Eight Tips To Optimize Your Resistance Training

Resistance training can help you build muscle, strengthen, and improve your health. There are plenty of reasons to start, although you’ll want to optimize your training. When you do, you ensure you can work out without strain and see results.

Making minor adjustments to your routine can help you get the most from working out regularly. These are the eight tips to optimize your resistance training. Let’s get started!

1. Get Plenty of Rest

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You don’t build muscle when working out; you build it when you rest. If you want to build muscle after resistance training, it’s best to get plenty of sleep each night. When you sleep, your body releases amino acids into your bloodstream that build stronger muscles.

In particular, muscle repair occurs during deep or REM sleep. Getting more deep sleep ensures your body gets enough rest to grow muscle. So, you must get at least seven hours each night when trying to optimize your resistance training.

2. Don’t Miss Recovery Days

Next, it’s also vital that you don’t skip out on rest days. You shouldn’t do resistance training every day because you’ll wear out specific muscle groups. Instead, you should exercise different muscles each day and have a few rest days a week.

You should have a rest day at least every seven to ten days. Doing so can prevent injury, gives your body time to repair and build muscle, and reduces muscle soreness. That way, you can keep performing your training at optimal levels.

Overall, recovery days are just as important as your training! Make sure to work them into your schedule. 

3. Increase Resistance Over Time

You won’t gain muscle if you repeatedly use the same resistance levels. To optimize your training, you’ll want to add more resistance when it starts getting too easy for you. 

You don’t want to overdo it; you must find the perfect balance. That means you can easily repeat a move ten times without struggling. However, it’d be difficult if you did it two more times. Add more resistance to stay within that range.

Over time, your body will adapt to the exercise. If you do not see the same levels of improvement you used to, it’s time to add more resistance to your routine. Most of the time, it takes about six to eight weeks of regular resistance training to reach that point.

4. Use Compound Movements

Using compound movements over isolated ones is another way to optimize your training sessions. Compound exercises use two or more joints during the motion, while isolated movements use only a single joint.

Compound exercises rely on more muscles to perform the move, so you’re using your time and energy more efficiently. It’s best to use these types of movements when you want to optimize your resistance training as much as possible.

A great example would be a squat. With this exercise, you use your quads, hamstrings, glutes, and more. However, a bicep curl is an excellent example of an isolated motion because it only uses your biceps.

5. Get More Protein

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You must get more protein in your diet when you want to build muscle. The amino acids found in protein are what repair and build your muscle tissue. You won’t see results very quickly if you aren’t getting more protein when on a regular training routine.

 There are several simple ways to get more protein every day. Snack foods, like chips, are very low in protein. If you replace your snacks with eggs and cheese, you’re sure to add more protein to your diet. You can also have healthy protein shakes every once in a while.

Overall, there are plenty of options to increase your protein intake. You’ll want to ensure that you give your body the necessary nutrients to build and repair your muscles after training.

6. Use the Correct Form

Next, you must use the correct forms while training. Otherwise, you won’t get the most out of your workouts and could accidentally cause strain on your body. Always practice using the correct movements; it helps to watch yourself in the mirror while learning something new.

If you don’t think you can perform a movement correctly, try lowering the number of repetitions you do until you can. Spend time focusing on how you move— you’ll notice a difference in no time!

7. Don’t Skip Warm Ups

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Warm-ups take time so they might seem inefficient at first. However, skipping warm-ups will put you at risk of injuries. You need about five minutes of warming up to get the best results. You’ll feel ready and won’t risk harming yourself.

You can go on a walk or stretch to prepare your body for resistance training. You must ensure the muscles you plan to train that day are ready to go!

8. Pay Attention to Pain

You’ve probably heard one person say “no pain, no gain” since you started training. However, you shouldn’t actually ignore pain! It’s a clear sign that you’re putting too much strain on your body during your training sessions. There are differences in good and bad pain during a workout.

First, good pain makes you tired. It’s the burning sensation we get during a good workout. It’s not painful enough to stop; pushing through it will strengthen you. However, it shouldn’t be bad enough to make you lose the correct form.

Bad pain is different and can lead to severe injuries. You’ll be able to feel that something isn’t right with your body, usually followed by sharper pain. Additionally, if you feel pain in your joints, you must stop! You’re not trying to work out your joints with resistance training, so they shouldn’t become sore.

In short, you’ll need to pay attention to your pain. After all, you can’t optimize resistance training when you have an injury.

Always Work on Optimizing Your Training

It becomes easier to optimize your resistance training when you think about it each session. As long as you take care of your body when working out, it will come naturally to you.

To summarize, you can use those eight primary tips to optimize your training sessions. Try using them in your next workout!

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