How To Get The Most Out Of Your Workout

By all appearances, you don’t know how to get the most out of your workout.

Yeah, your body gives it away that you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing but so does what you do at the gym, which I’ve witnessed firsthand!

And what I’ve witnessed is that when not using the surroundings as selfie scenery to mix up your social media feed, you’re doing even stupider shit when you find the time to lift something other than your phone to your face.

And boy, oh boy, are you doing some stupid shit!

And by “some”, I mean A LOT!!!

Well, that stupid shit need not be done anymore, my anonymous friend.

Nope, not if you follow the provided steps to improve your workout!¹

ONE

Bring a water bottle.

Staying hydrated during a workout aids with performance and is essential to help replace fluids lost from sweat. Sure, you can go to the water fountain between sets and drink there, but those frequent trips will disrupt your intensity. That’s why you should keep a water bottle on hand.

A gallon jug isn’t necessary.² All that’s needed is a normal size water bottle. For an hour workout, that should be more than enough to prevent you from prolonging your rest by having to make the arduous journey to the water fountain, with you possibly wasting even more time by engaging in conversation with people along the way.

Speaking of which…

TWO

Do not talk to anyone!

No, seriously.

DO…NOT…TALK…TO…ANYONE — I don’t care if sweet baby Jesus is in the building handing out golden tickets to heaven!!! The gym is not a social club!

Pump up some street-level rap music, death metal, bluegrass, whatever the fuck gets you into the zone, and go take care of your business as soon as you step inside the weight room.³

THREE

Warm up before working out.

But rather than stretching or hopping on the treadmill or some other piece of cardio equipment, spend 5-10 minutes performing low-intensity exercises that mimic the exercises you’ll be doing.

How do you know what exercises you’ll be doing that day?

Ummmmm…because you’ll be using a workout routine rather than flying by the seat of your pants.

That’s how!

FOUR

Try to compound matters.

Isolationism was popular in the United States from the 1930s to the early 1940s, with the country trying to stay out of messy European and Asian foreign affairs. Much like that’s gone out of the window, so too should it in the gym!

Rather than spending your time performing isolation movements like dumbbell biceps curls that only work one muscle group, perform compound lifts that recruit multiple muscles at the same time. For example, deadlifts work the lats, traps, glutes, hamstrings, rhomboids, erectors, and much more. With all of those muscles involved, not only is there greater potential for increasing overall muscle mass but you’ll also burn more calories because of the greater energy output with all of those muscles having to work.

FIVE

Get your exercise order in order.

If you’re training two muscle groups during the same session, work the larger muscle group first. For example, if your training schedule has back and biceps falling on the same day, perform the exercises for the back before worrying about the bis. The same goes with exercise movements — perform compound lifts before isolation work. For instance, the barbell bench press should come ahead of cable flyes on chest day.

NOTE: If the smaller muscle group is a point of focus because it’s lagging in size, strength, etc, then it’s alright to hit it at the beginning of the workout when you’re at your strongest and not mentally or physically worn down. Along the same lines, you may also perform an isolation movement like the dumbbell lateral raise before you do seated dumbbell shoulder presses (a compound movement) if your medial delt needs more attention than the anterior head, for example. That’s known as the priority principle. Another reason to perform an isolation movement ahead of a compound lift is to help loosen things up, like doing leg extensions prior to squats on leg day to help warm up the knees. Use your discretion.

SIX

Lift heavy…

…but remember that you’re mortal.

If it’s your very first time lifting or you’re just coming back from an extended break, DO NOT listen to your ego and use more weight than you can handle. Yeah, you may think you’re Superman but watch how fast that ass turns into Handi-Man when you get injured as a result of asking your body to do what it’s not ready for!

What’s too much weight?

You’ll know shit’s too heavy when the gym staff asks if you need them to light candles and play some love songs for you because there’s so much jerking going on. Either that, or they just kindly tell you to leave the premises before they call the cops. In other words, the weight’s too fucking heavy when you’re using serious body English to move it!

So how do you choose?

Select an amount of weight that you think you can do for the repetitions called for in your rep scheme. The weight should be manageable on your own if you’re working out by yourself, but it should also be challenging.

For example, let’s say that your program includes a flat dumbbell press for four sets of 8 reps, or 4 x 8. So you choose two 5 lbs dumbbells and are able to squeeze out 8 reps on the first and second set.

You’ll know that you chose the proper weight if on the third set you reach the fourth or fifth rep with relative ease but find that the weight is getting heavier with every rep afterward. Despite this, let’s say that you complete 7 reps…but it was a struggle. You take your rest break, and then on your last set you’re only able to crank out maybe 6 or so reps — falling well short of 8.

That’s what we want. If you’re able to reach the high end of the prescribed rep range on every set with little difficulty, then you’re bullshitting and not really pushing yourself.

SEVEN

Think about the muscles you’re trying to engage as you lift.

Lifting is as much mental as it is physical.

Rather than just lifting and turning your brain off, you should be having an internal dialogue with yourself about what you’re supposed to do and feel. For instance, when doing lat pulldowns, you would actually tell yourself each rep to lower the weight with your elbows to make sure that your lats are doing the work to move the weight, not your arms. And then at the bottom position, you’d tell yourself to pause and squeeze your lats before returning the weight to the starting position.

EIGHT

Get super with it!

Resting between sets is important so you can push yourself on the ensuing set rather than crapping out early because your strength and energy haven’t recovered fully, but that’s only if you’re working out with a heavy load.

When training with moderate loads, perform supersets, which is a form of compound set that involves doing exercises for opposing muscle groups immediately after the other. So as one muscle group rests, the other works. An example would be bench press paired with dumbbell shoulder press, which work the chest and delts, respectively.

NINE

Be different.

Do not — DO NOT!!! — go to the gym week after week and do the same thing over and over and over again. And when I say this, I don’t mean for you to continuously change the exercises that you’re doing in some misguided attempt to achieve muscle confusion.

No!!!

What I’m talking about is changing the amount of stress — weight, sets, reps, tempo, time under tension, rest periods — placed on the body in order to force a physical adaptation, whether it be strength, muscle size, or body composition.

That’s what’s known as progressive overload, which is how you truly confuse the muscles, if they’re even capable of being confused.

Need an illustration on how to achieve overload?

Look no further!

Below is an example of how to increase the amount of weight or number of reps that you do each and every training session.

Just allow me a second to put on my tweed jacket with elbow patches to better compliment this teaching moment.

*read the following in a snooty professor voice*

Let’s say that the flat dumbbell chest press from step #6 was done on Wednesday.⁴

Because you failed to do the prescribed 8 reps for all four sets, you’ll use the same 5 lbs dumbbells the next session you’re scheduled to do the exercise. On the third set where you only did 7 reps the previous session, you’ll try to get at least one more rep than you did the last time. The same goes for the fourth set, where you did around 6 before, which means you would now try to get at least 7. You would do this every time you’re scheduled to do the flat dumbbell chest press until you’re able to do the prescribed 8 reps for all four sets. Once that happens, then you slightly increase the weight and repeat the process. So the next time you went to do the flat dumbbell press, you’d reach for 8 lbs or 10 lbs dumbbells and do those for as many reps as you’re capable of doing.

Yeah, those are a lot of numbers that you have to stay aware of. That’s why it helps a shitload if you keep a training log via a smartphone app or, if you’re a dinosaur, in a good old fashioned composition notebook.

*stop reading in a snooty professor voice*⁵

It’s when you’re able to do more reps or use more weight than you did before that you know that you’ve gotten stronger and have built muscle, which is what we want.

But that can only happen by going to the gym and making serious efforts to challenge yourself by incrementally changing things.⁶

That, my anonymous friend, is how you get the most out of your workout.

There’s a little bit more to it, but the provided are enough for you to go and not do the dumb shit that you’ve been doing, which I’ve had the unfortunate luck of witnessing for myself.

Oh, my eyes!

My poor, poor eyes!

The horrors they’ve seen!!!

Glossary: barbell, bench press, biceps, calories, cardio, chest, deadlift, dumbbell, exercise, glutes, gym, intensity, lats, leg day, Monday, muscle, muscle group, program, routine, spotting, squats, traps, treadmill, work out, workout

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Monster Longe

Monster Longe is a personal trainer in San Diego. He has been lifting weights for +25 years and training clients in the gym and online for about half of that time. When not working with clients or making content that's easy to read, understand, and apply to everyday life, he enjoys long walks and leaving buildings crushed and entire city blocks decimated in his wake.