By: Matt Weik, BS, CSCS, CPT, CSN
Do you time your workouts? Timing your workouts can be an effective way to maximize the benefits of exercise and improve overall fitness. While it may seem like a small detail, tracking the duration and intensity of your workouts can help you establish goals, monitor progress, and optimize your training regimen.
Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced athlete, incorporating a timing strategy can provide valuable insights into your physical performance and keep you motivated to continue challenging yourself.
In this article, we’ll dive deeper into why you should time your workouts, the various benefits, as well as some practical tips and tools to help you get started.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes. It is recommended that you speak with your doctor before starting any exercise program.
Overexertion During Exercise Can Result in Physical Breakdowns
Physical activity is crucial to maintaining good health, but avoiding overexertion during exercise is essential to prevent harm to your body. Overstraining your body during workouts can lead to a disaster for your physical activity routine and overall health, which is why it may be beneficial for you to time your workouts. Excessive training can strain your body, weakening your immune system and making you more susceptible to illnesses.
When you push your body too hard, your immune system perceives the strain as an illness, causing fatigue and other symptoms that can interfere with your daily life.
It’s crucial to balance the duration and intensity of your workout to avoid overexertion. High-intensity workouts require less time, while low-intensity workouts can be more lengthy. It’s essential to be mindful of the time spent exercising and adjust it according to your body’s needs.
Proper rest and recovery are also crucial to avoid overexertion during exercise. Taking rest days and incorporating stretching and warm-up exercises can help prevent injury and reduce the risk of overexertion. In addition to that, staying hydrated before, during, and after exercise is essential to prevent dehydration, especially during hot weather.
Use Time as a Tool
Time is a tool. Plain and simple. And it makes sense why you would want to time your workouts. Timing is an essential aspect of aerobic exercise and has been for generations, with stopwatches being a standard athletic tool. Timing a run and maintaining a consistent pace can be the difference between a 40-minute fat-burning session or winning a race. Time is both a goal and a crucial source of feedback in aerobic exercises, where it’s used as a familiar tool.
Related Article: 10 Surefire Ways to Get Motivated and Fast-Track Your Fitness Goals
Circuit training, a popular exercise routine that combines strength and aerobic training to improve cardiovascular health, endurance, and stamina, also uses measured intervals between sets of exercise. These measured intervals help to achieve the desired combination of benefits and make timing a critical component of the workout.
You can achieve the most significant benefits from your circuit training routine by using timed intervals and monitoring your progress. If you’re doing intervals where you have a work and rest period, you may utilize this protocol to time your workouts already without knowing you’re leveraging everything we’re talking about in this article.
Overdoing Workouts Can Cause Symptoms in Your Daily Life
Over-exerting yourself during workouts can lead to several negative consequences — much of which can be mitigated or minimized if you were to time your workouts.
Apart from fatigue and potential injury, it can also result in a sour mood, anger, irritability, and even depression. It’s akin to the feeling when someone is on the verge of getting sick. Your immune system may weaken, making you more susceptible to illness, and you may experience fatigue more quickly when performing everyday activities. This fatigue differs from the usual exhaustion you may have felt initially during your workout and tends to be more pervasive.
Here are some key points to keep in mind:
- The intensity of the exercise should determine the duration of your exercise.
- Higher-intensity workouts require shorter durations. HIIT and interval training sessions should be shorter.
- When deciding how long to work out, consider only the time spent exercising. Time spent on activities like dressing, warming up, and cooling down doesn’t count.
- Pay attention to your resting heart rate, especially if you have a heart rate monitor. A sudden increase may indicate your body is under stress and it’s time to reduce the workout.
- Over-exercising can cause muscle loss and increased fat tissue — unless it’s your goal, it’s crucial to avoid overworking your body and take adequate rest between sessions.
What Does the Science Say?
Dr. Izumi Tabata’s research findings are significant for understanding how to maximize the benefits of your workout routine. The research, conducted by Dr. Tabata and his team at the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Tokyo, compared the effects of two different exercise approaches on two groups of athletes.
The first group exercised for one hour at a moderate intensity five days a week for six weeks, while the second group worked out at high intensity for only four minutes and 20 seconds, four days a week for six weeks, with 10 seconds of rest between sets. The results showed that the high-intensity group had a 28% gain in their anaerobic system, as well as a greater increase in aerobic efficiency.
In contrast, the moderate-intensity group only increased aerobic efficiency. This suggests that more significant benefits can be achieved in a shorter period of time by increasing exercise intensity and minimizing rest time between sets. But with these findings, you’d never be able to implement the strategy or potentially achieve the same results if you didn’t time your workouts.
Time Your Workouts and Your Pre-Workout
On top of making it a priority to time your workouts, you also need to time your pre-workout. As a rule of thumb, you’ll want to take your pre-workout anywhere from 15-30 minutes before your workout. This will allow the potency of the ingredients to hit your system and start feeling the effects.
What type of pre-workout should you use? That’s personal preference, but if you’re someone who wants to get in and get out with a bunch of intensity and no-nonsense, it’s tough to beat MuscleSport Rhino Rampage. This high-stim pre-workout will get you going in no time to the point when you arrive at the gym, you’re ready to run through walls and PRs. And as they say, “NEVER MESS WITH A RHINO!”
The formula found in Rhino Rampage is revolutionizing the pre-workout market by including new, backed by science, patented ingredients like Pepform® Citrulline Complex, Amentopump™ Amentoflavone, Infinergy™, Advantra-Z®, Dynamine™, and TeaCrine™.
In addition, you’ll find some potent ingredients like 3-Aminopropanoic Acid, L-Norvaline, 4-Hydroxyphenylalanine, Theobromine, English Walnut Extract, Rauwolfia Vomitoria, Huperzine A, and Kanna Extract that help with compounding the effects of the patented ingredients.
With the combination of the Rampage Performance & Pump Matrix and the Rampage Jungle Energy Matrix, you may quickly find yourself feeling like the king of the jungle and that nothing can stand in your way. The only thing left to do is load up the plates and get to work. Once you try MuscleSport Rhino Rampage, you may never look at another pre-workout ever again!