5 Ways To Increase The Intensity of Your Workouts

Has your workout hit a plateau?  Need to find a way to Step Up The Intensity of your Training?  Are you Ready To Unleash The Mayhem?

I know you're ready so I’m going to uncover the top tried and true secrets that are going to take you from where you are now to where you want to be.

A Sexy, Lean and Uber Fit Champion! Now where that just came from I do not know but yeah, ok... Uber!! 

Through the concepts I'm going to describe to you, you're going to learn exactly what you need to do to rev your metabolic rate so high that you'll burn up body fat even while you're at home kicked back watching t.v.

Sound too good to be true?

If you're like most people, this is exactly how you would LOVE to be able to lose weight.  You’re doing very little work but melting fat off your body.

Possible? Absolutely. But, only after you put in the hard work with your training first. When you can blitz up that intensity high enough, amazing things will start happening to your body.

You'll feel stronger, you'll feel fitter, and you'll look much leaner than ever before. You may even start to notice that you can eat more food without gaining weight - that's the beauty of high intensity workouts right there!

It's so unfortunate that so many people miss out on this just because they simply do not bring the intensity of their workouts high enough. They're usually too scared, too uncomfortable or simply don’t know any better.

Lets dig into this. You see, your body does not like to be pushed out of its comfort zone. If it had its way, it would go about your day without ever really experiencing any type of challenge.

Basically, it likes being lazy. But, lazy gets you what? I’m sure its safe to say exactly where you are at right now. No, I’m not calling you lazy. But, think about anything new that you have ever tried to do.

Did you experience some Fear and Doubt? 

This is the body’s self defense mechanism to resist change. What happened when you overcame that fear and doubt though? You broke your bodies laziness and created a positive end result in your life that was worth it! 

Agreed?

So, if you want to push the barriers on your fitness level and reach a whole new level of leanness – a leanness where muscle definition starts to show and reveal your sexy and lean body come out of hiding, then you HAVE to push past that comfort zone, break the fears and doubts and literally force the body to change!

Yes, you may experience a bit of discomfort during your workouts because you are working at that elevated intensity but trust me, when you see the results coming in, you will never bother with a boring low intensity workout again.

Ok, yes, low intensity workouts do have their place – if you need a recovery session after a very high workout or you're injured and just trying to maintain some degree of fitness level then they may be appropriate, but if you're goal is maximum definition, fat loss, and strength, high intensity is where it's at.

It's you're golden ticket to success. So that is precisely what we're going to focus on.

So, what does intensity mean?

Right now you may be thinking...pain. Or perhaps you have this vision of yourself hunched over out of breath halfway through the workout. To you, that equals intensity.

While these both may somewhat describe intensity, it's vital that we place a specific description on this so when you achieve it, you know it.

Intensity is pushing your body harder than it's been pushed before.

Intensity is forcing your body to work when it would rather rest.

Intensity is constantly pushing yourself further than you did the previous workout.

This is extremely important if you want to see progress. Basically, it goes like this. 

Your body is a highly adaptive organism and every time you place a stress on it, it's going to adapt to this stress as best as possible, growing back stronger and healthier!

That is the process of progression. You break down the muscle tissue, give it enough rest, and then it grows back stronger again and ready to take on tougher workouts and challenges. 

Not failing to mention that during this process, it continues to burn fat up to 24 hours per day!

Now, one place too many people go wrong is with the rest element. They're in the gym every day doing something and not allowing their body the time it needs to recover. Be very careful about doing this. If you do, you're definitely going to suffer the effects of lack of progress.

We'll get back to that shortly though. Right now just know this process. Break-down, rest, progression.

What you want to be doing each and every time you're training is working at an intensity that is slightly higher than the one you were at before.

If you do this then you're placing that new stress – that higher stress (which is often termed as overloading stimulus for you technical people out there) on the muscles which forces them to react.

They have never seen this stress before and because of that, you see improvement. If you fail to provide a higher intensity than you did last time though, the body gets comfortable again.

It's been challenged with this stress before and is now adapted to it so it knows it's fully capable of handling it.

So, no strength gains or physical changes are going to take place. You will definitely still burn off calories while doing your workout but you won't see the type of progress you're looking for. This is the very reason people spend years in the gym and see little to no new results.

When you're constantly increasing the intensity, you reach new levels of fitness and you must remember that with each new level, you'll be burning up more and more calories.

Therefore, the more you push it on a regular basis, the faster fat loss will progress, the faster you'll get lean muscle development, and the more fit and healthy you'll become.

So now that you understand why intensity is important, the question is how its accomplished. How do you add that intensity to your workout program that is going to cause all these benefits to take place?

Fortunately, there's numerous ways you can go about this. 

1. Increased Resistance

One of the first methods of boosting up the intensity of your workout program is by simply adding more resistance. This is by far the most common method and what you'll see most people doing.

Rather than doing say 15 pounds on their exercise, they bump it up to 17.5 or maybe even 20. This further challenges their muscles and they see nice muscle tone and strength gains because of it.

The only problem with this type of intensity increase is that you're not going to see it each and every workout. 

It's very common to find that you can only increase the weight upwards every 3-10 workouts depending on the particular exercise you happen to be doing and the amount of weight you're lifting in the first place, so to expect yourself to boost the weight each and every workout would be unrealistic.

2. Decreased Rest Time

So then we come to our second method of increasing the intensity. That method is reducing back on the total amount of time you spend resting throughout the workout.

Rather than taking one full minute between your sets you would take just 30 or 45 seconds. Now you're forcing the body to do the same amount of work (reps X weight X sets) but in a shorter period of time.

Hence, you bring on muscular fatigue. Again, the body must learn to deal with this new, higher level of muscular fatigue and you become stronger because of it.

One thing that should be noted here however is that generally you don't want to reduce the rest periods so much that it sacrifices how much you can lift – or makes you use improper form.

You must ALWAYS use proper form on your exercises. Using momentum or improper form will cause you to be at a higher risk of injury. When you work with a personal trainer, or in one of our MXT classes you won't have to worry about that issue at all since you’ll be closely monitored on how you're executing the exercises.

But if you're doing a workout alone and are not using good form, you're in for trouble. Always keep this in the back of your mind; form and execution is everything!!

Only bring the rest periods down short enough that you get more of a muscular challenge without it influencing your ability to maintain what you were doing before.

The point is to add intensity not change the entire stress around.

3. Change Of Exercises

Another way that you can increase the intensity of your workouts is to change the exercises you're doing around. This is actually a very good way to bust through any fitness plateau you might be doing and totally shock the body into responding.

When you go into the gym and are doing the same order of exercises over and over again, the body gets used to that too. Even if you are aiming to up the weight or reduce the rest, eventually it's just not enough.

That's when a complete change-over is needed. Rather than doing a flat bench press for instance, try an incline bench press.

Or, rather than doing squats, try lunges. Just be sure that the exercises you're adding in replace ones that work similar muscles and you'll be all set.

Remember that you don't necessarily always have to change all of the exercises either – simply changing two or three of the main ones you do will be enough to really shock the body and showing progress again.

Get creative – there are so many exercises that can be added into a workout routine that there's absolutely no reason why boredom should ever be a factor for you.

4. Added Instability

Next up on our list of methods to boost the intensity of your program is to add some degree of instability. Instability is an extremely great way to challenge the body because of the fact that it's really going to get those core muscles working hard.

Want a stronger and tighter midsection? 

Move away from the crunch mat.

One of the biggest mistakes so many people are making with their workouts is getting into some machine and just going through the movements. Half the time their mind isn't even on the exercise, it's what they're doing this coming Friday night.

This is actually one thing that we’re extremely proud of at our Cross Training workouts – you'll never be doing the same workout twice. I strive to make absolutely sure that each workout is fresh and new so first, you never get bored (no one wants you dropping out from lack of interest!) and second, so you see ten times the results you've ever seen before.  SHAMELESS PLUG - If you're in the RVA area and would like to try a week for FREE please visit mayhemfitness.com

If you want to see optimum results from your workout program you must zero in and focus; often times my clients will hear me say, “Make that Mind and Body connection to work together!”

This means focusing 100% on the muscle(s) being worked while doing a certain exercise. One great way to ensure you're doing this is to add instability to your workout. 

When you're unstable you definitely will not have a chance to let your mind slip and start focusing on something else.

If you do, you'll be knocked on the floor. So the fact that you're concentrating in on every muscle contraction and really trying to stabilize yourself will not only cause you to work your muscles better but it's also really going to get those abs working incredibly hard.

This means greater calorie burns during the workout, greater calorie burns after the workout, and faster results!

Instability is hands down one of the single best ways to boost your workout intensity and challenge your body. With a single exercise ball, the options are literally endless.

5. Utilize Supersets

Finally the last way that we're going to go over today to add some more intensity to your workout program is an advanced lifting technique – and one of my personal favorites, the Superset.

OH YEAH!! The Superset...

A superset is where you're going to take one exercise and pair it with another. So let's say you’re going to be working chest and back today.

Rather than doing all your chest exercises and then moving over and doing your back you're going to perform one set for the chest and then directly move over and perform a second set for the back with no rest in between (except to move to the new exercise and possibly change the weight).

Then once both the exercises have been completed you can rest before moving on to your next set. The benefits of this technique are numerous.

First, your workouts are going to be short, sweet and intense. Since you literally are cutting down the total rest time by half, you're going to get in and get out faster than you know it.

Second, you're going to really good muscle pumps. Now, this might not matter to everyone but if you're motivated when you get that fuller feeling in your muscles, supersets will do that to you quickly. 

Hence, since you're more motivated, you may now push harder. Getting more work done! Winning!! 

Third, supersets are great for increasing the muscle's endurance capacity and making you more resistant to fatigue which will help greatly when you're performing many of the activities you do on a regular basis. 

Especially if you engage in competitive sports - you will outlast your competition as they fatigue out!

So as you can see, supersets are a great technique to be using and one I'd definitely recommend. One of the best things about your workouts is that they're virtually an endless series of supersets in some cases. You're constantly moving between exercises and really ramping up that total calorie burn for much faster overall fat loss.

Now, also note that there are more ways than one to do a superset. You can do agonistic and antagonistic supersets, you can do compound to isolation supersets, and you can do same part supersets.

Let's briefly give you a glimpse into each one. I want you to fully understand this training principle as it's one that will definitely accelerate your progress.

Antagonistic/Agonistic

So in all the major muscle groups in the body you have a pair of muscles that virtually oppose each other. You have the chest and the back, you have the biceps and the triceps, and you have the quads

and the hamstrings. When you pair these two exercises together in superset fashion, that's when you're doing antagonistic and agonistic supersets.

This tends to be a very beneficial way to pair these together due to the fact that since they oppose each other, when one muscle group is resting, the other is working and vice versa. Hence even though you aren't actually resting in the workout, you are letting that muscle rest. This allows you to perform more work in less time.

Compound To Isolation

The second type of superset is a compound to isolation superset. This is a good way to improve a specific body part that you really want to start targeting and showing better overall results.

Lets say you want to tighten up the back of your arms (Triceps). In this case, let's say you would do the bench press and follow that with some tricep extensions. Because the bench press is going to work the triceps while you're doing it, you pre-fatigue the tissues and then move into the tricep extension further exhausting those hard working muscle fibers.

End result? Dramatically stronger, tighter and sexier arms, specifically the triceps.

While I don't really recommend a number of isolation exercises in any workout (which I'll go into in more detail in another blog post), this particular method is quite effective.

Same Part Supersets

Third, the last type of superset you can do are same part supersets. This will be where you perform two different exercises that are going to target the same muscle group. So you'd do two shoulder exercises for instance back to back.

Or, two lower body exercises – say squats followed by lunges. Do note though that these are going to be by far the most intense supersets you do. Since you're directly stimulating that muscle tissue across numerous sets you will most certainly find that you're experiencing a high rate of lactic acid build-up - THE BURN, OH THE BURN!!

If you can make it through these, you will without a doubt be able to tolerate a higher overall work capacity when you go back to your straight sets again.

So there's our last method to boost up the intensity. You likely will never have a full workout composed of just supersets (unless you're highly advanced), but you will definitely want to add them in there as you move through your workout program and get in better shape.

To summarize, whatever way you choose to do it, increased intensity is the way to go with your training. Get a taste of it and you'll never go back!

Get Work Done!