A good gym regime is spread over six days. Basically three days of weight training and three days of cardio-vascular exercises. Lets construct a typical gym schedule for a beginner or intermediate level of exercise. Monday – Chest, shoulders and triceps. Tuesday – cardio, wednesday – legs, thursday – cardio, friday – back and biceps, and saturday – cardio again. Rest on sundays. One may shift shoulders and triceps to wednesday along with legs if chest workouts take too long. Workout should be done typically for 50 minutes to 60 minutes depending on one’s energy levels. Cardio-vascular exercises can include 15-20 minutes each of using the treadmill, cross trainer, stepper, and cycle. Doing weight training every day will not allow your muscles to relax. Hence, a one day gap (where you do cardio instead) is necessary to support your muscle growth. This has been suggested by physical training experts too. The best time to visit the gym is morning. But then finally it is up to you. Any time is a good time to exercise. Make sure you eat / drink something before you begin exercising. A banana or two is good enough. If you like to drink protein shakes, make sure you drink the same after gym and not before.
If you are a regular at the gym, you must be aware of the importance of warm-up and cool-down during exercise. Actually these need not be restricted to the gym. One should warm up before starting any exercise and do some cool-down exercises too afterwards.
Make sure you drink water at regular intervals in the gym. Some people prefer mixing glucose based powders in their water bottles. Or some people drink sports energy drinks like gatorade. Some people prefer drinking lime or orange flavored energy boosters. These drinks give you more of energy and help keeping you hydrated during your workouts.
Before you start lifting weights in the gym, you should do some warm up exercises. You can run on the treadmill for 5 minutes, do some push ups and pull ups. You can perform free exercises like aerobics. Do warm up exercises for at least 10 minutes in your gym regime. Doing so will reduce the chances of your suffering an injury. If you don’t warm up before weight lifting, chances of getting an injury are very bright. Similarly after you are done with your weights, you should perform cool-down exercises for at least 5 minutes. This could include stretching of the hands and legs. You could also do crunches or some exercises for your abs. Essentially you are trying to relax your muscles after lifting weights. Stretching is very important in your gym agenda. Make sure you ask your trainer to help you give proper stretching. Stretching exercises differ according to what workouts you did before – for example biceps, shoulders, triceps, back, etc. Try to do more of free exercises (not involving machines) so that more muscles are involved in your workout. Experts advise people to do 3-4 sets of any workout. Please read further in part two of this article series.
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Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Gym Beginners, Some Tips For You – Part 1