Five tips to make a pre-workout more effective for women
By incorporating a few simple pre-workout methods, you can make your exercise sessions much more effective. Here are five tips that you should follow.
Exercise is great for our physical and mental health. But if you want to get the most from your workouts, then it’s important to prepare for them properly. Here’s how you can maximise your efforts.
1) Stretch
Most people know that stretching before a workout can make exercising more effective. But still, plenty of us either forget to stretch or don’t understand the reasons why stretching helps – and therefore forgo it.
Stretching is an important step before working out because it warms up your muscles for your workout and protects you from experiencing soreness after exercising. If you skip or rush stretching, it can make your workout routine much less effective.
Warming up by doing dynamic stretching is even more important as you age. If you don’t stretch as you get older, you can become stiffer and sorer when doing workouts. So, whatever age you are, remember to spend a few minutes stretching before you begin working out. Your exercise routine will then become much more effective.
2) Take pre-workout supplements
Taking pre-workout supplements can be effective for boosting your energy and motivation before you exercise. Pre-workout supplements also enable you to burn more calories while exercising. They can help you to last longer, go harder, and improve your overall performance too.
However, for maximum benefit, you need to choose the best supplements with the right ingredients. Look out for ingredients like caffeine, L-citrulline and beta-alanine amino acids, essential amino acids, and vitamins, minerals, and electrolytes.
A combination of those ingredients, in the right doses, can be very helpful for women who are about to work out. But you should compare different pre-workout supplements to ensure none undercut on essential ingredients. Take a look at this insightful article for the best recommendations for supplements for women.
3) Use a foam roller
Trainers and celebs who regularly work out have been raving about foam rollers for some time now. You may have used foam rollers for helping therapeutically relieve stress, but they can also be simple and effective tools for use before working out.
When you use a foam roller on your body, it helps to increase your circulation and make your muscles feel and look more supple. Furthermore, it can stimulate your lymphatic system in order to eradicate toxins. While foam rollers can be used at any time, they are especially powerful when used straight before workouts as they allow your body to awaken and become prepared for more strenuous movement.
4) Eat a pre-workout meal
If you load up with carbs in the hour before you work out, your performance can be significantly improved. Both carbohydrates and lean proteins are good choices. Try low-fat meals that contain foods like chicken, Greek yoghurt, or fish combined with carbs like rice, beans, or sweet potatoes.
Carbs help with endurance, so by eating carb-loaded pre-workout meals, you can have much more effective workout sessions. To gain additional energy, consider adding a dose of medium-chain triglycerides and coconut oil.
5) Regularly get enough sleep
While taking a nap before a workout isn’t recommended, getting enough sleep each night is crucial to an effective exercise session. So, when you go to bed, see it as part of your pre-workout ritual.
When you get enough quality sleep each night, which should be between six and nine hours, you will have better focus, strength, grip, and stamina over time, thereby allowing you to achieve more activeness and progress further and more consistently with your workout sessions.
Getting enough sleep also makes a difference in your mood. Quite simply, when you regularly get enough sleep, your mood improves and you become less irritable, which in turn helps to motivate you in your workouts.
