Adding Variety To Your Workout Is Essential To Give Your Body What It Needs
When it comes to working out, consistency is the foundation of staying on top of your health. From better sleep to reduced depression and anxiety, having a workout routine keeps you in great shape both physically and mentally. Yet, with a busy life, meeting the exercise quotas you may have set for yourself often seems unattainable. Everything from lack of time or motivation to gymtimidation can prevent you from hitting the gym as much as you'd like.
Another culprit can be the monotony in your workout practices. While sticking to a routine can help you with consistency and staying on track of progress, you don't want your workouts to become ... well, routine. If you're going to the gym three or four times a week and constantly using the Stairmaster, lifting weights, and finishing off on the rowing machine, your workouts will grow tedious. Adding some variety to your regimen will make the act of exercising much more exciting compared to simply hitting your goals.
Vary workouts to prevent muscle damage
Outside of livening up your workouts, varying your exercises is important when it comes to maintaining the health of your overall body. Honing in on only one set of muscles is like only going to the dentist and expecting it to benefit the rest of your body. After a day of working on arms, focus on abs or legs the next day. Not only will it allow strained muscles to rest properly, but you can avoid the Johnny Bravo look that can come along with working on your upper body alone. Switching up your exercises allows the entirety of your body to be worked out, resulting in a more consistent-looking physique.
Although you may want to see progress with one area of your body, you're not doing yourself any favors by working it out every day. For example, if you keep lifting weights to build muscle in your arms, you risk your arm muscles experiencing an unnecessary amount of pain and damage. At that point, you'll be getting in the way of the very thing that you're working towards.
Follow a fitness plan
For people that have periods, syncing your workouts to your menstrual cycle can help you vary your workouts if you have trouble knowing what you should be doing and when exactly you should be doing it. Since hormone levels are consistently going up and down throughout each phase of the cycle, tailoring your workouts to how much energy you have will help you narrow down which workout to do.
Another way to combat a lack of variety in exercise routines would be to join a class. Classes such as HIIT or kickboxing involve full-body exercises, so you never have to worry about being stuck doing the same thing or focusing too much on one body part. You can also find online workouts that will show you which days to work on certain muscles. That way, the guesswork is out of your hands and you can listen to a professional about what you should be doing for optimal results.