Spring and summer is just around the corner, yet the days are still short, and you haven’t gotten any less busy. You have work, friends, family and other commitments that compete with your gym training time. So what can you do to help boost your best efforts in the gym? Read on to find the seven easiest and most effective tips to get to rapidly get your best body yet:
- Tell people:
Telling people your intentions keeps you honest. You can recruit the people around you as your best supporters especially in moments of weakness, and they will also help you feel more accountable.
For example: the morning tea break with cakes and treats could be a (cake) recipe for disaster, but if your colleagues know you’re being strict on your diet they’ll be less likely to encourage you to eat it and instead might help provide
- Recruit a friend:
Fitness is more fun with a friend: it can add an element of motivation to show up on colder days, and perhaps a level of competitiveness to get you aiming higher with the intensity of your sessions.
Choose a friend who has similar goals to yours, and someone with a good work ethic. Having similar training goals and attitude will ensure that you can also preserve a friendship both inside and outside the weights rack.
- Eat well:
It’s not actually possible to out-exercise your diet. Regardless of what you choose to eat, remember every item you put in your mouth has calories. Calories all matter, regardless of the source, so make sure your putting efforts in to reduce portion size and choose fresh and healthy food. E.g. peanut butter has good fats, but still has fat, so go sparingly on portion sizes.
Major changes in the kitchen mean major changes to your waistline. When you can’t bring yourself to prepare your meals simply make more choices that you are proud of in your daily routine e.g. choosing an apple instead of a Danish at morning tea, and reducing snacking.
One further change is looking at your daily habits. Make a commitment to sit down when eating, placing all your meals on plates, and not eating when distracted. When you are not paying attention to your food, it is extremely easy to eat more than you realize. Plating food allows your brain to be conscious when you are eating, and sitting down reminds your body that it’s time to rest and digest instead of be in stress mode.
- Work your hardest:
Only you know how hard you are working in a session. It doesn’t matter your starting point or what the person next to you is lifting. If your perceived level of exertion is a 4 out of 10, don’t expect to get the results you desire if you aren’t giving your best. Aim for that last 20% of your reps in each set to be the most challenging ones (so 9th and 10th rep will be most difficult of a 10 rep set), and keep the rest periods short: either super set where there is no rest between two exercises, or keep timed breaks to only 30 seconds.
- Sensible supplementation
It’s understandable that you might not feel like you have as much effort to give on some days: perhaps work has been stressful or you had a fight with your partner. The intensity of the session is dictated by the work that you put in: so each session is crucial to get you closer to your goals.
One way to solve that is to have a great pre workout to ignite the focus of the session. The new E.S.P might be just what you are looking for: whilst other pre workouts use caffeine alone as a stimulant, E.S.P. combines caffeine with other stimulants to ensure that you do not have a drop off in your energy by the end of your session, and that the effect of this tapers off (without the crash).  Your endurance, alertness and ability to metabolize energy for fuel by your muscles is increased, as is your ability to burn fat in your session. The unique combination of ingredients, and recommendations to choose your dose based on your energy level make it a key component to any results-focused workout plan. Simply take it 10 to 30 minutes before your session and smash the session out of the park!
- Measure your progress:
Make sure that you take a note of your starting point. Often when we start we don’t want to measure just where we are at: we want to wait until the most dramatic differences (usually in the first 2 weeks) have occurred. However, that would be wrong!
Take measurements in the form of weight, photos, and measurement in centimeters of your arm, chest, waist, leg and hips. Using around three different methods of tracking progress will ensure that – even as one might stagnate – you might see more changes happening in the other two.
- Ask an expert and schedule your program:
Unless you have a background in exercise, enlist the help of a personal trainer to ensure that you are doing the correct program that will take you closer to your goals. This is especially important
 Have a plan in the gym and record what you achieve in your session, it might surprise you to look back on just how far that you have come.
Check out our fantastic other intra, pre and post workouts <each is a link> to maximize your time in the gym, kick-start your recovery and increase your focus in your session. We pride ourselves in selecting the best brands with the most effective ingredients.
