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Last week’s tip was about maximizing your time spent at the gym.  Well here’s a way to get even more out of your training sessions, “DRILLS”.  Simply put, a “drill” is any cardio activity that will increase your heart rate to an even higher level.  For instance, when I’m training my clients circuit-training style, instead of resting for a few seconds after completing two sets of four exercises and before moving on to the next two body parts and new sets of exercises, I’ll have them jump rope for up to two minutes, or do jumping jacks with a light dumbbell holding it in both hands for a minute or two, or sometimes I’ll have them hop on the Treadmill or Elliptical Trainer for five minutes.

Keep in mind that if you’re doing a circuit training workout, your heart rate should already be elevated so adding three or four “drills” to your training session will greatly increase the intensity of your workouts and burn an even greater amount of calories.  My suggestion would be to begin with 1-minute “drills” and slowly over a few weeks increase the time of each “drill” by about 15-seconds until you get to the 2-minute mark,  to allow the body to get use to it or else you might experience light-headedness, nausea, or even feel faint if the “drill” is too long.  Keep in mind that you want to have enough gas in the tank  to finish your training session and overdoing it on the drills may rob you of the energy needed to complete it.

There’s plenty of ways to spice up your workouts and doing “Drills” is just one of them.  Just remember that you always want to change things around.  Try not to do the same exercises every time because muscle has memory and after doing the same exercises for a few workouts, you’ll start getting diminishing results.  Don’t be scared to try something new, you might just get some surprising results.