Your workout will be way better if you do those 10 things. You'll build more muscle and will burn more fat. The first thing you need to do during your workout, backed by science, by the neuropsychology of the exercise, is listening to music.
In your brain, there is an area called amygdala, responsible for receiving the stimuli you receive. Music is stimulus, and it reaches it, and I say that it depends on the musical style. Country music doesn't really work, and it will depend on the volume.
If it's at a low volume, it's not excitatory. But if it's too loud, you may be irritated, so adjust the volume in order to feel excited to hit your workout, and some music genres have a higher tempo, so that's why - people listen to EDM or rock music - I like rock music! Rock is nice, but not that sugary rock you played that one time.
Science shows us that music has an ergogenic effect, which increases your performance, and in some sports it's prohibited to use music, as it changes people, and they even lose pain perception. If you use music to train, you'll feel less pain, and thus more reps, more load, more volume, and more muscle. - You'll get sad, then.
- I'll complain on Twitter! The second thing you need to do during your workout that will impact heavily is the load you choose. We are talking about a tool for your results, regardless of building muscle or fat loss.
If you get the load wrong, you'll get hurt or not get the proper results, as you won't be hitting the muscles properly, or you can use a light load and not stimulate that muscle enough. It's important to reach failure, or close to failure. When your muscle is unable to do it, we understand that we managed to stimulate it.
You need to use a load that enables that. Studies show that it doesn't matter how many reps you do, as long you reach failure or close to it. I'll help you out: with a light load, you'll take longer and will need more reps.
Is that a problem? No. But this will lead to a lot of muscle pain, lead to acidosis.
If you do 15, 20 reps, the muscle will burn a lot. Is that a problem? No.
But if you add weight and reach failure with less reps, it's the same thing, but you'll use more strength, it will be more vigorous, and you may be doing the exercise with poor form. Euro! I'm giving you two options.
Either you do it in a way that brings you more pain, and you can handle that, or you'll use bigger loads, with a more challenging workout, in which you also need better technique to avoid getting hurt or compensating. Feel your body. That's tip number 9.
The third thing which will boost your workout, and it's one you have no idea how much it will help you. The gym people won't like it, though. I'm talking about - not getting distracted!
- Shut up and don't talk to me! If you go to the gym to workout, are you there to train or to talk? I'm talking about avoiding focusing on anything other than the workout.
You'll need to be antisocial. I use some things which are interesting, like headphones. It will boost your workout, and if people look at you with headphones, they'll avoid you.
There's also one thing I like and you may have seen, a lot on my instagram, which is my bucket hat. When I really don't want to talk, I just put my bucket hat on like this. People see me from the nose down.
I remember Waldemar Guimarães, who has the quote "put an angry face on and train". When you do this, you will have a better workout, as you are more focused. You'll feel your body more, and we'll get into that for tip 9, and this will boost the hypertrophy and fat loss processes.
Tip 4 is the order of exercises. For a chest workout, do you choose it randomly? It will suck.
If you choose good exercises, but their order is not that great, your workout will suck. Each exercise works in a way with different auxiliary muscles, and specific joints, too. It's important to know their order and which ones to choose.
This is complex, and I took over 20 years to figure it out. I do that on Muscle 60D, which is why we promise 1 year of results in two months. You have two options, either you sign up for Muscle 60D, or you get a well-made workout, you can't do things randomly.
Tip 5 to boost your workout and is usually neglected is the range of motion. Let's imagine the crossover. You can do the movement going from point 0, at the beginning of the movement, to the point where it shortens the fiber the most, and when you reach that limit, you get the most range of motion.
What's do you get? - I dunno! - At both extremes, you have the active and passive insufficiency.
Insufficiency because your muscle has less sufficiency of contraction and strength. When you reach that point, the muscle has a harder time and it suffers more, leading to more hypertrophy. You have a huge arc of movement in the exercises, and it's important to have that mobility, the shortening and stretching of the muscle, and one thing that can hamper is having clothes that difficult this movement.
That's why I'll talk to you about this Insider t-shirt. It has all this mobility, fits well, and has other things which are a plus: it doesn't wash out, dissipates the heat, is anti-odor, unwrinkles in the body and fits well. We have a 12% off coupon.
The link is down below, and everything is pretty good. Tip 6 you have to do in your workout to boos your results is not being an ego lifter. I'm talking to those who try to lift heavy weights because they think it's good and it turns them into badasses.
We just talked about using the right load, and it's important to use a load to reach failure, and not to show off to your friends. And if you are a man and try to load it up to prove your manhood, women don't really care about that. Use the proper weight.
Go back to point 2 and adjust your load properly. Point 7 to boost your results is about warming up. Not only it is boring.
. . So damn boring!
It comes in double trouble. Warming up once is not enough. If you go to the gym it's important to do the basic or systemic warm up, and we are talking about any cardio exercise to elevate your body temperature, to optimize your body and make you pump blood to the muscles you'll use.
But that's just one session. How long should you take? From 5 to 10 minutes, doing more than that can get in the way.
After that, you go to the specific warm up. This one is in the exercise itself, in which you do 1 to 2 sets with a lighter weight. Just to burn the muscle a bit.
- Do you like when it burns, Raniel? - Yeah, I love that ache! What's this all about?
One thing that is always neglected and you won't do from now on is drinking water. Your body is this beautiful machine with tubes coming from many parts and blood comes and goes, and blood is a liquid. When you work out, your muscle warms up, and your blood also does that.
In order for you not to burn alive, your body tries to cool it down, and one of the ways it does that is through sweat. It starts pouring water do cool down. And you know where this sweat comes from?
The blood. If you sweat a lot, your blood becomes more viscous, which leads to problems not only during the workout. Who takes oxygen and nutrients to the muscle?
The blood! If it is more viscous, will it get there easier or harder? Harder!
- And your muscle gets? - Flabbier! You need to hydrate, your body takes water out, and you drink it in, so it's all good!
The math is like that: 10ml for each kilo for each hour of training. If you weight 80kg, you need to drink 800ml during 1 hour of training, and to quantify that, I'll give you some strategies soon. Number 9: listening to your body.
Remember what we said a while back, that you needed to get rid of distractions? When you do that, you listen to what's inside. I'm telling you to feel your body.
It's what I call a meditative training, you'll pay complete attention to your body. When you do biceps curls, you'll pay attention to how your biceps is working, and we can apply something interesting in the No Reps methodology which is the inner focus. When you not only do the movement, but focus on the contraction, and science shows this increases exponentially the electric activation in the muscle.
This means that the muscle activation increases. Note that the joints are also something you should keep an eye on. It may be that a movement may lead to a slight discomfort which you don't notice, but can be nagging in the near future.
- My arm! - The 10th thing to do during your workout and I placed here because people don't think it's part of the workout: cardio and stretching. You need that!
Is it boring? Yes! - Do you like salad?
- No! - You need salad. Do you like vegetables?
- No! You need your vegetables. They are important.
You may not like it, but some things in life are like that, you have to do them. - Piece of crap! - Cardio boosts your body's response.
You lose more fat and increase your muscle. It's great. And your cardiorespiratory health improves.
It's great! When you stretch, you boost the effect bodybuilding has, and there's more, you prepare this muscle for the next workout in terms of flexibility, so you are boosting it as well. You have to do it regardless of if you like it, and it is part of your workout, it's only over after those two things.
Now, what I promised you a while back: how to control water during the workout. You need to prepare yourself before the workout with some things that are important. I talk about it in this video.
Watch it, to know what you do before the workout, because you know what you need to do during it.