Tips for Working Out at the Gym

[out of the woods]

I'm planning to go to the gym again. Probably on a daily basis. But the thing is, I'm a bit inexperienced with the whole "proper way" to work out.

Is there a particular way it should be done, to ensure you're losing weight evenly in all places of your body, or to make sure no complicated pain or discomfort arises?

For example, should the elliptical/treadmill/bike-thing be done before the weights, or the other way around, or any mixture of it all?

Should you stretch yourself out before doing anything, or are some machines meant to warm you up themselves?

Should you only do one thing a day, like weights one day and treadmill another? Or is it okay to do it all? And is there a time limit where using something is just not helping you anymore/causing strain, that you may not notice? [ Because I know pain while you're working out is an indication. ]

Any advice is appreciated! Thanks!



[ And I tried looking to see if there was already a post out there like this, but I couldn't find one, so I hope no one minds! ]

 

[__penguin__]

My workout routine (that works very well... when I can actually stick to it xd ) is 30 minutes of cardio *every* day, then alternating upper and lower body strength workouts every other day (like.. upper body on monday, lower body on tuesday, upper body on wednesday, etc). Of course, I never usually get to work out every single day of the week, but I try to as much as I can.

Don't worry about losing weight evenly. You can't spot-train to lose fat in a certain place. It'll always go away evenly by itself.

I always stretch all my muscles before every workout.

For my strength workouts, I follow this book I got a long time ago (I really like it, I'll link you if you're interested), but you can find good strength training exercises on google or from workout videos or whatever.  

[Iconised Ghost]

I dont think it matters how you work out in terms of even weight loss- i'm pretty sure that you lose weight from where ever your body decides to lose weight from and theres not a lot you can do about it. You can work on certain areas so they look more toned as the fat level goes down though.

Depending on what you plan to do, there is definately a "right" way in terms of technique. This is especially important in weight lifting, if you dont have the right posture you could do yourself an injury. If you're not sure, your gym should have people around who would be happy to tell you how to do it. My gym has a sort of "gym explorer" where a trained person takes you around the weight machines etc and shows you how to do them, what weight to set them on, etc. You could look into that 3nodding

I like to use the treadmill before I do weights because I can use it as a ten min warm up, so I jog gently, moving into a run and then a sprint so my muscles arent cold going into some heavy lifting. But you can do other things to warm up too. It depends on what you are going to do in your work out i guess. But running has worked pretty well for me.

You probably should stretch before and after exercising. I'm lazy and dont stretch before hand. But afterwards is not only good for your muscles, it also feels really nice xD

That doesnt mean you cant do things in any order you want after you are warm. Once i'm warm, i'll weight lift, run, weight lift, cycle, weight lift, do some stairs etc. Just as long as I dont cool down between exercises. This means that you dont have to do weights one day and treadmill another. Its really dependent on how you feel- if you do an hour of weights, you might not want to run a marathon straight after wink You can alternate weight lifting and cardio days if you want to make sure you get plenty of both, but I dont think its super necessary, if you want to do a bit of both on the same day I cant see why not. As long as you arent getting yourself injured.

As for strain- pain is a good indication. You probably want to be a little sore after a work out, its a sign you worked hard. You kinda get a feel for "good" and "bad" pain. Personally, pain that can be relieved a bit by stretching or more gentle exercise is good pain. Pain during the exercise, other than the usual muscley cramps, any sharp pain, sudden pain is bad pain. If in doubt, stop your exercise, try something else, have a rest.

For some weight exercises people say you should do a certain number of reps. I think you should be able to do ten or 15 reps and you should just about be struggling to finish them. So for e.g., im doing a chest press, I should be able to do 15 but have to work hard to do them. I usually do 10 or 15 reps on each machine before moving onto the next, and do about 3 sort of cycles of those machines. So I end up doing 45 reps on each but not all in one go.

This is all just based on my own experiences ^_^ If you have any worries about how to do any exercise properly, stretching or pain you should really ask your gym. They'd be happy to help  

[Tandahda]

My work out goes something like this:

15 min warmup on an elliptical
10 min stretch
10 min various calisthenics (situps, pushups)
30 min podrunner podcast on the treadmill  

[Honeydew Ice Cream]

I'll keep you my dirty little secret...

I tend to do my cardio (18 minutes treadmill + 15 minutes cross-trainer) before my weight training. For weights, I'll do upper body one day, lower body the next, back to upper body, etc. It gives that part of your body a day of rest between each workout. Also, between sets, I try to do jumping jacks, or some other form of low intensity cardio exercise; this keeps my heart rate up while I'm at the weight machines. I stretch after my workout.

Hope this helped! c:

...don't tell anyone or you'll be just another regret.