Get Stronger Quicker

Strength training comes in all shapes and sizes, and if you incorporate slight adjustments to your gym routine you’ll find that it’ll be both rewarding and beneficial.

If you have plateaued and you're not seeing results any more; this will lead you to frustration and in the end you will start having negative results and thoughts.

But it doesn’t have to be that way…

Strength training comes in all shapes and sizes, and if you have slight adjustments to your gym workouts you’ll find that it’ll be both rewarding and beneficial. We have listed 7 different ways in which you can alter your training workout to suit your needs and the needs of your body, which will help you adapt and in turn you will start to see gains in your training.

Full Body Training

Your weight training may be focused on working a number of different body parts either every single day or over the course of the week. The idea behind this is to train each body part evenly so that you build muscle all at once and become strong all around. This is best to do when starting out and wanting to tone or bulk up all over before including more variation and difference into your workout.

An example would be doing chest on Monday, back and shoulders on Tuesday, legs on Wednesday, cardio and active recovery on Thursday, biceps and triceps on Friday

Upper/Lower

Strength training requires variation in order for you to continuously build and prevent the possibility of not progressing. To counter this, try changing it up by working your upper body one day and lower body the next. Keep this interchange going for 2 weeks before changing your routine again.

An example would be to train 4-5 times a week and do an upper body exercise like chest or back one day and legs the next, while including cardio in on “rest” days.

Push/Pull

A recent trend at the moment in gyms is the push/pull workout schedule. If you are you reaching a plateau? Or you are encountering a few functional weaknesses that make it difficult to progress to a higher level. Does this sounds like you? Then you should incorporate push/pull into your training routine for a while. It is involved with doing an exercise whereby you “push” and the next day doing exercises that require a “pull”.

An example of this would be to do an activity such as rowing one day and then a bench press the following day, keep this variety going while concentrating on all your muscle groups.

Isometric training

Do you want to strengthen your muscles and make them able to grip and lift weights more efficiently? Then you need to incorporate isometric training into your workout. It is where you hold a weight in a fixed position for a certain amount of time, normally around 30-60 seconds. It will help your muscles to become used to withstanding a load and boost your overall training.

An example would be holding a weighted dumbbell out in front of you with a straight arm for 30 seconds at a time during your workout, possibly as part of a superset.

Circuit training

You may have seen everyone to novices to the daily gym bunnies on the circuit, hearing that familiar beep go off, whereby they either hop onto a new machine or onto the steps for a lung-busting high intensity cardio workout. And that’s because circuit training is all about high energy stimulation of muscles. Do it to condition your muscles to work actively under pressure, as well as for fat burning and toning.

An example would be ditching your regular routine once a week to go around the circuit a few times, or do it on a day of active recovery juxtaposed with your cardio session.

Power lifting

Want to push yourself to your limit? Perhaps you’re seriously interested about bulking up but aren’t quite sure where to start. Well, power lifting is pretty much the best place. It involves doing a maximum load weight over three of the most important exercises. Lift as much as you can while completing a squat, bench press, and deadlift for big results.

An example is pretty straightforward: complete a squat, then bench press, then deadlift while lifting to your max.

Eccentric loading

This is necessary if you want to prevent your likelihood of picking up injuries or you want to “stretch” and lengthen your muscles. It is a simple yet technical change to your usual lifting where you do, say, a bicep curl normally but when you lower weight down you do it slowly and at a concentrated pace which will help build the muscle to become bigger, and then finishing off quickly with force.

An example is doing a tricep curl by focusing on lowering the weight down slowly and then complete it with a powerful burst.

In summary, it's always best to keep evaluating and adapting your training programmes this will help you gain the most from your time in the gym. A good step to take first is to have a fitness and diet DNA test , this will help you target the correct reps and sets to your workouts and indicate the right recovery time, helping you cut the risk of injuries by overtraining. The DNA test will also help you on the right path towards good nutrition which play an important role in any training programme.

Don't be afraid to ask a Personal Trainer for some advice or better still to help you design a programme; this is probably the best option to reach your goals in the most effective way. A personal Trainer will change and adapt your routine as your progress while also focusing on the important areas that you want to improve on.