A ‘perfect’ workout is one that helps you enhance your performance and function, manage your weight, and tighten and tone your body. At the same time, it must be time efficient and it should work your body from multiple angles to promote muscle balance and injury prevention.
The ‘perfect’ workout for you will be different from someone else’s, and your ideal workout will also change on a near-daily basis. That said, the most effective workouts do share some commonalities, which can be applied to virtually any exercise program to make it even more beneficial.
1. Use a Foam Roller Before You Workout
Before you start your workout, use a foam roller, yoga ball or massage sticks to release trigger points, increase blood flow and improve tissue quality.
Many people wait to use a foam roller until they feel a tight spot in a muscle, then simply ‘roll’ it out. While this can be effective, it’s a mistake to regard the foam roller as only an occasional fitness tool. You can actually use it daily (even if it’s for just a few minutes) to help prevent trouble spots in your muscles from occurring.
Using a foam roller is actually similar to getting a massage (only less expensive!). As you roll on it, fibrous tissue is broken down and circulation is boosted, helping to relieve tension and pain.
When you perform various exercises with the roller it also helps to engage your muscles and build strength. Plus, because the foam roller is unstable, using it works your core muscles and helps improve balance.
Their effects can be quite significant, as one study found that using a foam roller on your hamstrings may lead to statistically significant increases in range of motion after just five to 10 seconds.1 Separate research also found that using a foam roller reduces arterial stiffness, which may indicate improved flexibility, and improves vascular endothelial function.2
Your foam roller doesn’t actually have to be made of foam, either. My favorite is actually a padded plastic roller called the Trigger Point Performance Foam Roller. This one doesn’t wear out over time and retains its shape to help you get the benefits.
2. Warm Up Correctly With Dynamic Stretching
Warming up prior to your workout is important, provided you do it correctly, and this means ditching static stretching in favor of dynamic stretching. Static stretching is when you hold your muscle in a fixed position for a prolonged period, such as 60 seconds or more. This technique has been conventionally regarded as the gold standard for decades.
However, now research shows that it actually decreases the blood flow within your tissue creating localized ischemia (a restriction in blood supply) and lactic acid buildup. This can potentially cause irritation or injury of local muscular, tendinous, lymphatic, and neural tissues.
In short, static stretching may damage your muscles and tendons, which may be why studies show it worsens muscle performance, particularly when the stretch is held for 60 seconds or more.
While static stretching is now going by the wayside, dynamic stretching, an active type of stretching such as walking lunges, squats, butt kicks or arm circles, is coming in to take its place. Dynamic stretching has been shown to positively influence power, speed, agility, endurance, flexibility, and strength performance when used as a warm-up.4 It also helps by lubricating your joints, raising your core body temperature and getting your central nervous system prepared for your workout.
3. Get Your Core Ready
Your body has 29 core muscles, which are located mostly in your back, abdomen and pelvis. This group of muscles provides the foundation for movement throughout your entire body, and strengthening them can help protect and support your back, make your spine and body less prone to injury and help you gain greater balance and stability. Prior to your workout, engaging in a few exercises to help activate your core can help to ensure proper posture and help protect your back during your workout. Try:
- Planks
- Quadrupeds
- Bridges
4. Choose Multi-Joint Movements
Multi-joint movements work more than one joint at a time, which mimics the way your body functions in daily life (plus multi-joint movements are more time efficient). Multi-joint movements can be done for both upper and lower body workouts.
“ … for example, dumbbell rows work shoulders as well as elbows while bicep curls work elbows only.”
5. Move in Three Dimensions
Seek to incorporate all three directions when you work out, frontwards and backwards, side to side and rotational. When you exercise in multiple planes, it allows you to target muscles from multiple angles so that you don’t develop imbalances, which can promote injury. This is the way your body is designed to move and it’s also a way to add efficiency to your workout. Exercises that work multiple planes include squats, lunges and side lunges, lateral shoulder raises and movements like a baseball swing. Your body is divided into three primary planes
- Transverse plane: divides your body into top and bottom parts
- Frontal plane: divides your body into front and backsides
- Sagittal plane: divides your body into right and left sides
6. Pull More Than Push
When you exercise, focus on doing a 2:1 ratio of pull to push, which may help to improve posture, reduce injuries and add balance to your body. This is because most of us need extra strengthening to our back and more stretch to our front.
7. Alternate Heavy, Medium and Light
Alternating the intensity of your workout is important for training different muscles and optimizing your muscular fitness. One day try heavier exercises involving fewer reps (8 or less). The next day, try moderate-weight exercises with 8-12 reps and another day try lightweight exercises with higher reps (12-20).
8. Cool Down Correctly
If you want to do static stretches, the end of your workout is the most appropriate time, as this is when your muscles are warmed up and ready for more sustained stretches. However, while cooling down after exercise has long been promoted as a necessary step to help prevent muscle soreness and improve recovery, research suggests it actually does little to reduce muscle pain or improve recovery.
While it appears unlikely that cooling down has any real benefit in your post-workout recovery, muscle pain or next-day performance, it may help prevent the buildup of blood in your veins, which can lead to dizziness or fainting. The cool down also brings fresh blood into areas to help with lactic acid removal, while bringing your heart rate down to resting pulse quicker. A proper cool down also helps lower a raised heart rate down to resting heart rate safely.
Further, it may also help you to simply unwind after an intense workout, easing the transition back to your normal level of activity. Personally I only cool down for three minutes after doing a high-intensity workout. If you are pushing your body to extremes it makes sense to do a cool down, especially if you are close to or exceeding your maximum calculated heart rate (220 minus your age).
By Dr. Mercola
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