Prioritize Your Workout Plan for Better Results

Here’s some important information that will help you achieve your goals quicker if you are not already aware.

When I walk through the gym periodically, especially if I spend some time there, I notice pretty much everything. Usually, the things that I notice are the things I write about in these articles, and I do it to help, not to criticize.

One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that many members spend a substantial amount of time stretching and doing abdominal work on the mats. That’s all fine and good and extremely beneficial, but if your priority is weight loss, or fat loss is what I like to call it, then although stretching and abdominal work should be a part of your time spent in our gym, the priority should be strength training and cardio.

I feel that there are still a lot of people who believe that doing abdominal work will trim down their mid sections by reducing the fat that has accumulated there over the years. Nothing can be further from the truth. Spot reducing is impossible. The only way to reduce the amount of body fat you have is to get your body to use it for energy, or reduce your daily caloric intake, or better yet, a combination of both.

So having said that, if your priority is to lose body fat, then you should warm up quickly for no longer than five minutes. That’s all that is required if you put some effort into it. Break a sweat, yes a sweat, and get going on your strength training. Your strength training should last about 30 minutes or so which will leave you with at least 25 minutes of cardio to keep your entire workout at one hour. You can certainly choose to do longer cardio, there’s nothing wrong with that if you have the time, but we try to get members to do an effective routine in an hour, no more. There are many reasons for that, but can’t get into those reasons here.

This article is about prioritizing the components in your workout to better serve you, and that’s what personal training is all about. Even if you hire us to do a consultation and a program design, at least you will know that you are not wasting your time. Well worth the investment.

Now having said all that, priorities change. Hopefully, you follow our advice and lose the weight you want to lose, or at least most of it. Now it’s time to re-evaluate and change what is necessary to change in order to achieve your next goal which might be to get stronger, get more flexible, etc. Then and only then will the components in your workout change. \

Hope that helps,

Gino