What Might Be Hindering Your Workouts?

You go to the gym, you workout, and you leave. Sometimes the workouts are awesome. Sometimes they’re average. Sometimes they’re not good.

What is making the difference between the good, average and poor workouts?

In this article, I’ll be going over some things that can easily fly under the radar when it comes to workout quality!

Pre-Workout Nutrition:

Do you eat within 2 hours of your workouts? If you are not getting some sort of meal, preferably carb and protein focussed, within 2 hours of training, there is a decent chance you are limiting your performance, hours before you even step foot in the gym.

Eat some carbs for fuel and eat some protein to help with muscle recovery and growth after your session.

There is nothing wrong with fat, but lower-fat meals are likely best for pre-workout nutrition since fat will slow down the digestion of carbohydrates and protein.

Get in a good pre-workout meal and you’re already putting yourself in a great spot to TRAIN!

Warm-Up:

We’ve all been short on time and jumped right into our workout without a proper warm-up. Chances are, you have felt the difference. I personally perform FAR better when I execute an intentful warm-up prior to training.

While 5 to 10 minutes on the treadmill or another cardio machine is a good idea, the main warm-up benefits come from the mobility and priming exercises you do prior to your actual workout sets.

Doing some squats and your quads and hips are tight? Give them a foam-roll to help relax them. Performing some ankle and hip mobility is also something I often do prior to squats since properly reaching squat depth is heavily dependant on sufficient ankle and hip mobility. Do some bodyweight single-leg deadlifts, bodyweight squats and glute bridges to prime your foot stability, quads and glutes so they are activated and ready to go!

Do a proper warm-up that gets your heart rate up and works on aspects specific to your upcoming training session and you’ll be well on your way to a great workout! Not to mention, a quality warm-up helps lower your risk for injury during your workout. You have no chance at an awesome workout if you’re injured and can’t workout!

Rest Times & Focus:

Nothing is worse than being in the groove, then getting stuck in a 5-minute conversation. But did you get yourself stuck in that conversation? I’m not saying to be an asshole and don’t talk to anyone. Have a little conversation if you want, but try to not let them carry on for crazy lengths of time as that can easily interrupt your flow.

I rest anywhere from 5 minutes for heavy strength work to 1 minute for pump focussed isolation work. Plan what you do within your rest times, according to your rest times. Keep in mind that there are other things to be doing during rest times to ensure you are prepared and ready to go for your next set. Do you need to change the weight on the bar? Your calf still a little tight and you want to give it a foam-roll?

About the focus part… STAY FOCUSSED! I’m not going to tell you how to do that. You know what allows you to stay in the zone. Maybe it’s listening to your favourite music or podcast. Maybe it’s working out in complete silence. For some people, it might even be talking to people for a minute or two between sets!

Be honest with yourself and keep yourself focussed! The more you do this, the better your sets and therefore your workout will be!

The End!

Those are 3 simple tips to help you with your workout quality! Hopefully, these tips allow you to have as many AWESOME workouts as possible!

Thanks for reading everyone! If you enjoyed the article or have any questions, be sure to let me know in the comment section below! I will see you back here this Thursday for my next article!

Here are some other articles that may be beneficial for your knowledge!

How To Build Muscle With Protein!

What’s Important For Nutrition?

How to Create a Workout Program

Until Next Time,

Kohl Johnson

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