Familiarity breeds boredom
It pays to change up your workout routine
It’s easy to embrace repetition. After all, there’s a certain comfort to familiarity. But when it comes to maximizing fitness results, it doesn’t pay to press repeat. Routine breeds boredom — and not just for your mind. Your muscles need variety, too.
Admitted ly, breaking free of routine isn’t easy. The more familiar your workout becomes, the more efficient you become at it. But there’s a downside to working out on autopilot. Monotony is just around the corner.
In the spirit of keeping your workouts fresh and motivation high, here are a few tips on how to revive a tired routine:
Let someone else lead
For all you exercise DIYers, consider putting your routine in someone else’s hands at least one day a week.
Take a fitness class where an instructor puts you through your paces. Or join a running, cycling or swimming group where you can feed off the energy of others.
Why opt for a routine designed by someone else? Let’ s face it: most of us fall back on our strength sand ignore our weaknesses, which limits results. With someone else leading the charge, you’re forced to step outside your comfort zone and try new things. So whether it’s a boot-camp class that has you doing bur pees, push ups and shuttle runs—exercises everyone does their best to avoid — or a group workout that pushes your limits of endurance, speed or intensity, make a commitment to allow someone else to take charge of your workout on a regular basis.
Mix up the tempo
Are you an endurance junkie who thinks a workout is defined by how long it takes? Or are you hooked on pushing your heart rate into the upper limit of your training zone? The truth is, a little of both does the body good. Improving endurance aids in recovery and prepares you for days when you’re on your feet for extended periods of time. High-intensity workouts, on the other hand, make it easier to catch the bus when you’re running behind and teach your body to cope with the kind of discomfort that causes you to quit before you’re done.
And don’ t forget the value of taking it easy. Rest days, yoga, Pilates and tai chi provide the kind of balance that keeps injuries at bay and the opportunity to refresh the mind/body connection.
So don’t choose sides when it comes to going hard, going long or taking it easy. Instead, make room for all types of workouts and reap all the benefits they have to offer.
Change the scenery
Exercise rs tend to spend most of their time indoors at this time of year, but workouts spent staring at four walls pale in comparison to working up a sweat in the great outdoors. Fresh air and sunshine inf use energy into tired workouts, so make sure you find away to burn some calories outside of the gym.
That’s not the only change of scenery you need. The next time you find yourself mindlessly staring at the numbers sc rolling across the console of an exercise machine or the black line at the bottom of a swimming pool, or following the same route through your neighbourhood while on foot or on your bike, take the time to connect with others doing the same thing. Striking up a conversation or sharing as mile or high-five with a fellow exerciser can add a spark to a workout.
Embrace technology
There’s no shortage of gadgets capable of counting your calories, steps, heart rate, distance, speed and laps of the pool or track. And while stats aren’t the be-all and end-all, they can help motivate you to go a bit farther, a bit faster or work a bit harder.
Those stats can be delivered in real time or reviewed after your workout is over. They can also be used to set a goal (number of kilometres, workouts or calories burned in a specific time frame), with reminders and encouragement delivered by way of your device as you work toward meeting your daily or weekly workout targets.
And technology can do more than deliver stats. You can stream your favourite pump-up songs and sync them to a predetermined workout tempo, listen to a podcast or audio book in the gym or on the run, throw a workout video up on your TV from an app on your phone, and enjoy music using bone conduction technology while doing laps of the pool.
And if that’s not enough technology for you, wait a week and something new will hit the market. Sometimes all it takes is a shiny new gadget to breathe some life into an old workout.