5 tips for effective gym training

Gym training stays effective when you keep these things in mind:

1. Rest, food and training

To improve your fitness, you need all three of these in the right balance. Enough sleep supports recovery, so pay special attention to it when your training volume goes up. The UKK Institute (a Finnish centre for health promotion research) says in its physical activity recommendation (in Finnish) that sleep is not something to skimp on. Eat to match your goals. If you want to lose weight, you usually need to take in less energy than you use. If you want to build muscle, you usually need plenty of energy. Whatever your goal, keep it sensible: enough protein and vegetables at every meal.

2. Progression: adding challenge

You go to the gym for the first time and do a workout that works and feels right. You carry on with the same workout, and you are pleased when, a month later, it feels quite light. When an exercise starts to feel easy, you can add a little more challenge, step by step, to match your goals. That way, progress can carry on for a long time.

3. Train in a way that fits your goals

If you are aiming for overall wellbeing, remember both strength training and cardio. A beginner may need only two sessions a week to improve, while more experienced people may need more, for example four. After several years of training, progress doesn’t necessarily come in every area at the same time. With a broad background, though, the right priorities can bring progress in one area at a time. It is also good to remember that for advanced gym-goers, keeping up your fitness can work with a fairly modest effort: training 1–2 times a week.

4. Patience

As you may have guessed from tip three, fitness is a long game. At the start, progress is often quite quick, but it slows down and asks more of you with every step. Always set realistic short-term goals. Enjoy the early progress and the energy that regular exercise brings to everyday life.

5. A training partner

It isn’t always easy to head to the gym. We know. A training partner can help enormously here. Sometimes you are having a bad day, work is weighing on you, the car is acting up and your back hurts a little. That is when a training partner can remind you that training often helps you cope with the worries of everyday life! (It won’t necessarily fix the car 🙂)