How To Get A Beach Body The Right Way
As a society, we’ve hit peak workout gimmick saturation. It started with jazzercise, moved pleasantly through Richard Simmons and now somehow half of your friends on Facebook are suddenly fitness experts, peddling DVDs, shakes and saccharine sweet positivity. Some of the stuff you see online is solid, serious information, but a lot of stuff floating around out there is designed to prey on your insecurities and get you to cough up some dough to achieve your fitness and physique goals.
There are better ways to get a beach body. High-intensity interval training, a staple of fitness on your friends list, is one way to go about it – as long as you’re doing it the right way. You need to be safe and smart about your high-intensity interval training workouts and the nutrition you’re using to fuel them and recover. Social media can aid in your progress or bury you in a mire of comparison and self-deprecation. Learn how to get a beach body the right way and make your social media, high-intensity interval training and diet work for you.
How To Get HIIT Right
High-intensity interval training, or HIIT, is no joke. As a cardio workout, it beats time on the treadmill in level of intensity, amount of calories burned and potential for actually having fun doing cardio. There are a million DVDs, YouTube videos, books and websites that will give you detailed descriptions of all of the moves you need to master. You can put them together to create an effective HIIT workout, but there’s more to getting HIIT right than just going through the motions.
As tempting as it can be to dive right into a new HIIT workout, it’s important not to be overzealous. Ease into high-intensity training. You need at least a baseline of aerobic fitness before you start throwing intervals into the mix. According to BodyBuilding.com, you should get in a solid month of cardio work, at least 20 minutes a day for three days a week, before you consider HIIT. At that point you can start to gradually incorporate some intervals into your workout. As you gain strength and endurance, up the ante and include more intervals.
When you look to a planned HIIT workout for guidance, you may find yourself faced with moves and styles of cardio that you loathe. If you hate running, you don’t have to suffer through it to feel the effects of a high-intensity interval training workout. You can choose your own adventure here. Find a premade workout that fits your needs and gives you the kind of workout you like, or you can make your own.
No matter what kind of high-intensity interval training workout you choose to do, check in with yourself and your body to make sure you’re not doing any damage. It’s easy to overdo it with HIIT workouts, since they’re constantly pushing you to work harder and faster. If you’re not careful, this is a recipe for injury. BodyBuilding.com suggests taking a rest day if you have an HIIT day scheduled but are feeling wiped out. If your body is fatigued, give it the rest it needs or swap your HIIT cardio for a low-intensity, steady-state workout like a light jog or a nice bike ride. Don’t hurt yourself trying to keep up with a crazy schedule of workouts imposed on you by some digital trainer yelling at you from the TV or computer screen. You do you.
How To Fuel Your Body For HIIT
Another aspect of getting that perfect “beach body” through high-intensity interval training is often neglected. Get the proper nutrition to fuel your body through those grueling cardio workouts. Some sugary shake isn’t going to do it for you. Your body needs high-quality nutrition to power through your HIIT workouts and help you rebuild and refuel on your rest days.
“This isn’t some run-of-the-mill cardio workout where you can hit the gym on an empty stomach and expect results,” says BodyBuilding.com. You’re going to need something substantial to get you through it. As you get closer to your workout, shoot for fuel that has fast-digesting protein and some carbohydrates. Avoid anything super heavy or sugar-laden.
After your workouts, you need to make sure you’re getting clean protein and amino acids that can fuel muscle rebuilding and growth. Treat HIIT workouts the same way you would treat weightlifting, instead of how you’d treat a yoga session or jaunt on the treadmill.
There are a number of protein products and shakes advertised by well-intentioned pseudo-professionals all over social media, but you don’t need to buy into the internet hype. When you’re choosing a protein powder or a meal replacement, you don’t need to follow trends. Just because a product is blowing up on your friends list doesn’t mean it’s worth your money. Performance Inspired Nutrition makes sure all of our products are clean, all-natural and up to the highest quality standards. Performance Whey Protein, Ripped Whey Protein and Performance Inspired Post Workout BCAA supplement all have optimal nutrition for HIIT workouts without the junk that’s thrown into some similar products.
How To Find The Right Social Support
Social networking sites, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, have become flooded with fitness gurus, workout plans and supplement advertisements. Some of it’s good; some of it’s not. That endless stream of information and potential for constant comparison can be motivational or utterly depressing.
“Social media can trap you in a sea of self-criticism,” according to Greatist. Comparing yourself to social media figures or even well-meaning friends can drive you to find fault with yourself. Those people aren’t you, and to compare all of your hard work to one snapshot (or Snapchat) of someone else’s life is to do yourself a disservice.
Instead, use social media to your advantage, finding communities of people whose goals and ambitions are similar to yours. Use online tools to track your calories, movement and sleep. Harness the good of social media and the internet and stay away from anything that can get between you and your goals, even if that thing is a seemingly-innocuous Facebook post about some new, amazing shake or workout. You’re smarter than that.
The right social network to help you meet your health, fitness and physique goals is out there. Find Performance Inspired on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and connect with a community of engaged, encouraging individuals and a wealth of inspiring information.
