How long you should spend at the gym varies widely from person to person. If you are new to the gym, you should aim to spend around 1 hour there. As you gain more experience, your muscle hypertrophy will be harder to achieve, which means that you will be able to spend longer.
How often should I go to the gym?
This depends because you need to work every type of muscle that you have at least two times per week to get the maximum muscle growth. You can do this in any way that you would like, by following a schedule or not, as long as you are targeting every muscle type.
It is recommended to not overwork yourself as this will impair your muscle growth, in some cases it can cause injury, and studies also show that people who attend the gym for three weeks and have a one-week break obtained the same amount or more muscle growth over time as the people who went for 4 weeks without a break.
What should you wear to the gym?
You should wear loose-fitted clothing that enables you to move freely without any discomfort. This usually refers to jogging bottoms, shorts, and a tank top.
Three steps to get a six-pack:
1. Diet
With a good diet, your aim should be to utilize a calorific deficit which means that, you should be consuming fewer calories than what you are disbursing. To make sure that you do this well, you should check on food labels to ensure you are not eating calorie-dense meals. It would be helpful to avoid foods that are high in sugar as these are empty calories and offer no nutrition.
A common misconception is that fats are really bad for you, but in fact, fat is needed for optimal health. Before you go for those pastries, you should know that the type of fat matters and you should avoid processed foods, some more beneficial types of fat are unsaturated ones from the likes of Olive oil, nuts, and legumes.
2. Burn excess fat
Burning excess fat usually refers to the food diet, however, there are some precautions you can take to speed up the process. Cardio activity for example related to running, cycling, rowing, walking and swimming can all be beneficial. If your diet is right, you could burn fat without doing any cardio which refers to the previously mentioned caloric deficit.
3. Build muscle
You cannot build muscle without working them so your goal would be to work the muscles that you want to build. Some people have the impression that your muscles grow whilst at the gym and this is not true. Muscles grow when your body performs a repair when sleeping. Whilst building the core muscles could be done at the gym, it is better suited at home in the form of crunches, Russian twists, leg raises, L-sits.
When working out, what should I be eating?
Depending on your metabolism rate, different foods would be suited to different people this is because some people burn more or fewer calories naturally without any exercise per day. Aiming for lots of protein from sources such as meat, eggs, fish, nuts and seeds would help you further to build upon your muscle. You should try to eat at least 1g of protein daily per 1lb in body weight. To find out your body weight from stone to lbs and to see how much protein you should be eating click here.
Are supplements beneficial?
Supplements themselves can be beneficial to building muscle, this is due to is being difficult to get the right amount of protein into your diet per day. Nonetheless, it could be said that eating foods that naturally contain protein instead would be better for your health especially if you get the protein from a balanced diets perspective. Supplements are not all made equally and some, of course, are better than others but you shouldn’t focus on having whey-based protein as your main source, instead use it as a top-up of protein if you have not had enough in that specific day.
Up next: Why is Organic Important for Health?
