Cheat exercises are something that not many people are talking about in the fitness world. AND, we do mean “cheat exercises” and not chest exercises, which was the only thing I could really find when trying to research this topic at first.
Warning Before Doing Any Cheat Exercises
Form is essential when exercising because you can hurt yourself if you compensate with other muscles, too much. If you’re planning to perform cheat exercises, please be careful and know that we’re not responsible if you hurt yourself.
What are Cheat Exercises?
Cheat exercises are when you perform any type of exercise without perfect form to try and push past your own limits. You might use momentum to your advantage on cheat reps, and you’re going to get a lot of hate on Instagram and social media for it.
You’ll see a lot of unfit people telling the world’s strongest people:
Hey, you’re doing that wrong.
Terrible form bro.
Etc.
Form is important, and you don’t want to use cheat reps all the time, but they can be an important tool in your arsenal to promote muscle growth and strength gains.
Extended Set Cheats AKA Cheat Reps
Cheat reps work something like this:
Perform the set with good form
Keep pushing the set beyond your limit (when form gets bad)
Push past your normal point of failure using momentum or by engaging other muscle groups
Performing strict bicep curls is a prime example of a time when you might use cheat sets. You’ll perform, let’s say 8 reps at whatever rep range and you’ve been stuck in a plateau for quite a while.
After a few weeks of struggling to break through the plateau, you decide to use cheat exercises. When you hit rep 8 and can’t perform another rep, you use momentum on the last repetition to bust out another rep or two or three.
You’re fatiguing the muscle further, and when the muscle fibers heal, they’ll be stronger.
Still not understanding?
Let’s assume that you’re performing seated rows. You’re doing amazing, your back is on fire and you feel like that’s It, you can’t perform another rep in isolation. You might start engaging your biceps more and breaking out of isolation to engage more muscles and get the extra rep or two in for the exercise.
That’s a cheat rep.
However, there is also another type of cheat exercise to know about.
Cheat Exercises with Heavier Weight AKA “Heavy Cheat”
Lifting heavy builds more muscle, and if that’s your goal, you need to push your limits in the gym. You can perform cheat exercises with heavy weight, but you need to be very careful and do them at your own discretion because you can hurt yourself in the process.
The idea is simple:
Form is less strict
Multiple accessory muscles are engaged
You perform one or two reps
However, if you’re lifting heavy and beyond your normal capacity, this is often a discouraged training method due to the high risk of injury. In addition, anyone who has had injuries will want to avoid cheat exercises with heavy weight.
A prime example of cheating with heavy weight is doing a deadlift.
People that are cheating will jerk their back and force the weight up. Unfortunately, this is also a great way to destroy your back and be in pain for the rest of your life.
Why Cheating Get a Bad Name?
So, cheat exercises can be good and bad, but why do they have a bad name? Well, the main reason is that cheating like this is often done by beginners trying to look good in the gym and leads to injury.
You can cheat on some exercises more safely than others, and keep this in mind when trying this method.
Never Try Cheat Exercises for:
Barbell bench press
Barbell rows
Calf raises
Chest flys
Deadlifts
Leg curls
Shrugs
Squats
Upfront rows
Dips
Preacher curls
Skull crusher
Chin-up
If you do cheat exercises with these and a few others, you’re really risking serious injury, especially in your back, which can lead to months out of the gym and years of pain.
Exercises Where Cheating is Less Risky
Dumbbell curls
EZ-bar curls
Lat raises
Lat pulldown (NOT behind the neck)
Seated leg press
Tricep pushdown
Also, if you plan on going into any competitions or to break records, the judges will disqualify you for cheating.
Tips When Performing These Exercises
If you’re doing cheat reps or heavy cheats, be sure to follow a few tips below:
DO NOT mess around with your lumbar spine. If your spinal position is compromised at all, you risk hurting your back, which absolutely will set you back.
PREPARE for the eccentric part of the movement, because you will need to control the weight you lift.
FINISH with a cheat rather than start with it. 99% of what you do during your session should be with perfect form and muscle isolation. Just if you’re going to perform cheats, be sure that they’re the finisher for the muscle group you’re working.
How Often Should You Do Cheat Exercises?
What most people recommend is that you try making your gains the natural way. Perform your sets using strict form, add weight over time and break those plateaus.
However, it’s not recommended to:
Perform cheat sets for more than 1 – 2 sets per body part
Perform heavy cheats for more than 1 – 2 sets per body part
It’s often better to incorporate other tweaks to your workout to try and find ways to reach your goals without trying to cheat. The risk of injury is high, and if you’re trying to cheat on the wrong exercise, you can cause some serious damage to your body.
“Dumb cheating” gets you hurt, and “smart cheating” may help you add on a little more muscle and boost your strength if you’ve hit a sticking point and haven’t been able to bump the weight up in months.
Cheat exercises and reps will help you overload your muscles, breaking out of your typical isolation reps and allowing other muscles to assist on the rep.
Endurance workouts are different than traditional workouts. For example, if you go to the gym and follow a standard three-set, ten repetitions per exercise workout, an endurance workout plan is much different.
When you focus on muscular endurance, you’re training your muscles to sustain exercise for longer periods of time.
For example, if you’re a landscaper and need to haul 40-pound bags of stone throughout the day, functional training following endurance practices is the correct type of exercise for you.
Endurance Workout Plan: The Basics
Understanding Muscle Fiber Types Used in Endurance Training
When you’re focusing on endurance workouts, you’ll be working different muscle fibers than if you focus on power or strength.
Let’s take a look.
Slow Twitch Muscle Fibers
Your endurance exercise program requires you to move weight rapidly. When your physical activities demand long-lasting energy, you’ll use slow twitch muscle fibers.
An endurance workout routine focuses on the slow twitch fibers that offer long-lasting energy.
If you train for strictly strength, you likely have less slow twitch fibers. However, runners or someone who has trained for marathons will have higher amounts of these muscle fibers. If you train for endurance, your body will naturally start to develop more of these slow twitch fibers, which are very energy efficient.
Fast Twitch Muscle Fibers
The other muscle fiber types you’ll engage are fast twitch. Your fast twitch fibers are responsible for exerting bigger, more powerful force. If you’re trying to hit a new personal record, heavy weights and lower reps are ideal.
Your fast twitch fibers will engage when lifting heavier weight, but they take a lot of energy and are meant for large bursts of energy.
Anyone who focuses on strength training or lifts with heavy weights and low reps, will have higher amounts of fast twitch muscle fibers.
Note: Your body will have a mix of slow and fast twitch fibers naturally. However, you can train to increase slow or fast muscle fibers.
Creating an Endurance Workout Plan
Ideally, you’ll create your endurance workout plan based on maximum lifts. For example, let’s say that you want to increase your lower body endurance.
You’ll load up the bar, enter the squat position and find your one-rep maximum.
Note: Ask someone to spot you so that you can minimize your risk of injury, or use a squat rack with safety bars. Being stuck in the starting position for a squat with the bar loaded can cause significant injury, especially to your knees if you squat hard.
Your one-rep maximum is the amount of weight you can push one time.
If you can do more than one-rep, increase the weight.
Once you’ve found your one-rep max, which you can do with perfect form, you’ll need to lower it for your endurance workout. Remember, endurance is based on lighter weight that you can push for a longer period of time.
You’ll want to reduce your one-rep max to:
40% on the low end
70% on the high end
A general rule of thumb is that a person with higher fitness levels can start at 60% to 70% of their maximum, while beginners should start at 40%.
Not sure where to start? Try 50% of your max and adjust as needed. If you can’t reach your repetition goals, you’re using heavy weights and need to scale it down.
Repetitions and Sets
You now have your ideal weight chosen, but how many repetitions are in an endurance workout. The goal is to aim for 12 – 20+ repetitions and 3 or 4 sets.
If you can perform 30 reps the first set and only 15 the next set, that’s acceptable.
When performing these reps, be sure to go up and down as fast as possible while maintaining good form and a full range of motion. In addition, maintain moderate intensity throughout the entire session.
Your heart rate will rise, and your muscles will begin to burn during your session.
Quick Note on Warming Up
The nice thing about focusing on endurance is that you won’t need to warm up before a workout, unlike strength training. Also, you’re using light weights, so there’s a lower risk of muscle strains or tears.
But you still need to maintain proper form to limit the risk of injury.
Example Endurance Training Workout Plans
Weight lifting for endurance is similar to strength training because you’ll perform the same exercises. The main difference is the scale of intensity and level of effort you have to put into each set.
You’ll maintain short recovery periods of 30 seconds and no longer than a minute, while also pushing your muscle to extreme fatigue.
Mentally, this style of training is very intense.
But strength endurance is worth the effort when you’re able to perform functional activities easier.
Ideally, you’ll plan for endurance in your long-term fitness plans.
Why?
It’s a form of functional exercise, recovery time is low and you can complete these routines in 20-40 minutes. So, you aren’t restricted to a 1-2 minute rest period like with strength training, which really slows down a routine.
A few basic plans that you can follow for endurance training are:
Note: You’ll be performing 12 – 20+ reps for each set that you perform for your upper body and lower body.
Endurance Workout for Biceps
Biceps tend to get tired quickly, but you can follow this endurance workout plan to get started:
4 sets of incline hammer curls
4 sets of ez-bar curls
4 sets of Zottman curls
4 sets of seated dumbbell curls
You can swap any of these exercises out for other bicep exercises, such as concentration curls, strict curls, overhead cable curls – anything.
Endurance Workout for Back
Your back a major muscle group, and you’ll want to try and hit all areas of the back. An example routine may look like this:
4 sets of back extensions
4 sets of close grip pulldowns
4 sets of seated rows
4 sets of bent over barbell rows
You can add in any back workouts that you prefer, and if you can, pull-ups are a great option.
Endurance Workout for Triceps
The triceps are another small muscle that takes a lot of effort to work. Your routine might look something like this:
4 sets of skullcrushers
4 sets of weighted bench dip
4 sets of tricep push-downs
4 sets of seated tricep press
You can swap in single-arm cable triceps extensions, dumbbell kickbacks or reverse grip pushdowns among numerous other exercises.
Endurance Workout for Chest
You have dozens of exercises to choose from for your chest, so keep in mind that you can add any of them into the mix. A basic routine may include:
4 sets of incline dumbbell press
4 sets of dumbbell flyes
4 sets of barbell bench press
4 sets of decline barbell bench press
Ideally, you’ll add flat, incline and decline versions of these exercises to hit different areas of the chest.
Endurance Workout for Legs
Your legs have so many areas to focus on, including quads, hamstrings and calves. Feel free to adapt the routine below to focus on key areas of your legs:
4 sets of squats
4 sets of deadlifts
4 sets of smith machine calf raises
4 sets of hamstring curls
Again, add in anything you wish, including leg press, single leg press, lunges, box squats, bear crawl sled drag and more.
When you add these types of exercises into your exercise routine, you’ll be building those slow twitch muscle fibers necessary for muscular endurance.
Your endurance training workout plan can be customized to meet your goals.
A lot of people combine strength and endurance workout plans by burning out during their last sets. Using kettlebell swings as an example, you might use 40 pounds for swings and on your last set, finish by doing 20 pounds for as many repetitions as you can.
When you create a solid training plan, you’ll build a well-rounded level of fitness. An endurance workout routine focuses on the slow twitch fibers that offer long-lasting energy. If you’re not incorporating functional training into your regimen, you can by using the examples above.
Exercise and the brain: what’s the correlation? I know when I exercise, it’s a major stress relief. And when talking to people at my local gym, everyone seems to agree that exercise is a better way to release stress than even marijuana.
But why?
Exercise Boosts Dopamine and Serotonin
Depression is an epidemic, and chances are you know someone with depression. Everyone gets depressed once in a while – life is difficult and unpredictable.
The World Health Organization (WHO) claims that 300 million people worldwide suffer from depression. You’re not alone if you’re depressed. I know there are some days, for no apparent reason, I just wish I didn’t wake up in the morning.
My theory has always been that lack of moving plays a role in depression.
A lot of people don’t feel like they have a purpose. A lot of people are also stuck behind a desk all day, and it’s easier to pull up to a drive-thru than it is to get out of the car and sit down for dinner after a long day of work.
Yet regular exercise tends to relieve many people from the depression that they’re suffering from.
Why?
Research has shown that physical activity, whether it be yoga, weight training or even a brisk walk around the block, helps the brain produce:
Dopamine
Serotonin
Both of these brain chemicals are responsible for keeping you happy. Endorphins, the feel-good chemicals produced by the brain, are also produced.
Anxiety and depression can be helped with a bit of exercise.
Exercise and the brain are intrinsically tied based on these facts. If you want to improve brain health, start with a regular exercise routine.
Exercise Improves Memory and Learning Ability
Studies, one in particular from the University of British Columbia, found that aerobic exercise is able to enhance the hippocampus.
But why does this matter?
The hippocampus is the area of the brain that is responsible for:
Verbal memory
Learning
One thing to note is that researchers only experienced these results with aerobic exercise. Participants in the study that did the following did not have the same results:
Muscle toning exercises
Balance training
Resistance training
I guess all those times that I have weight trained and walked by the cardio machines on the way out of the gym are now a big regret. Plus, it’s important to focus on your cardiovascular health, too.
The effects of exercise was shown to help direct and indirect memory and thinking ability.
Your brain suffers from inflammation and a lot is going on all at once. Insulin levels are fluctuating, hormones and chemicals are being produced.
Exercise directly impacts the brain by:
Stimulating new blood vessel growth
Reducing inflammation in the brain
Reducing insulin resistance
These are all direct benefits to the brain, but there are also indirect positive effects that are experienced. The benefits of exercise also:
Reduce stress
Boost your mood
Enhance your sleep
When you sleep, the brain has time to rid itself of toxins and start repairing the body. Stress, mood and sleep play an integral role in your cognition. If you have problems in any of these three areas, they will contribute to cognitive impairment.
Dr. Scott McGinnis of Harvard Medical School, claims that many studies found that the prefrontal cortex has a larger volume in people that exercise. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for memory and your ability to think.
I figured, after reading this study, that it would take years for any part of my brain to actually change.
I was wrong.
Moderate exercise, over a six-month period or year, can increase the volume of select areas of the brain. Cognitive abilities improve, and the benefits of exercise seem rapid.
Participants in the study walked for 120 minutes a week – that’s it. Will HIIT and other aerobic exercises produce the same results? Chances are that they will.
Update: New Study Links Irisin and Cognitive Function Together
Since first publishing this article, there has been a very interesting study done on exercise and the brain. The study was conducted b Nature Metabolism in 2021. The study was done on mice and found that following exercise, there was a notable increase in the irisin hormone.
Irisin was found to enter the brain post-exercise and improve cognition.
Additionally, the hormone is also known as an anti-inflammatory and protects against neuroinflammation.
Exercise and the Brain: Does Exercise Heal the Brain?
If you have severe brain damage, your memory function and cognitive abilities may be impaired. “Healing” may be promoted with physical exercise, but you’re not likely to reduce any extensive brain damage.
But the brain will benefit from an increase in blood flow and reduction in oxidative stress.
Researchers have studied the positive benefits of exercise on the recovery of traumatic brain injury (TBI). A 2012 study found that aerobic exercise was able to help relieve depression among TBI sufferers. The study included:
Participants that were injured 11 months or longer prior to the study
12-week of aerobic exercise program
After the human studies, all participants suffered from lower levels of depression, noted higher self-esteem and also improved their aerobic capacity. No adverse side effects were reported.
But what about someone that has a TBI or a serious concussion? Can the brain heal from exercise? The truth is that there’s simply not enough studies to rely on that are not bias or seriously lacking. Further studies need to be conducted to see if there’s a link between exercise and healing improvements for TBIs or concussions.
What About Resistance Training? It Must Do Something!
I hate cardio. I would much rather do resistance training, but for the betterment of my brain, I will start doing more aerobic exercise after writing this article.
Thankfully, exercise and the brain can also include resistance training. resistance training has been shown to also benefit the brain.
Executive memory and function are very important, but a lot of people have no idea what this means. Executive function allows you to:
Plan for the future
Perform complex tasks
Organize information
Think in an abstract manner
Store working memory
Studies show that in people aged 55 or older, exercise increases the person’s ability to perform well on cognitive tests by 400%. Substantial benefits were exhibited in as little as four weeks with exercise sessions lasting 30 – 45 minutes.
Interestingly, one study also found that taking steps when walking send waves through the body into the arteries. When this happens, blood flow increases to the brain. Increased blood flow into the brain results in more nutrients and oxygen to the brain.
Enhanced blood flow to the brain can also create new blood cells and there’s also the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which helps protect and repair brain cells from degeneration.
Exercise and the effects on brain health show a direct correlation to improved cognitive skills, lower stress hormones and a plethora of mental health benefits.
Getting Started With Exercise If You Have Mental Health Issues
If you’re depressed, anxious or suffering from mental health issues, it can be hard to even think about exercising. People that don’t have any mental health concerns struggle to get out of bed or off the couch and exercise.
A lot of people, myself included, always find ways to be “too busy” to exercise when in reality I could fit in a 30 – 40+ minute workout every day.
If you find yourself struggling to get started with an exercise program, these few tips can help you get going:
Start slowly. You may want to lose weight, build muscle or reach another fitness goal, but you should be starting slowly. It’s not uncommon to want to lose 10 pounds in 30 days, lose 2 in 20 and give up. Instead, start slowly with realistic goals. Aim to exercise three days a week, and once you hit this goal, slowly move up to four days and five days a week.
Find something you enjoy. The reason that there are always new workout fads is because people get bored easily. For me, nothing is worse than staring at the wall while on the treadmill. I despise it. But, a way around this is to find something you enjoy doing and do it. Lift weights, rock climb, do yoga, join a martial arts class – find some form of exercise you enjoy and stick to it.
Schedule in your exercise sessions. What time is best for you to exercise? Schedule it into your day. If you find yourself missing session after session, reverse course and exercise first thing in the morning so that you start the day off doing something good for your mental health.
Make it social. Personally, I don’t have workout partners because if they become unmotivated, so do I. Instead, be social in the gym or at your class so that you look forward to going to the gym and seeing someone that you know. If you’re hiking or doing a solo activity, you can obviously skip this point.
If you’re able to make it a week engaging in exercise, you can make it two and three and eventually you’ll feel like something is missing if you skip a session.
Exercise and the brain are linked, but so are your brain and your diet. You should try eating foods proven to protect your brain. Food plays a major role in everything from promoting cognitive functions to lowering your risk of neurodegenerative diseases
Make exercise fun. You don’t need a gym or a membership to reap the rewards of exercise on your brain. All you need to do is get moving to experience the benefits of exercise on the brain.
Walk into any gym, and you’ll see people walk straight through the door and make their way to the free weights. One person may grab a 30-pound weight and quickly start their first set of overhead presses.
But you’ll also see others “warming up before a workout,” using just 5 or 10 pounds to get their muscles moving before performing shoulder presses. Others may decide to jump on the treadmill or elliptical to warm their body up before going into their routine.
Do you need to really warm up?
Yes.
What Science is Saying About Warming Up
Arnold Schwarzenegger warmed up before exercising, and so have many of the world’s greatest bodybuilders, powerlifters and athletes.
A study from 1985 was conducted to better understand the benefits of warming up.
You see, the goal of warming up is to increase your body’s overall temperature.
Three techniques were studied:
Passive warm-up
General warm-up
Specific warm-up
Specific warm-ups seem to work the best because they warm up the muscle that will be doing the exercise. So, for a bicep curl, you may perform 10 reps with 10 pounds to warm the muscle up before moving to 15 pounds and then to 30 pounds.
Temperature-dependent physiological processes are the main benefit of warming up, and this increase in body temperature will do a few things for you:
Reduction in musculoskeletal injuries, primarily seen in sports (tendons, ligaments, muscles, nerves, etc)
Increase in blood flow to the muscles
Increase in nerve receptor sensitivity
Boost in nervous impulse speed
Injury prevention is important, but a lot is happening here. Blood flow increase to the muscle is essential when exercising because blood flow will help push more nutrients and oxygen into the muscles. Muscles dilate naturally when exercising, and proper blood flow is essential for adenosine triphosphate (ATP).
When exercising, ATP allows the muscles to work and contract. ATP is responsible for the storage of biochemicals and the usage of energy.
As ATP is used, the body will produce metabolic byproducts and lactic acid, which needs to be carried away from the muscles and sent to the liver to be eliminated. An increase in blood flow helps these natural processes take place, making your body work more efficiently.
Any muscle contraction in the body will require ATP to create the biochemical reaction to take place.
Nerve impulse speed and sensitivity will allow the muscles to fire rapidly and more efficiently, allowing you to push or pull the weight with greater ease.
Activation energy rates will be reduced when warming up, allowing you to perform extra repetitions if needed.
Muscle viscosity is reduced, too. Viscosity is the process in which the muscles will become lubricated, allowing you to lift heavier and slowing the contraction. Contraction effectiveness is improved, too, allowing for a better overall contraction and results.
Another study from 2010 was published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning that examined the effects of warming-up on physical performance. The assessment, which analyzed 32 studies, found that there was evidence that showed warming up helped improve performance in 79% of the examined studies.
There was little evidence to show that warming up was detrimental to sports athletes.
The Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport also looked at warming up with a weighted vest for runners. Weighted vests, which were 20% of body mass, were used for a warm-up, and the results found were significant.
Participants in the trial performed the following:
10-minute jog
5-minute submaximal run
6, 10-second strides
Weighted and non-weighted exercises were performed, and after a 10-minute rest, it was found that leg stiffness was moderately improved (20.4%) while peak running speed increased by 2.9%.
Running economy increased by 6%.
What the researchers believe is that using a weighted vest in a warm-up will help with competitive endurance performance, too.
Now, the weighted vest may not be used in your warm-up, but it does show that different warm-up methods can have different impacts on your overall performance. An additional study suggests that warming up on a cardio machine is most beneficial when starting off slow and gradually increasing intensity during the warm-up.
A 2007 study found that a warm-up will also produce a small reduction in onset muscle soreness.
How Important is Warming Up Before a Workout?
A lot of people head into the gym, start their sets and really never perform a warm up. If you’re in this category, chances are that you’re short on time and think warming up is a waste of time. But there are a lot of great benefits of performing this key activity:
Benefits of Warming Up Before a Workout
Increase blood flow to your muscles
Raise your body temperature
Reduce the risk of muscle strain
Improve range of motion
Reduce the chance of injury
Dynamic Stretching as a Warm Up
Warm up exercises can include lifting light weight to increase blood flow to your muscles. For example, ,if you’re working your upper body, specifically your biceps, you can warm up with:
30% to 50% of your maximum weight
Perform 2 sets of 10 reps with light weight
You can also choose to perform a compound exercise before performing heavier sets. But you also have the option to add in stretching exercises to loosen up tight muscles and alleviate muscle tension. A dynamic stretching routine may include:
Jumping jacks
Arm circles
Side shuffle
Lunges
Squats
Leg swings
Knee Lifts
A dynamic stretch should be part of your workout routine. Dynamic movements, or range of motion movements, are a good addition to a training session. If you plan on rigorous exercise, you can increase your exercise intensity with a dynamic stretch.
What Professionals Have to Say About Warming Up Before a Workout
You want to look at, and sometimes, replicate what the world’s top athletes are doing.
Why?
Because these athletes are putting their own ideas to the test. Who would you rather listen to: a scientist that conducted one random study on warming up, or an athlete that has been warming up for decades with amazing results?
Some of the best information in the bodybuilding and power lifting industry comes from trainers or athletes that have exceled in everything that they do.
What are these people saying about warming up?
Jim Stoppani, someone that I admire and follow in the fitness world, recommends dynamic warm-ups because a static warm-up, such as stretching, has been shown to be detrimental to your power, strength and speed. He recommends warming up when doing heavy weight, performing several sets prior to performing 3 – 5 reps of a really heavy weight.
If your rep range is in the 12 – 15 range, the first few reps will act as a warm-up and you probably won’t need to perform a warm-up in this case.
Eddie Hall, The Beast, World’s Strongest Man in 2017 and holder of the 500 KG deadlift record, also warms up, albeit with insanely heavy weight for us average mortals. You can see him warming up for the log press with a “light” 60kg for 40 reps. in the video below.
Eddie Hall warming up
Kirill Sarychevholds the world record for raw bench press, lifting 738.5 pounds and also set the record for raw three-lift powerlifting total at 2,386.5 pounds. He benched 705.5 pounds, squatted 793.7 pounds and deadlifted 887.4 pounds.
He’s a beast to say the least, and he also warms up.
Now, if you’re wondering why you never see people warm up on Instagram, it’s because there’s nothing “impressive” when warming up. Do you want to see Kirill bench 45 pounds, or do you want to see him bench 400 – 500 pounds like it’s a paper weight?
I think we’re all looking for the impressive lifts when we’re on Instagram.
But when these athletes are in the gym, you can be sure that they’re warming up their muscles, often performing a dynamic warm up, so that they can push more weight and reduce their risk of injury. You, too, should be warming up before a workout.
Losing weight is no easy feat, but maintaining weight loss can be just as challenging. A new study from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus may have uncovered the secret to keeping those pounds off: exercise.
The findings aren’t exactly shocking or revolutionary, but they do give some insight into what actually works to keep the pounds off.
The study, which was published in the March issue of Obesity, looked at successful weight-loss maintainers, or those who maintained a reduced body weight of 30 pounds or more for over a year.
Those who were successful at maintaining their weight loss relied on physical activity – not chronic restriction of calories – to keep off the pounds.
What’s interesting about this study is that it contradicts the popular belief that you can’t outrun your diet.
The successful weight-loss maintainers actually consumed significantly more calories than those who were of a normal weight. In fact, their calorie consumption was more in line with those who were overweight or obese.
So, how did they manage to maintain their weight loss if they’re essentially going back to their old eating habits?
The study found that the weight-loss maintainers were burning more calories than both the normal weight individuals and those who were overweight/obese.
The weight-loss maintainers were managing 12,000 steps per day compared to 9,000 steps by normal weight participants and 6,500 steps for overweight/obese individuals.
The moral of the story? Keep moving! Don’t stop exercising because you’ve reached your weight loss goal. Use this study as motivation to keep your routine going.
