Contrary to popular belief, working out and dieting aren’t the only things that help you achieve the body that you want, especially if you’re trying to build muscles. Having said that, those aren’t the only factors that slow down your progress either. It’s not just because you’re training too little or eating the wrong foods, sometimes there are daily activities that affect your progress too.
If you want to exercise to be part of your routine, remember it is a marathon, not a sprint. Plan your gym schedule in a way that you’ll be able to sustain it in your day to day living, instead of treating it like a month or two challenges. Aside from that, you have to allow your body to recover as well because that’s when your gains happen.
1. Schedule Down Times
Not giving your body time off from training can over exhaust your muscles, especially if you always do high-intensity workouts, and lead to a plateau. But if the idea of idling around doesn’t sit well with you either, better incorporate low-intensity exercises like walking and swimming in between your regular high-intensity ones. This way, you get to stay active without overdoing it.
2. Have Ample Rests Between Workouts
At first, you can’t wait to get to the gym every day and pack on muscles. But if you work out every day while trying to up your intensity level, you’ll find yourself bored so you end up skipping one too many times or getting injured which leaves you with no choice but to put your workout on hold for treatment and recuperation. Although chiropractic care is an effective way to address these types of injury, it still would have been better to avoid injury at all cost. Remember that your body needs at least 2 days off in every 7 days of exercising to allow your body to heal, rebuild itself stronger and bigger.
3. Sleep
Athletes spend the majority of their time in training and participating in their chosen sport or event. The idea is if you want to improve you have to train harder. Because of this, most of them tend to neglect sleep and recovery. What they don’t realize is that skimping on both of those can single-handedly halt your gains, increase your risk for injury in the gym or on the road, and hinder processes in your body that regulate, well, pretty much everything. Sleep helps your body regenerate much needed overall energy in order to perform at your best. Aside from that, getting enough sleep allows your body to repair muscles and keep your hormone levels up. So basically, sleeping is your body’s way of going into repair mode. Therefore, as you become renewed when you wake up, you are able to train harder and better.
4. Hydrate
When trying to work on a goal body, people tend to focus a lot on their workout routine and diet plan, so much that they miss out on hydration. You need to keep yourself hydrated not only because it helps you from feeling overheated but also because drinking water helps regain energy and because your body needs liquid to avoid your muscles from drying out which can affect your muscle growth.
5. Eat Nutritious Foods
As cliché as it may sound, but the saying “You are what you eat” is very true. Even if you take a break from training for a while you cannot fully recover if you’re not feeding your body well. Your body needs vitamins and nutrients, which you can never get from fast food or junk foods, in order to perform well. So make sure that you pay attention to what you put in your mouth.
6. Get A Massage
A massage from a therapist or self-massage AKA self-myofascial release (SMR) with foam rollers, massage sticks, and even baseballs can reduce muscle stiffness, promote circulation and induce a state of relaxation in the muscle, although research has been equivocal. It might be painful during, but SMR can be performed the night of a hard workout to remove scar tissue, adhesions in the muscle and restrictions in the fascia (a type of connective tissue that wraps around the whole body).
If you are going to take the time to exercise, then you probably want to get the most out of the time you are in the gym. It’s important to remember that you don’t just achieve this in the gym. The things that you do outside of your training have a great impact on the results too.
One way that people are finding to be beneficial for getting the most of their fitness routine is through chiropractic care. That’s because it helps reduce the pain by keeping your spine in alignment, opens your range of motion since properly aligned spine allows the joints and other areas of the body to work more efficiently, and strengthens bones and muscles because when your back is aligned that’s less stress and extra work for your bones, muscles, and joints which results in them being able to do their job better.
Having said those, it would be a smart move to seek chiropractic care every after exercising especially in a tropical country like Singapore. This way you’re not just maximizing your effort and results in working out but you can also avoid getting injured while doing so. You may be able to get your health in tip-top shape and gain the maximum benefits from your exercise routine with the help of chiropractors in Singapore as well as set you up for long-term health and wellness.