7 Ways to Spice up Your Workouts

When you exercise on a regular basis, there is a strong possibility that your routine will become stale after a certain period of time. If you are one of those people who basically does the same workout routine day in and day out, then some suggestions below will be useful to you.

Even if you are someone who switches up your training on a regular basis, some ideas below may be of some merit to you also. The goal with everyone training should be progression, so let's get to these methods that can help you to continue that much desired progression.

“Power Hour” Workouts

The “power hour” is something that isn’t only reserved for Wall Street. No, sir, you can employ power hours in your workout regime. Power hours work optimally with compound lifts such as bench press, squat and deadlift.

Take 80 percent of your 1 rep max and every minute on the minute, the goal is to bang out a single rep.

Can you make it all the way through the hour?

That is a super impressive 60 reps if you do!

It’s a sneaky impressive feat when you think about it. You are getting in a crazy amount of volume with such a high percentage of your 1 Rep Max. You should normally get around 5 reps with 80 percent in a set, you aren’t going to get too many sets with that kind of weight.

SuperSet Workouts

Bodybuilding technique that will give you a skin splitting pump!

A superset is when you perform back to back exercises with no rest between the exercises.

When it comes to supersets, you can perform 2 different types. On the one hand, you can perform a same muscle group and on the other, you can perform an opposing muscle group superset.

Same muscle group superset is more intense, as you are truly taxing the targeted muscle group. It blows up the muscle with fluid and blood—the more sets you perform like this, the greater the pump will be.

You also need to keep the weight moderate, as the goal here is volume.

Opposing muscle group supersets (as one muscle is contracting, the other is relaxing) are also popular among the bodybuilding community. You can also go a bit heavier, because there is an element of rest for the paired muscle groups.

Examples include barbell row with bench press, leg extension with hamstring curl, and shoulder press with a lat pulldown.

HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) Week

Main benefits include improving conditioning while reducing body fat levels. Sometimes, when you only lift weights, you can build both muscle and fat levels. Depends on diet, of course, but this is especially true if you are going through some phase of bulking.

Throwing in a HIIT only week can help shred off that excess fat, especially if it’s Summer season, and you want your muscles to pop a little more. As I said above, it also has an element of improving your conditioning.

Three, 30 minute max, workouts for the week.

Normally when you are basing your training around compound lifts, I only recommend sprinkling in 1 or 2, 20-minute HIIT session in a week.

HIIT sessions are taxing on the body in and of themselves, and can impact your performance and output in your other workout sessions.

But, since you're not scheduled to do any normal workouts during the week, you can push the boat out with your HIIT sessions. Some options include, doing a circuit workout of 5 or 6 exercises and get as many rounds completed as possible in that time.

Another option is pure cardio, something like 10 minutes on a rowing machine, 10 minutes on an assault bike and 10 minutes on a regular bike. Push all out for 20 seconds and rest for 10 seconds. This is just a blueprint, you may need to adjust based on fitness levels, but you get the point.

Add/Switch Up Progressive Overload Protocol

Too many people plateau way too fast with weights. Lots of reasons as to why this happens, but one of the main reasons is lack of a real plan to keep pushing and making gains.

When you don’t plan, you’ll stop making gains. You’ll get stuck in the same old routine that adds no real value in terms of forcing your body to continually adapting to new stresses.

There are so many programs that you could follow, some include Juggernaut, 5–3–1, and the conjugate method from Westside Barbell. The key is to pick one, stick to it for a cycle, and measure your progress.

If you aren’t measuring your progress, you won’t know where you are at. It takes a little extra time in the form of tracking your workouts, but it’s totally worth it, because it provides you with all the data you need of where you need to make adjustments.

Focus on Bringing up Lagging Body Parts

The most aesthetic looking physiques are symmetrical — all muscle groups look proportionate to each other. That’s not an easy feat to achieve, most people have a mix of underdeveloped and overdeveloped muscle groups.

Many reasons contribute to this scenario, including poor technique, not training muscle groups at different angles and lack of connection to certain muscle groups.

Focusing on bringing up lagging parts requires getting in more volume.

Try a lagging body parts day.

Focus on volume, moderate weights, technique, and connection. You can improve connection by priming the lagging muscles prior to the workout.

Mobility work can help with priming the lagging muscles, the goal is to warm up the muscles with blood flow but to also feel the muscle. You could also potentially workout a specific muscle group every workout you do.

You get in extra volume without overtaxing the muscle group.

Doing work like this can give you a better, symmetrical look. It’s also fun because you are actively trying to bring up these body parts and makes your training more fun because you are not trying to kill yourself.

Make Unconventional Training Conventional

Ever swing a sledgehammer? Flip a tire? Push a prowler? These are just some examples of some “unconventional” ways to train. You might be thinking, I don’t have access to such implements, but as I say, there are a lot of levels to what is considered “unconventional”.

If you haven’t trained with bands before, that will be a new training stimulus to you. Attaching bands to a bar adds so much value to your training. They will either deload or add weight to the bar, depending on the mechanics of the exercise.

They also add an element of instability, and you work your stabilizing muscles a lot harder.

The main goal with training with bands is to increase your power output and training is characterized with moderate weights, low reps and high sets.

Even loaded carries are fantastic exercise that are rarely used. Grab a dumbbell in both hands and walk with them, that is a basic way to start off with the exercise, but you work multiple muscle groups when doing loaded carries. There are multiple ways to progress with this specific exercise.

Train w/ Fat Grips

Multiple benefits associated with fat grips including increasing grip strength, building forearm size and building bigger biceps. You can attach fat grips to dumbbells, barbells and basically any handle.

They work very well with cable machines due to the variety of exercises and handles.

The reason they work so well is that they make it harder for you to grip the weight, so you have to grip tighter. The principal of muscle irradiation kicks in, which basically means a louder muscle building signal is sent to the muscles in the vicinity.

You get the benefits of muscle irradiation from gripping harder, while also getting the benefits of the specific exercise.

Nothing better than double whammies, right?

You’ll also find that when you revert to lifting weights without the grips, the weights will feel lighter!

That’s because your body has adapted to working with fat grips. Training with these grips is definitely an underrated way of training and will definitely add a new element to your training regime.

Recap

If you are bored by your usual workout routine, hit a plateau, have lagging body parts, or just want to force your body into a new adaptive process. The suggestions above will not only spice up your training, but will also help you reach the next level on your training journey.