At first glance, this may seem like a subject reserved for elite athletes and gym junkies, but in reality, every busy bee, pet parent, or a dad running after his hyperactive youngster could use a fitness boost.
Everyday tasks and challenges can be just as arduous as your average gym routine, whether you’re hauling groceries from your car, or playing fetch with your pooch.
To that end, you can do much that can help you not only improve your strength and endurance, but also to become healthier and more resilient when it comes to handling your everyday chores.
Let’s take a look at the top five strategies you can include in your lifestyle to see your fitness abilities soar!
1. Think Compound Thoughts
When you see someone in your local gym religiously performing bicep curls, you may find it intimidating or even powerful, leading you to believe that isolating every muscle will give you the best results.
The simple truth is that targeting muscles one by one is not an effective way to improve your stamina or endurance, which means you’ll need to go for more complex movements, the ones that require activating multiple joints, in order to see any results.
You can perform them at home, vary their combinations, and do super-sets, as well, in order to increase the difficulty of your workouts.
For starters, focus on compound exercises such as the squat, military press, deadlift, pull-up, push-up, lunge, and the bench press.
Sure, you may not have the bench or the squat rack in your garage, but you can use a kettlebell, or simply do bodyweight squats, and use heavy objects to make other movements more difficult.
Even a bottle of water or a dictionary can do the trick if you’re at the very beginning of your fitness journey.
2. Tweak Your Diet
Perhaps the least popular of all lifestyle changes, but dietary changes are those that will tip the scales in your favor when it comes to helping your body produce more energy.
If you have a sweet tooth, we have some bad news for you: simple, processed sugars found in your favorite candy bars and gummy bears are doing you no favors.
They might give you a momentary lift in energy, but the high will soon pass, leaving you energy-depleted and as tired as you were to begin with.
Once you kick the sweet stuff, you should focus on introducing a variety of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, meat and other sources of lean protein in case you are a vegetarian or a vegan.
As your main source of energy, carbs are your body’s best friend, if consumed wisely, and from healthy, fiber-packed sources. Add to that plenty of protein to keep your muscles strong and vital, and you will be on your way to the next level of fitness ability!
3. Consider A Few Additions
However, athletes, and people who enjoy physical activities on a regular basis often fail to provide their bodies with all the essential macros and micros through diet alone.
That said, vigorous training without the help of a powerful diet will take a toll on your endurance in no time.
By introducing pro gym supplements into your diet, you can do so much to help your body perform better during training, and recover faster after your workouts.
This is especially relevant for athletes who have a specific eating regime, with restricted dairy or meat intake in particular.
Adding a quality protein powder into your healthy smoothies and reinforcing your post-workout shake with a scoop of creatine can help you make up for the nutrients you cannot get from your diet.
You may find that you have a deficiency of a certain mineral, such as iron or magnesium, which is common in endurance athletes as well as active people.
This will help you determine how often and how much you need to supplement your diet to stay on top of your goals!
4. Rethink Your Sleep Schedule
Even if you do alter your eating habits and you start incorporating more compound movements into your routine, it will all fail to deliver the desired results unless you truly give your body a chance to rest.
In addition to structuring your rest breaks between each set, and each workout, you need to stick to a consistent sleep schedule that allows you to get your fair share of shuteye.
When it comes to sleep, quality is as crucial as quantity, which simply means that turning in for eight hours every night is not enough – you also need to go to bed at roughly the same time, and wake up at a predetermined hour, so that your body can adjust.
It’s during this time that all the beneficial processes happen, such as muscle protein synthesis that are vital to improve your stamina and endurance.
5. Keep Your Body Guessing
Although in some aspects of your life you do need a routine (your sleep schedule being a perfect example), keeping other habits strictly the same may actually be counterproductive.
Sticking to the same exercise plan, for instance, is a surefire way to hit a plateau and stop improving your endurance.
To that end, create several different training plans, or take up different activities such as cycling, swimming, and weightlifting to complement your existing routine. This will help you challenge your body continually, and prevent you from getting stuck in a rut.
You can find much more information on living a holistic lifestyle in these free magazines and on our YouTube channel.
Scarlet is a passionate writer and regular contributor at ripped.me interested in fashion, lifestyle, and health. She loves traveling, you could say that she is a real travel addict, especially when she has a chance to visit some exotic destinations. She would tell you that inspiration can be found in the most unexpected places.
