How to approach keeping fit

Nowadays, busy lifestyles and an increasing external focus on healthy living have a major impact on our approach to fitness.

There’s plenty of thinking behind today’s training programmes – workouts have never been as scientific, technologically sophisticated and engaging as they are today. The new trends in fitness are giving us an astonishing view of what the human body can reach in a session by training smarter (not longer) and challenging oneself to the extreme. Without further ado, let’s learn about these new concepts in fitness.

First is the High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), such as Crossfit, P90X3, Focus T-25 and Insanity, offered by so-called ‘box gyms’. This approach has taken the fitness world by storm with its circuit style workouts, involving short bursts of intense activity that provide improved athletic capacity, conditioning and fat burning.  Depending on your stamina and willingness, the results can yield the body of a gladiator or an Amazonian. Not bad at all. However, be prepared for constantly sore muscles.

Another significantly fun and sexy new trend is the Pole Workout. Without a doubt, this can provoke some flare in your training. Experts confirm the pole classes are sweat-inducing super effective fat-torching workouts, with the added advantage of learning how to show off your curves and glorify your body.

Next we have team-based workouts. This is a fun way to build muscles and experience a sense of fellowship – burn calories while you bond with teammates, letting the excitement and accomplishment of teamwork take over. These competition-based classes involve games such as catching the flag, tree climbing, carrying logs, tag and overall endurance training.

Another current trend is Core Fusion Express. This new method of working out your core and improving coordination is based on the traditional Pilates and Yoga abdominal exercises – specific ballet postures offer fast-paced, full-body training, adding a mayor cardio component with the sole aim of sculpting your muscles. All exercises require complete engagement to correct imbalances due to poor posture and bad movement patterns established during previous workouts. It helps you recognize your weaknesses and so customize your training.

Then we have Power Yoga as Recovery Class. You have certainly heard the slogan “Train hard. Recover harder”. The boom in high-intensity workouts means people are getting sore and need a complementary stretching program. This is where the self-care workouts come in. These courses help stimulate recovery and embellish overall sport efficiency as well as longevity in training, whatever your goals might be. Round out your weekly routine with Yoga training to get more out of your time at the gym, which helps to avoid injuries and incorrect posture.

Another trend is a very hi-tech device called ‘telemetry’. Have you seen those wristbands that track your daily activity, heart rate and more? Now it’s used in group classes where performance metrics are displayed on a board in the room, synced up with apps in your smart phone. There are hundreds of other helpful fitness apps that tell you what food you eat (soon enough these apps will chew the food for you). These innovating concepts will be offered in the traditional gyms, where people can choose from an array of classes, instructors and machinery that help you restore, heal and maintain overall fitness. This ancient concept (it comes from ancient Greek, tele = remote and metron = measure) has proved to work. Ultimately, all trends come on go. We all know that variety is the spice of life, so we certainly need to keep trying new concepts.