Which Workouts & Exercises Are the Best for Helping You Achieve Your Fitness Goals?
The secret to choosing the exercises that will help you reach your fitness objectives is to think about the outcome: What precise outcomes are you seeking?
Your exercise routine will appear very different from someone who wants to bulk up if your fitness objective is to lose weight.
We’ve organized various workout types by end goal to make it simple for you to determine which ones are ideal for you. (and later, we explain why bundling your workouts with your Personalized Protein Powder can be useful for achieving these goals).
Choosing the right exercise for your particular fitness objective
If you want to gain power and muscle:
Weight training, also known as resistance exercise, is an absolute necessity for building muscle and strength.
The New York Times claims that around the age of 30, a person’s muscle begins to decline. After age 40, the typical person loses 8% of their muscle mass per decade, and after age 60, this muscle loss accelerates even more quickly. Weightlifting or resistance training can help you gain strength and muscle at any time of your life while also helping to combat this phenomenon.
Make sure you’re working all of the body’s main muscle groups if you want to develop muscle and strength effectively. (You don’t want to increase your power and muscle mass in just one place, right? Most likely, your goal is to build muscle and strength from your shoulders to your legs.)
You can do full-body exercises that target your chest, back, arms, hamstrings, and abs in one practice, or you can focus on specific muscle groups by splitting each day into upper and lower splits. Lower body exercises particularly target the quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, and calves while upper body resistance or strength training concentrates on increasing muscular strength and endurance in the arms, back, chest, and shoulders.
A compound exercise is a strengthening exercise that uses several joints and engages several muscle groups simultaneously. Compound exercises are an effective method to increase strength and muscle mass. Start with the “Big Five” exercises, which include squats, deadlifts, bench presses, barbell rows, and overhead presses, if you’re fresh to compound exercises.
While you can perform resistance training routines with or without equipment, it is more effective to use equipment to increase strength and muscle mass. Depending on the equipment you have available, a full-body resistance training exercise may include:
Weighted chest pushes
overhead push with a barbell or dumbbell
triceps press
dumbbell tricep rotation
a thigh press machine
Leg curling machine posture
Weighted lunges
Leg lifts using weights
Pullups
Leg raises
rope circles
Bench press bicep extensions
Weighted hammer coils
If you want to lose weight: Cardio is known to kick-start weight loss if that’s your aim. Performing aerobic activities that improve cardiovascular health is the foundation of a fundamental cardio workout. Cardio, an abbreviation for “cardiorespiratory training,” is an activity that speeds up your breathing and heart rate while strengthening your heart and lungs.
Frequent aerobic exercise alone can cause clinically significant weight loss, according to a research that was written up in the journal Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases. (This implies that you can still drop weight even if cardio is your only form of exercise.)
The exercise technique known as “HIIT” stands for high-intensity interval training. Cardio routines are steady-state, aerobic exercises for the purposes of this breakdown; HIIT exercises are anaerobic. It is simple to understand why HIIT workouts are excellent for weight loss goals since they don’t solely depend on stored carbohydrates for energy.
You should work out with HIIT by exerting yourself during a brief exercise at 90–100% of your maximum capacity.
Although HIIT exercises include rest periods, they are usually more difficult to breathe during and can burn more fat than steady-pace cardio. In reality, research found that HIIT can reduce body fat more than conventional cardio exercise, according to a study in the journal Obesity Science & Practice.
Nevertheless, a workout regimen that focuses on weight reduction can benefit from both cardio and HIIT.
Don’t forget to lift weights as well. Although it may be tempting to skip the weights when you want to lose weight rather than gain muscle, weight training is essential for fostering muscle development and raising your resting metabolic rate. (RMR).
Your body consumes calories at rest according to your RMR. In a 6-month research published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, participants who performed strength-based weight training exercises three times a week for just 11 minutes experienced an average RMR increase of 7.4%. When attempting to lose weight, that increase is equal to burning an additional 125 calories per day, which is a significant difference.
Doing strength or resistance training with heavy weights is your best option if you’re looking to put on weight or bulk up.
Your workouts will resemble those of those who want to gain strength and muscle, but the secret is to use heavier weights. Building muscle mass is a common objective of people who are trying to gain weight while exercising, and using heavier weights will effectively increase muscle mass. Additionally, to increase muscular mass, you must practice progressive overload. Increases in the number of reps performed, the number of sets performed for each exercise, the type of action performed, the number of days spent in the gym each week, etc. can all be examples of this.
(As stated above, many individuals who are looking to gain weight in conjunction with exercise have the goal of building muscle mass, but if you are someone who is underweight and is looking to gain weight in general, you may need to limit your physical activity until it is adequately fueled by your dietary intake and habits.
It goes without saying that moving your body throughout the day is good for your overall health, but we don’t want to start or participate in any exercise routines that would burn off a lot of the calories that are required to gain weight. It’s crucial to pay attention to your body while attempting to achieve a healthy weight range, and you may want to concentrate on mild exercises like yoga, stretching, light weights, and movement that feels good.)
Lifting heavier weights and gradually increasing the amount of weight is the traditional technique for gaining muscle mass. Think about how bodybuilders and powerlifters bulk up by combining extremely low repetitions with very heavy weights. Ten weeks of resistance training has been shown to increase lean weight by 1.4 kg, or roughly 3 pounds, according to a 2012 research titled “Resistance training is medicine: effects of strength training on health” that was published in Current Sports Medicine Reports.
Remember those compound exercises for a workout that will increase your muscular mass. Squats, deadlifts, bench presses, barbell rows, and overhead presses are a few of the best exercises for rapidly gaining muscle mass. Each practice should consist of four sets of six to eight repetitions of the compound exercise, with the weight being gradually increased every few weeks.
If you want to keep your weight off: Once you’ve hit your target weight, keeping it off is your new objective.
You should keep up your cardio workouts if your previous aim was to lose weight in order to keep it off. According to an article titled “The role of physical activity in producing and maintaining weight loss” published in the journal Nature Clinical Practice Endocrinology & Metabolism, successful weight loss maintenance is achieved when the intake of calories and the output of calories (via exercise) are matched at the reduced body weight for a continued period of time.
Even after you lose the weight, you must keep up with physical exercise, otherwise known as your regular cardio workouts. As you start to relax some of the dietary restrictions you may have put in place at the beginning of your weight reduction journey, regular exercise is essential for body weight management.
Working out for 200–300 minutes per week (or roughly 30 minutes per day) is beneficial for maintaining weight loss, according to a 2013 article titled “The Role of Exercise and Physical Activity in Weight Loss and Maintenance” that was published in the journal Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases. Following weight reduction, those who maintain their cardio routine are more likely to keep the weight off.
Continue resistance exercise for muscle maintenance, strength development, or weight growth. Regular resistance or strength training is required to keep muscle mass because, as previously mentioned, muscle naturally begins to deteriorate around the age of 30. The emphasis is no longer on gradually increasing the weight you use, even though you might discover that as your body grows stronger, you naturally need to increase the weight. By performing lower-weight, higher-rep sets, you can maintain your muscles and remain toned without adding more weight.
Making sure you correctly fuel your body is essential for maintaining muscle mass even when you aren’t exercising. A high protein diet keeps muscles and lean body composition intact. To properly keep those gains, you should ensure that your diet contains an adequate amount of protein.
Gainful Customized Protein Powder can assist you in reaching your objectives.
We think your post-workout protein should be customized to meet your objectives, just like your workout should be. Gainful provides a full system of sports nourishment, which includes a protein powder that is customized for your body.
As one of the most essential nutrients for both muscle growth and fat loss, protein powder can help you get the most out of any type of exercise. Your metabolism may benefit from the boost it requires to remain elevated throughout the day. When you exercise, your body naturally breaks down protein, so taking a protein supplement right after exercise is a great method to replace the lost protein.
Are you interested in combining your exercise plan with customized protein? Take the Gainful challenge first. You will be asked to complete a quiz about your dietary preferences, degree of fitness, and overall wellness objectives. The Gainful nutritionists will then formulate your custom protein supplement, which is tailored to your needs.
When your blend is ready, we’ll deliver it to you in the exact quantities you need, ensuring that you’re getting enough protein to meet your objectives and power your workout.
All you have to do is sit back and let Gainful deliver your customized system to you when it comes to putting together a complete nutrition system for you and your goals. However, you can contact a Registered Dietitian by sending an email to [email protected] if you still have any concerns. Your RD is available to assist you in finding out more about how Gainful can help you reach your exercise objectives.