
When you can connect your mind to every muscle that is involved in the workout your are doing, you’re muscles listen to what you tell them to do. Any bodybuilder would agree to this and they’re worthy resources because they build muscle for a living. Even the great Arnold Schwarzenegger knew that feeling, visualizing and talking to muscles are part of achieving your dream body,
When you lift weights or exercise, connect your mind to as many muscles as you can feel. Feel muscles stretch, contract, burn, fatigue and push through. The more you think about it and visualize it all happening in you mind, the more your muscles begin to believe your intention to make a change.
Building your dream body is not only a physical journey but a mental and spritual one. Your body wants to connect with you. It always has since birth. The more present you are mixed with positive self-talk, the more likely you will build the body of your dreams.
So there it is, the 5 Most Underrated Fitness Tips! Try these tips at your next workout and FEEL the difference it has on you! Thank you for reading, I hope this helped you!
- Carl Anthony Grande
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