With the right whole body workout, you can improve your general health and resistance to illness, lose weight, tone up, build strength, and increase flexibility. To be complete, a whole body workout must start with a sufficient warm up, end with a sufficient cool down, and include aerobic exercises to strengthen the cardiovascular system and anaerobic exercises to reduce fat and build muscle strength.
Stretching And Calisthenics
A whole body workout starts and finishes with stretching and calisthenics, which both help warm the body up before the workout and cool it down afterward. Stretch all the muscles you plan to exercise to prevent pulling; stretch them again after you exercise to keep them from cramping. Perform aerobic calisthenics such as jumping jacks before a workout to increase respiration and circulation, and perform anaerobic calisthenics like situps after a workout to gradually ease them back down to a normal resting state.
Resistance Training
Whether by lifting weights, using resistance bands or performing isometrics, resistance training exercises cause muscles to break down and rebuild themselves bigger and stronger than before. To condition and tone muscle, perform more repetitions of a lighter resistance for fewer sets; to build muscle strength and mass, perform fewer repetitions with a greater resistance for more sets. Include at least one exercise for each muscle group, being sure to give attention to the arms and shoulders, chest, back and abdomen, gluteal muscles and legs.
Variety
Changing up your routine is important for a whole body workout to continue to be effective. The body gets used to routine quickly and the same exercise performed without variation eventually begins to yield diminishing returns. Vary the exercises you perform to serve a particular purpose, such as rotating between a selection of different resistance training exercises for each muscle group from workout to workout. Also vary the ways in which you do your cardiovascular exercise, such as running a treadmill one day and riding an exercise bike another.
Recovery Time
Adequate recovery time is an essential part of a complete workout plan. To fully benefit from any workout, the body needs time to rest and rebuild. Therefore, either skip a day between whole body workouts or split the workout in half and perform each half on alternating days. For example, many people do an upper body workout one day and a lower body workout the next.
General Guidelines And Recommendations
Whatever your routine, in order for a workout to be fully effective, it is best to support it with proper lifestyle habits. That means eating a healthy diet of natural, nutrient-rich foods, drinking plenty of clean water, getting adequate restful sleep at night, avoiding toxins like cigarettes and alcohol, and keeping your stress level down.
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