Fitness

5 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Workout

1 . Lift weights. “If you just do cardio, you’re sabotaging yourself,” says Jacob Wilson, Ph.D., certified strength and conditioning specialist and associate editor of the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. “Your metabolism will actually go down, making weight loss more difficult. Resistance training, however, builds muscle to increase your metabolic rate.” That explains why, in one Harvard School of Public Health study of 1 0,500

those who spent 20 minutes a

day weight spent the same amount of time performing cardio). training gained less abdominal fat over the course of 1 2 years (compared to those

2. Listen to music. Everyone knows that your favorite tunes can fire you up for a workout, but in one Indian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology of 30 men and women, people who listened to music (especially slow music) after their workout recovered faster than did those who went sans tunes. “Music boosts the body’s levels of serotonin and dopamine, hormones that are known to foster recovery,” says Perkins . Try listening to a few of your favorite, most relaxing tracks as soon as you finish your workout. It will help your blood pressure and heart rate get back to normal and recovery happen ASAP.

3. Swap stretching for a dynamic warmup. Don’t stretch in vain. In one Austin State University study, people who warmed up with light leg extensions and squats were able to squat with 8.36% more weight during their workout than if they had performed typical “bend and hold” stretches. Their lower bodies were also 22.7% more stable. “Think of a rubber band,” says Wilson. “If you stretch it around a lot and then pull it back to shoot it, it’s not going to go as far. The same thing happens with your muscles and tendons.” However, dynamic bodyweight moves—ones that mimic the workout you’re about to perform—increase blood flow and improve your range of motion without compromising your muscles’ and tendons’ elastic properties. So for instance, if you’re about to go for a run, it’s a good idea to move through about five to 1 0 minutes of lunges, knee raises and leg swings before hitting the treadmill.

4. Preface your workout with carbs. You might think of carbo-loading as something you do to run a better marathon. But eating carbs before your workout can also help

those intervals, according to 201 3 research published in Sports Medicine. “Carbs are your body’s primary fuel for any high-intensity

workout, and when your body is fueled, your body is going to put forth a better effort and get a better value, both in terms of

caloric expenditure and muscle growth, than it would if you were in fasted state,” says Wilson. So even if you like your morning workouts, make sure to eat some toast or oatmeal before you head out of the door.

5. Do intervals. Minute per minute, high-intensity intervals—periods of all-out effort interspersed with short, low-intensity “breaks”—come with

more cardiovascular and fat-loss benefits than any other workout, says Wall. For instance, in one study from Human Performance Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse,

lunges burned an average of people who performed a 20-minute interval workout with exercises including pushups, burpees, squats

1 5 calories per minute—nearly twice as many as during long runs. To burn similar calories, follow

workout’s protocol: Perform as many reps

as minute, then repeat for a total of four rounds. possible for 20 seconds, rest for 1 0 seconds and repeat for

a total of four minutes. Rest