4 Tips To Increase The Intensity Of Your Workouts

increase the intensity of your workoutsThe following is a guest post. If interested in submitting a guest post please read our guest posting policy and then contact us.

When you work out you want to get the most out of your workout routine every time. When you first start out you might find yourself only going so far. After a while you need to increase the intensity of your workout and push yourself farther. If you workout at a gym you may think you need a personal trainer to do so. You do not have to worry about that. You can increase the intensity whether you are at home or at a huge gym. Take these four tips into mind when you are wanting to increase the intensity of your workout routines.

1. Less Rest Between Sets

Pushing yourself to the limit and beyond is the best way to get the most intensity added up.

How long are you currently resting? Make sure you are keeping track and timing yourself. Different muscles have different growth responses to different rest times. People suggest rest times of anywhere from 45 seconds to 3 minutes.

But this one fact remains: if you want to increase the intensity of your workouts, you’ll want to start reducing your rest times.

Start reducing the time that you rest between sets of exercises. Take a small break but do not take too long between each rep. By reducing that time you can increase the intensity of your workout while seeing results with the training you’re doing.

You want to find the right mix of keeping your heart rate and breathing up, while still getting enough rest to exhaust your muscle again during the next set.

2. Push Harder and Deeper

increase the intensity

From Star Trek to Thor, Hemsworth increased his weight lifting by 5% every two weeks.

When you are doing lunges or similar types of activities remember to push as deep as you can. By adding that increase you will be upping the effectiveness of your workout. This will help you to push yourself farther than you have gone before. When you are ready to stop doing an exercise that is when you need to push yourself even harder than before. Keep on keeping on and you will see results sooner than you think.

3. Add More Reps

When you are working on a set of exercises make sure to increase the amount of reps or the weight every two weeks. Remember Thor? He got huge by increasing the weight he was lifting by 5% every other week.

By increasing the reps your body will not get used to doing the same thing and it will be pushed harder and farther than before. By upping the reps each week or each time you do the exercises then you will increase the intensity slowly while watching out for injuries.

4. Add Weights

When you are doing exercises like lunges then you should start looking at adding small weights along the way. You can add them to your ankles or carry them with you in the lunges. The more weight you add the more intensity it will add to that particular area of exercise. You will be able to feel the burn when you start adding in weights where you once didn’t have them. This can help you see results after you hit a plateau or if you just need to step it up a notch.

Increase the Intensity of Your Workouts

Other great ideas for your workout can be found at 3LBsoul and you can learn all about how to increase the intensity of your workouts. You will see results when you start changing up your routine. While something may work for a while it will eventually stop working.

Using these four tips can help you to step it up and start seeing results and improvements from your hard work. Do not just rest in one easy routine. Switch it up often and see how much you can improve your body and your confidence!

Author Bio:

Marlene is passionate about helping others grow fit. See more at 3LBsoul.com and get more information about Fitness and Health.

Photo courtesy of ProjectThor.com

Comments

  1. Working outside or doing physical labor all day means I really don’t need to exercise in the way that peopel do these days. I’m already physically exhuasted each day I come home. But I think for the office worker dudes and others that don’t move around much in the day, yeah, you gotta get pumping the iron! And don’t be a wuss about it, lol, great post!

    • I’ve got to say there are guys I know at the gym that do construction then hit the gym. I don’t know how they do it! When I had a more labor intensive job, out in the sun from 6am to 3pm, there was no way I could workout after that.

  2. Those are some great tips I working on adding a fitness schedule during the week since I’ve move into more of an office, and sitting around is doing nothing to keep the weight off.

    • Anyone in an office job, even if you’re on your feet moving around, really needs some additional challenging to the other parts of the body. When I was directing a call center I gained a ton of weight even though I was on my feet all day.

  3. I’m with TB. For a while, my workout routine was 2 sets (two sides of the highway) of ~100-150 reps of setting 12lb traffic cones, then 6 hours later picking them all up.

  4. I am about to embark on another workout routine and these are some great tips. I will have to use them in order to get my desired results.

    • Good stuff Grayson! I would encourage people to not waste their time reading “muscle comics” (the muscle mags you see at Barnes and Noble) and find a person who has the fitness and body you admire. Get them to train you, and find out what they eat. If they are a good communicator, that’ll change your world.

  5. Love the post. I cannot tell you how HIIT sessions (High Impact Interval Training) and the book 4 Hour Body has helped. Tricking our body through intervals is the way to go. Thanks and have a great weekend!

  6. Very useful tips indeed!! I wanted to build a good body fitness just like Hemsworth and for that reason I’m being following workout planning. So glad to find these tips, I’ll add these tips into my schedule to get the best result. Thanks dude.

    • Absolutely! There’s a lot of stuff out there on how Hemsworth got huge for Avengers. And I don’t know if there’s anyway to tell if it’s just made up or not. But finding a person at the gym that looks like him, or the body you admire, get them to train you.

  7. Great guest post. As a runner, I need to vary my workouts more. My legs look like steel and my upper body isn’t as tone. I need upper body to run faster, too, so it isn’t an “I should.” It’s become a “starting now” move. Two weeks in I feel pretty sore, but good.

    • I’m running my first half marathon in a few weeks, but I’ve been an avid runner for a year now. I run about 16 miles a week, while also lifting 3-4 times a week. I’m more muscular than what is ideal for a runner’s build, but I will say having a stronger back, core and legs is a worthwhile investment.

  8. Great tips! I switch things up all the time to increase the intensity. I’ll go from resting longer times between sets to resting only 45-60 seconds. At first it isn’t bad, but then you get into deadlifts where you are upping the weight and only resting 60 seconds. It feels like your heart is going to explode out of your chest!

    I also make it a point to up the weight each time I lift…gotta keep the body guessing.

    • Yeah dead lifts and squats! I get nauseous man! I can keep pushing myself hard. But as soon as I set the weight down I feel like I’m going to fall over! With squats, I do 3-4 normal sets, then one heavy mega set that’s 20 reps. Even if it’s 8 reps, then standing with the bar, breathing, 8 more reps, breathing then 4 reps. It’s brutal!

  9. I’ve been working out from home doing P90X and it’s kickin my butt! It does lead to some pretty sore days afterwards. But, it’s insurance for me staying trim and fit.

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