Boost Your Energy With These 5 Pre-Workout Habits
Workouts generally do the opposite of giving you energy: they often exhaust you. It’s a rewarding form of exhaustion, but what if you don’t have the energy to work hard?
Warming up properly can help you get your blood flowing, your heart pumping, and put your mind in the space it needs to be to exercise.
Here are 5 things you can do to warm up your energy levels:
1) Walk or bike
Before starting your workout, you want to get your body accustomed to movement. Low impact exercises like walking and biking do just that without exhausting you for the workout.
For 10 minutes before starting your main workout, walk or bike at a moderate pace. You shouldn’t be breathing heavily and try to keep a pace that would allow you to have an entire conversation. When your body feels ready, move into some higher impact movements.
2) Have a pre-workout snack
Your body is a machine, and it needs fuel! If you feel overly exhausted by your exercise, you may want to take a look at how you’re fueling your body immediately before you work out.
The best thing you can eat is something with some carbohydrates. Things like bananas, oats, and granola make easy, healthy fuel that you can take with you on the go.
Try to eat around 30 minutes before you work out to give your body time to digest.
3) Work your quickness
If you want to heat up fast, you should warm up quickly. Exercises like jumping jacks, bodyweight squats, and jumping rope work your entire body in a way that gets things ready for hard work.
Work in sets of 10-15 and move at a quick pace. Aim for 2-3 sets of each movement. You can also try things like sprints and footwork drills to really get the blood pumping!
4) Try some caffeine
Caffeine is a surefire way to get some quick energy. A cup of coffee, tea, or a pre-workout supplement 30 minutes before your workout will give you an energy boost.
Caffeine can sometimes make stomachs upset, so if you decide to go with this route, consume it with food.
5) Add warmup sets
Warmup sets are the best way to get your body accommodated to lifting heavyweights. When you do something like a bench press, the last thing you want to do is throw a ton of weight on the bar without letting your body get used to the movement.
To do a warmup set:
A) Perform the movement with a lightweight.
B) Focus on making your form as perfect as it can be.
C) Do not go close to failure. When you feel like you’re ready (after a set or two), you can start to add more weight.
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