Up The Intensity of Your Workout

Ever feel like your cardio routine is seemingly repetitive? Well then it is time to up that intensity of your workout. Your body starts adapting to a routine when you do the same workout over and over again. By switching up your workout routine you will wake up muscles you haven’t used in years, which will  intensify your sweat session and who doesn’t like a good sweat when working out.

Follow these steps to a sweater workout and a faster heart rate:

Active Rest – 

The fitter you get the easier it is for your body to recover. Therefore active rest is a way to bring down your heart rate enough to just catch your breath, but it does not necessarily allow it to drop all the way down. Incorporate this into your workout by adding skipping or star jumps in between sets.

Monitor Heart Rate – 

The less rest breaks you need the fitter you become in comparison to when you first started working out. By monitoring your heart rate it makes it easier to determine how much rest your body actually needs. You can monitor your heart rate by wearing a heart monitor. If you do not have one you can always use the timer on your phone and count the number of beats in ten seconds. When the number of beats begin to drop rapidly you are good to continue the workout.

Energy Bursts – 

By adding sudden bursts of energy to your workout this forces your body to use anaerobic energy to feed your muscles. Your body has to work harder to replenish this energy. Try this technique out on your next run, by sprinting 100 metres with everything you have, then slow down and walk before doing it for another 100m. If you are in the gym add in skipping for a minute during your sets or if you are at home you can add 15 burpees.

Interval Training – 

Some days you just don’t feel like a straight hour on the treadmill to achieve a good sweat. So why don’t you try interval training. Interval training is when you divide your regular cardio training into periods or work and rest. For example, doing a 30 minute run consisting of 1 minute sprints followed by 45 seconds rest. Interval training can be done when running either on or off the treadmill, cycling or even when weight training- so give it a try and mix up your next workout.

Give these a go the next time you do your workout and let us know how it goes.

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