8 Ways to Improve Your Training

Image courtesty of The U.S. Army

If you've ever started an exercise or training routine, you know how frustrating it can be when your gains start to slow down and stagnate. Maybe the scale shows that you have stopped losing weight, or you're unable to add more plates to your bench press. Whenever we stop making gains, we call this reaching a plateau. Plateaus, in any area of life can be discouraging. No matter how hard we train, it seems we're not making any progress. But like a mini peak on a mountain, there is always a way to get to the summit.

When it comes to lifting weights, many people feel that the end-goal is only about how much weight they can lift. "You're making gains only if you're increasing the amount of weight on the bar," is their motto. Of course, there are other ways to be productive and make improvements. If you find that you have reached a plateau in part of your training, consider making gains in some other aspects of training. Here is a list of eight ways you can improve the quality of your training in the gym.

1. Form

Work on improving your form. If you're a beginner, this is the single most important goal you can strive for. If you're a regular gym rat and feel that improving your form is matter for beginners only - think again. They say that fundamentals are everything in sports and in weight-training, proper form is the basic fundamental. The fundamentals can always be worked on and improved. Getting the perfect form on an exercise should be constantly addressed.

If you don't know the proper form, now is the time to learn it. Assist the help of a certified trainer or someone whom you trust. Be weary of the advice you get, however, because it will only take that much longer to correct mistakes and errors from improper form.

2. Speed/Time

Make improvements in the amount of time you spend at the gym. Try to shorten the duration of time you spend on your workouts. Many people spend more time in the gym than necessary. Instead of focusing all of their energy and attention on getting the most from their workout, they can be seen sitting around, conversating, taking long water breaks, talking on the phone. Cut out these extraneous behaviors.  

Make it a goal to see if you can squeeze the same amount of wok - or more, in a shorter period of time at the gym.

3. Flexibility/Range of Motion

Try to get the deepest stretches and contractions from your exercises as possible. To do this, aim to achieve full range of motion with every repetition. Get the full stretch in your muscles as you lower the bar. Get the full contraction as your squeeze your muscles.  

Aside from injuries, more often than not, I see people failing to get the most range of motion from their exercises. Their squats barely go below perpendicular. Their bench press is a full six inches from their chest. Their rows fall short of touching their solar plexus. If you do not have an injury are failing to get the deepest stretch from your exercises, either you are lifting too much weight - or simply not trying.

A good way to increase your flexibility and make use of the down time between sets is to practice stretching.  You can stretch whatever muscle you are exercising in between sets.  

4. Enjoyment  

Have you ever thought of increasing the enjoyment you get from you workouts? It may be a strange concept to you, if you feel that workouts should be tough, grueling and stressful, but what's the point of doing something that you despise? Yes, enjoyment and satisfaction can be increased.

Make a conscious effort to enjoy your training more. Enjoy the feeling of pushing your body to the limit. Enjoy the pump as your muscles overflow with blood. Enjoy the rush of adrenaline as your body courses with energy. Hey, Arnold Schwarzenegger described the pump as "having an organism." With that type of enjoyment, it's no wonder he trained religiously!

5. Increase Load 

There's more to increasing your workout load than merely adding extra weights to the bar. You can also increase the load and therefore the amount of work you do by increasing the amount of:

• Reps. Add a few more reps to your sets. If you can't lift the weight for more reps, then lower the weight.
• Sets. Add an extra set to your exercise.
• Exercises. Add an extra exercise to your workout routine.

Increasing any of these factors will increase your growth. This is where advanced training techniques like pyramids and drop sets come into play. If you don't know what these are, then simply adding one extra rep, set or exercise will help tremendously.

6. Learn

Improving in the gym is not only a matter of improving your body. Learning is also improving. Improve your mind. Strive to learn new ways of doing things. Do you find your workouts repititious? Does it feel like you are doing the same exercises over and over?

Add variety to your workouts by learning new exercises. Or try an entirely new workout. You can add body weight only exercises. You can try kettle bell exercises. There is a tremendous variety of exercises out there.  Find one you like and incorporate it into your next workout.

For example, I never tried cardio type "class" workouts, like yoga or kickboxing before.  However, I trained with the P90X dvds and found that I quite enjoyed these types of workouts.  They are also easy to do and don't require any equipment.  Now I have no excuse to not exercise as I can just train at home without any gym equipment.

7. Stamina/Endurance 

Try to spend more time at the gym. I know this may go against improving your speed/time, but where the former goal was meant to make your workouts more efficient, the latter goal is meant to increase the endurance of your muscles. Like a sprinter vs a long distance runner.

How long can your muscles work before they succumb to lactic acid and fatigue? Do you get tired easily? Are you out of breathe early? If so, then work on improving your muscular endurance and stamina. Increase the amount of reps you do, or the amount of sets in your workouts. You can also increase the number of exercises you do with each workout.

Strive to add more work to your routine.  Your body will adapt to the extra load by increasing it's endurance and stamina.

8. Improve a Specific Body Part

Focus on improving a lagging body part. If your strongest body part is your chest, then maybe you don't need to work on improving the amount of bench press you can do. Maybe your legs or your back is lagging behind. Then spend more time doing squats or rows. We all like to play to our strengths. When it comes to body building and weight training, that often means we neglect the weaker parts of our body - leading to asymmetry and underdevelopment.

I'm guilty of this myself. I tend to workout the upper half of my body to the detriment of my lower half. With this recent BTCIII challenge, I am working on improving the size of my legs.

Look in the mirror, be honest with yourself. What body parts have you neglected?  Ask a friend for an "objective" perspective.  Sure we all like to have the biggest guns in the room, but if you have chicken legs - then you will look disproportionate.