The gym is an excellent place to lose weight, since they typically offer you a variety of exercise options. Whether you need non-impact exercise, want fat-burning choices, or wish to build muscle as you lose weight, there is something to fit your needs at the gym. The key to losing weight at a gym is to take advantage of all the options to add variety to your workouts.
Use Different Muscles
If you go to a gym and use the same machine every visit, your muscles will adapt to the exercise, and you'll get less benefit. When your muscles have to perform new and different movements, they have to work harder as they adapt to these new moves.
Use a treadmill to warm up in a standing position, then move to an exercise bike, where you'll be sitting. Get on a rowing machine to work upper body muscles next. Finally, use an elliptical to change muscles once again.
Build Muscular Endurance
While lifting very heavy weights builds muscles, using lighter weights and doing more reps increases muscular endurance, or your ability to use your muscles over a long period of time. If you improve your muscular endurance, you'll be able to exercise longer before you tire out.
Add endurance training to your gym visits by using dumbbells, resistance bands and bodyweight exercises like push-ups, crunches and sit-ups. With dumbbells, use half or less of the maximum weight you can lift so you can do at least 10 repetitions of each exercise. Do three sets of repetitions, alternating exercises.
Build Aerobic Stamina
Aerobic exercise is moderate to vigorously intense exercise, usually done for 15 to 30 minutes for beginner- to intermediate-level exercisers. To build your aerobic stamina, exercise at 70 to 80 percent of your maximum heart rate, which you can calculate in a number of ways, most simply by subtracting your age from 220.
During aerobic exercise, you should break a good sweat, but you should be able to talk during your workout. If you can't talk, you are exercising in the anaerobic energy zone, which may be too high an intensity for you to continue very long.
As you get started with aerobic exercise, feel free to exercise for a few minutes, then slow down for 60 seconds while you build up your stamina. You can use exercise machines, weight machines with lighter weights, a circuit of dumbbell, resistance band or bodyweight exercises, or a pool or indoor track to create an aerobic workout.
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