Women’s Fitness Australia — May 2017

HOW’S YOUR

FORM?

A simple shape-up trick? Exercise

with perfect posture. Proper posture

requires more e ort from your

muscles. If you can draw a straight

line from the top of your head

through your ears, shoulders, hips,

to your ankles, you get a gold star.

If any part of you is out of alignment,

then you need to work hard to

improve your form. When exercising,

draw your shoulders back and down,

while tightening your core muscles.

FEEL LIKE YOU’RE SPENDING A BAZILLION hours in the gym for

a whole lotta nothing? Time to speed up the burn factor, baby. It’s too easy to

stick to the same daily regimen, but to rev up your metabolism and boost the

burning e ects, a few little tweaks might need to be made to your menu and

moves. Consider these questions your checklist to ultimate gains...

Boost the burn and reap bigger fi tness rewards by stepping out of your comfort

zone – and working at 60-90 per cent of your maximum heart rate (MHR). To

work out your MHR in beats per minute (BPM), take 88 per cent of your age

from 206. For example, a 35-year-old woman’s MHR would be 175 (206 – 31),

of which 60 per cent = 105BPM and 90 per cent = 158BPM, so her target zone

is 105-158BPM. A heart-rate monitor will help give you a continuous reading of

how hard you’re working and ensure you’re working at the right intensity.

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BeFIT

HOW ORGANISED

ARE YOU?

You don’t need to quit your job and ditch

your social life, but scheduling in every

session can deliver the paybacks. “Be

organised in your approach to training,”

advises personal trainer Emma Williams.

“Set a realistic target, then make a workout

plan, which you have to stick to. Aim to

block out 20-30 minutes of exercise, at

least three times per week. An intense

training program will fatigue the muscles,

so I recommend getting nutritional support

for muscular repair after intense training

to replenish muscle stores and avoid

excessive post-workout hunger.”

Once you’ve nailed your schedule,

become a master multi-tasker, suggests

trainer Shaun Sta ord. “There are only so

many hours in the day and, let’s be honest,

adding an extra workout is probably not

possible – unless you do two things at

once! That’s what I do. Every day I have

a backlog of emails to get through so,

rather than do them at my desk, I hit the

treadmill,” he says. “I set it to a steep incline

and walk for 45 minutes while churning

through emails on my iPad or phone.

That’s normally long enough to clear

the inbox and have a damn good sweat.”

Doing the same workout errryday will

lead to more than just boredom – it will

also cause your progress to level o. The

body is a clever machine and when you

do the same exercise, at the same level,

it adapts to doing them more e£ ciently

with less energy. The fi nal result is you

burn fewer kilojoules, gain less strength

and lose a load of motivation.

To avoid this plateau, change your

workout every few weeks. Increase the

intensity by upping the weight or adding

more sets, and consider reducing the rest.

Most people get the rest periods between

sets of exercises wrong. Timing is everything

• rest for too long and you’ll reduce the
  intensity of the workout; rest too little and
  you’ll risk exhaustion. Use a stopwatch to
  monitor rest and aim for around 30-45
  seconds of recovery between bouts of
  exercise. If that’s too easy, try including

‘active rest’ into the workout by jogging

or walking on the spot between sets.

Also, vary the way you work out by

trying a new training method, such as

pyramid sets (increasing the number

of reps and then decreasing back down

to the start) or drop-sets (performing

the exercise until you can do another

rep and then reducing the weight).

You could try supersets too –

performing two exercises back-to-

back without rest, while sizzling mega

kilojoules. This technique works best

when you choose exercises that work

opposing muscle groups, such as biceps

and triceps, and use less weight than

you would for doing straight sets. Since

you’re performing the exercises in quick

succession, you’ll fi nish your workout

way quicker and keep your heart rate

up so you’re fi ring on all cylinders.

ARE YOU CHALLENGING YOUR BODY?

Have you checked

your heart rate lately?