Flexibility exercises (Stretching) stretch your muscles and can help your body stay flexible. These exercises may not improve your endurance or strength, but being flexible gives you more freedom of movement for other exercise as well as for your everyday activities.
Stretching is a form of physical exercise in which a specific muscle or tendon is deliberately flexed or stretched in order to improve the muscle’s felt elasticity and achieve comfortable muscle tone. The result is a feeling of increased muscle control, flexibility, and range of motion.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

• Stress relief. If you’re not someone who works out very often, stretching can still help you ease any stress-related aches
• Reduce anxiety
• Relief from sore muscles
• Improved posture
• Less risk of injury
• Better flexibility
• Relief from back pain

Post-exhaust training method basically involves a compound exercise followed by an isolation exercise.

An example of this is a chin up paired with a straight-arm press down (to further fatigue the lats) or biceps curl (to further fatigue the arms). The idea behind this method of training is to further fatigue the major or minor muscle group involved in the compound exercise.

Causing maximal temporary exhaustion in a muscle result in more muscle damage and the accumulation of more metabolic by-products, both of which are important in muscle building.

But be careful not to overdo it with this type of training. With this in mind, ease into this specific type of training method.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

• Muscle recruitment is being used maximally throughout the session
• Increase muscle growth + strength
• Adds variety to your training
• Can help to burn fat
• You are getting double the work on the big prime mover and only one set of work on the smaller synergist
• The compound exercise requires more energy, so doing this first, whilst you are fresh my allow for more muscle recruitment
• This is good to maintain core engagement if the compound movement has a higher risk of injury i.e. deadlift

The concept of a superset is to perform 2 exercises back-to-back, followed by a short rest (but not always). This effectively doubles the amount of work you are doing, whilst keeping the recovery periods the same as they are when you complete individual exercises.

Opposing Muscle Group

One very common form of a superset workout includes working two different areas of the body. For example, a common superset includes performing one upper body exercise (such as the bench press) and then immediately moving to a lower body exercise (such as the leg press).

Another easy method to plan supersets is to alternate with opposing muscle groups (antagonistic). You can combine the bench, which works the chest, with the seated row, which engages the back.

Same Muscle Group

The second way to perform a superset workout is to choose two different exercises that work out the same muscle group and then perform them back-to-back without a rest. Performing quadriceps extensions immediately after squats is an example of this type of superset. This type of superset works one individual area especially hard. It is a great way to focus on a particular area of the body.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

• A huge timesaver
• Increase muscle growth + strength
• Adds variety to your training
• Can help to burn fat
• Improves heart health / lowers blood pressure
• Strengthens bones
• Boosts your mood and improves brain health

It combines mobility exercises that increase the range of movements and motions your body can perform. These include flexibility, but also balance, pliability and strength. The full combination is the best way to avoid injury.

Mobility is “proprioception” – our perception and awareness of our body’s positions and movements. Mobility training, then, includes a range of exercises designed to increase your range-of-motion, control muscles surrounding each joint, and help you move more actively.

Flexibility, on the other hand, is the stretching and lengthening of our muscles. When you can increase the stretch and length of your connective tissue, you can help your body through a full range of movements without causing injury, stiffness, and pain.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

• Promotes good posture
• Helps prevent knots and injuries
• Relieves tension associated with sedentary lifestyles or over-exercising
• Improves all-round functional fitness performance
• Increases range of movement, helping us stay active and healthy longer in life
• Reduces joint deterioration
• Prevents aches and pains
• Helps build stronger, more adaptive muscles and joints

German volume training (GVT) is an intense exercise program that builds the muscle mass and strength necessary for weightlifters to move beyond personal plateaus.

It’s sometimes called the 10-sets method. The training program involves high numbers of sets and repetitions with short resting periods in between. GVT stresses your muscles, which respond by triggering muscle growth. This training method helps bodybuilders and weightlifters build strength, increase muscle size, and develop lean body weight.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

• Promote muscle growth
• Build muscular strength
• Builds a lean looking body
• Boosts mood and mental health
• Can promote weight loss
• Good for motivation
• Good for fast-twitch muscle fibre recruitment

MISS, or Moderate-Intensity, Steady-State, is a similar form of cardio to LISS, but with increased speed and effort. For example, if your LISS cardio is walking at a fast pace, MISS would be a jog. At the beginning of MISS, your heart rate should be around 65-75% of your maximum heart rate, but as the time goes on, your heart rate should increase to around 75-80/85% of your maximum heart rate and stay there.

Your heart rate will get this high not because you are exercising at a fast speed like you would in HIIT, but because you are exercising at a continuously steady pace.

Doing this cardio for 30-45 minutes helps increase your overall cardiovascular endurance and gives you the base to perform HIIT and sprints more effectively.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

• Reduced risk of injury
• Exercise may feel more enjoyable
• Helps to prepare you for the tougher sessions
• Helps you to sleep better
• Improves blood / sugar levels

Circuit training is a style of workout performed with different stations or exercises at a usually high intensity with little rest between each station or exercise.

Circuit training is a form of body conditioning that involves endurance training, resistance training, high-intensity aerobics, and exercises performed in a circuit, like high-intensity interval training. It targets strength building and muscular endurance.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

• Improves muscular endurance
• Improves fitness and heart health
• Offers a full body workout
• It’s time efficient – can do strength and cardio in one session
• Can promote weight loss
• Good for motivation
• Good for all levels

Sets and reps are the terms used to describe the number of times you perform an exercise. A rep is the number of times you perform a specific exercise, and a set is the number of cycles of reps that you complete. For example, suppose you complete 15 reps of a bench press, that equals 1 set.

No matter how many reps you’re completing per set, most fitness experts recommend performing between two and six sets for each exercise. Although even 1 set work, pushed to the right level has shown to be beneficial if time is an issue.

STRENGTH TRAINING POINTS

Gym lore says that rep range determines whether you’ll build strength, muscle, or endurance. However, load, speed, and “time under tension” are actually more important than the number of reps.

Your body reacts best to what’s new, so it’s worth employing various training styles.
Of course, the rep range you choose requires scaling your weights: You can lift heavier weights if you’re doing fewer reps.

Whilst rep ranges are a useful guide, we must keep in mind that training our bodies is a physiological process that relies on adapting to a specific stress. It is the quantity and quality of that stressor, and subsequent recovery, that determines progress, rather than a specific number of repetitions.

So, the quality of the exercise, the weight you are lifting and hitting that failure feeling is most important. For beginners lifting a big weight and hitting 6 reps may be daunting but doing a lighter weight for 20 reps is more manageable.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

• Makes your body stronger (not bigger)
• Burns calories + speeds up the metabolism
• Decreases body fat %
• Decreases your risk of falls + improves co-ordination
• Lowers your risk of injuries
• Improves heart health / lowers blood pressure
• Strengthens bones
• Boosts your mood and improves brain health

8 sets of 8 is a high volume, fast tempo, size building workout. It is not designed for strength development – it’s purely for bodybuilding or “cosmetic” improvements. 8 sets of 8 will also help you get leaner.

The short rest intervals stress the cardiovascular system to the point where calories are burned, the metabolism is stimulated, hormones are stirred up and fat is melted away.

Here’s how it works: You will select three or four exercises per muscle group and perform 8 sets of 8 on each exercise. That’s 24 to 32 sets per body part. You will work two or three muscle groups per session and rest only 15 to 30 seconds between sets.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

• Improve cardiovascular performance
• Promote a lean body
• Can be time efficient
• Boosts mood and mental health
• Can promote weight loss
• Good for motivation
• Effective for burning calories and building size

Developed by Izumi Tabata, Ph.D., at the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Tokyo, Tabata is based on timed interval method.

Tabata is a type of HIIT workout that aims to yield the most benefits in a short amount of time. For each exercise, you do eight rounds of 20 seconds of maximal strenuous exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest x 8 cycles through.

This equates to a 4-minute workout. This can be done with just one exercise i.e., burpees OR combined with a few different exercises to make a ‘Tabata Circuit’.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

• Improves fitness
• Maximum results in minimal timeframe
• EPOC effect – ‘afterburn’ so the body continues to burn calories after the session
• Good fat burner
• Convenient and flexible sessions – you can perform a Tabata workout anywhere doing any exercise
• Increased anaerobic and aerobic fitness