How to Keep Your Workouts from Getting Boring
An exercise database will help you take the guesswork out of knowing which exercises target certain muscle groups, how to use various workout equipment or understanding proper form can make your journey a bit easier towards reaching your goal. By doing the right types of exercises, you will yield results. They will help you burn fat, gain muscle, and look and feel better. On the other hand, you want to avoid doing the wrong types of exercises that could cause injury, slow your progress, and leave you feeling discouraged and wanting to quit.
To help you succeed, an exercise database is an excellent tool that will not only help you now, but it can also be valuable in the future as well.
Why You Need an Exercise Database
There are many reasons you will benefit from using an exercise database. These include:
It Makes Life Easier: The easier you can make things on yourself mentally, the better. Constantly stopping your workout to watch YouTube videos about how to perform a certain exercise in the middle of your workout session can be disruptive and time consuming. With access to an exercise database, it will allow you to remain focused and feel more confident during your workouts.
It Ensures You Are Doing the Right Workouts: All exercises are not created equal and, depending on your goals, there usually is a right answer. For example, if you want to target certain muscle groups or try different exercises, you can use filters in the exercise database to easily find what you are looking for.
It Organizes Your Weekly Routine: Whether you want to find exercises on the fly or if you want to design your weekly training program, you will greatly benefit from using an exercise database to help keep you organized.
Support Your Workout Goals
A huge benefit of using an exercise database is to help you achieve your fitness SuPeRSMART goals. By having access to hundreds of workouts in an exercise database, it can ultimately help you in the following ways:
Target Muscle Groups: Whenever you are not sure how to do an exercise or don’t have access to certain equipment, you can search through an exercise database to find alternate options to target specific muscle groups.
Muscle Strength/Muscle Endurance: If your goal is to improve your muscle strength, this means that you want to increase the amount of force a muscle or muscle group can exert in resistance to a single effort. Or, if your goal is to increase your muscle endurance, this means that you want a muscle or muscle group to repeat a movement many times to hold a particular position for an extended period of time without fatigue.
Stretching: Often ignored, but very important. Stretching can help improve your flexibility and the range of motion of your joints.
Workout Variations: Although you don’t need a lot of variety when it comes to exercises in your current workout plan, it is still beneficial to challenge yourself to learn new exercises. Whether you are following a program prescribed by a certified Personal Trainer or developing your own, being able to understand different types and proper forms of exercises will maximize your progress.
Focus on Primary Muscle Groups
There are a number of ways that people choose to workout. Some people choose to do upper body days followed by lower-body days. Some people use the push/pull method. Others switch off between days of cardio and days of weightlifting, and some simply do full-body workouts every time they’re at the gym. While the best approach depends on your goals—perhaps the best method of all (or, at least, the most popular) is to divide your workout days up by muscle group.
Using an exercise database to divide your workout days up by muscle group and or combining certain muscle groups up with others is a consistent and organized way to meet your fitness goals.
There are six main muscle groups you should focus on incorporating into your weekly training program:
Chest - Pectoral
Back - Trapezius, Rhomboids, Latissimus dorsi, Erector spinae
Arms - Biceps, Triceps, Forearms
Shoulders - Anterior Deltoid (front), Lateral Deltoid (middle), Posterior Deltoid (rear), Trapezius
Legs - Quadriceps, Hamstrings, Glutes, Calves
Trunk – Abdominals, Obliques, Lower Back
Muscle Strength/Muscle Endurance
When training for a specific goal it is important to understand which phase you should be using. The main objectives of muscle strength is to become stronger, more efficient in movements, a better sport specific performer and to have denser muscles.
Muscle endurance is the best phase for a beginner or an endurance athlete. Beginners would benefit from this phase more because the light weights make it easier to learn proper form and perform consistent ROM (range of movement) throughout the exercise.
Stretching
Before assuming you know how to stretch, referencing an exercise database and watching videos can be advantageous to make sure you do it safely and effectively. While you can stretch anytime, anywhere, proper technique is key. Stretching incorrectly can actually do more harm than good.
Here are a few tips to keep stretching safe:
Don’t consider stretching a warmup. You may hurt yourself if you stretch cold muscles. Before stretching, warm up with a light walk, jog or biking at low intensity for five to 10 minutes. What typically works best it to stretch after your workout when your muscles are warm.
Focus on major muscle groups. Concentrate your stretches on major muscle groups such as your calves, thighs, hips, lower back, neck and shoulders. Make sure that you stretch both sides.
Don’t bounce. Stretch in a smooth movement, without bouncing. Bouncing as you stretch can injure your muscle and actually contribute to muscle tightness.
Hold your stretch. Breathe normally and hold each stretch for about 30 seconds; in problem areas, you may need to hold for around 60 seconds.
Don’t aim for pain. Expect to feel tension while you’re stretching, not pain. If it hurts, you’ve pushed too far. Back off to the point where you don’t feel any pain, then hold the stretch.
Keep up with your stretching. Stretching can be time-consuming. But you can achieve the most benefits by stretching regularly, at least two to three times a week.
Workout Variations
Another great thing about the exercise database it that it enables you to work out the right muscles independent of the equipment you have available. For example, if Monday is normally your chest day and you are currently on a business trip and only have access to a rather rinky-dink hotel gym. You are used to your gym at home that offers several options of dumbbells, cables, benches, smith machines, and barbells. However, at the hotel, you only have a limited set of dumbbells, a bench, and a few resistant bands. Instead of just skipping the workout all together, you could use the exercise database to select workouts that use the equipment that is available to you.
Additionally, instead of scrolling through hundreds of exercises, you can use the filters to help you quickly find what you are looking for in the exercise database. You can search by body part, level of experience, or equipment.
Provides Education
An exercise database is an excellent education tool to help you learn the names of exercises, which muscles are being worked, and proper form. Since you are already investing time to workout, you might as well learn about the exercises that you are doing. Also, if you are not comfortable trying out new exercises at the gym, using the videos to practice the movements at home first might help boost your confidence.
Motivational
Everyone has days when they struggle with motivation to workout. Whether you had a stressful day at work, the weather is gloomy, or you just feel glued to your couch, an exercise database could help inspire you to workout. How? Sometimes it can be helpful to actually see the workout you have planned to talk yourself into just getting it done. Or it can be helpful to make a few minor tweaks to the workout instead of just not doing it at all.
Conclusion
Having access to a library of workouts right at your fingertips is an invaluable tool for anyone with a fitness goal. Whether you are working with a certified Personal Trainer or developing your own workout plan, an exercise database will support you in identifying exercises that target specific muscle groups, style of strength training, stretching, and workout variations.
It is also convenient to have exercises in one place. Have you ever saved exercises that you saw on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube and then either completely forgot about them or forgot which social media platform you saved it on? Instead of wasting time scrolling through all of your social media accounts, do yourself a favor and use an exercise database created by a certified Personal Trainer. Not only will this help you save time, it will also help to educate and motivate you to make progress towards achieving your fitness goals.
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