18 Genius Ways to Improve Your Workout
You don't need to revamp your routine to get better results. Refresh it with these quick fixes for every exercise you do
By: Greg Presto 
Photo Credit: Beth Bischoff / Mitch Mandel
Upgrade Your Workout Instantly
For just about every exercise you're doing, there's a tweak that could make it better: improving your form, boosting your results, and preventing injury. Follow one, two, or all of these 18 tips from our experts to enhance your routine without overhauling it.
Get stronger without lifting.
Discover how to boost your testosterone and build bigger muscles, burn off belly fat, and ignite your sex life!
Photo Credit: Beth Bischoff
Load One Side to Fire Up Your Core
Your core does more than resemble beer packaging (six-packs for some, kegs for most); it also stabilizes your body. So when you create instability—by holding a weight in one hand, but not in the other, for instance—your middle starts working. "In order to maintain proper posture, your torso muscles have to engage to counterbalance the load," says Nick Tumminello, CSCS, director of Performance University. He recommends this strategy for lunges, squats, and shoulder presses, but his favorite offset load is the standing, single-arm chest press on the cable machine.
Photo Credit: Beth Bischoff
Go Slowly on the Way Down
If you've heard of "slow lifting," you may have heard wrong: You only want the lowering, or eccentric portion of your lift to be slow. By slowing down the eccentric lift, your muscles are working harder for longer—meaning more work in your workout, Tumminello says. Extend this lowering portion for up to 4 seconds.
Photo Credit: Beth Bischoff
And Speed Up as You Lift
But on the way up, Tumminello says, "move the weight as fast as possible—even if it doesn't actually move that fast, the intention of moving it quickly is the key." Exploding through the concentric, or up portion of a lift, turns on your fast-twitch muscle fibers—the muscles your body uses to sprint, jump, and pick up heavy stuff. Even if you don't plan to play sports, working these muscles through explosive concentric lifting trains them to use more fat as fuel.
Photo Credit: Beth Bischoff
Press Pause for Better Results
Bonus upgrade: If you want to add even more time under tension, add a 1- to 2-second hold at the bottom of moves like squats, pushups, and lunges, suggests Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, owner of TurbulenceTraining.com. "Or hold the top of a pullup for 2 seconds," he says. "That can make a huge difference in response from exercises you are doing regularly."
Photo Credit: Beth Bischoff
Flip Your Sets and Reps
Sometimes our workouts don't work because we've done them too long: Our familiarity makes us lose intensity, and we go through the motions instead of working through every set and rep. Instead of designing or searching for a new program, try flipping your current routine on its head, says David Jack, director of Teamworks Fitness in Acton, Massachusetts.
"Three sets of 8 is a traditional set range. Flop it to 8 sets of 3," Jack says. Increase the weight you use for each set accordingly, and maximize the force you exert in each rep. "Changing your rep schemes will change the type of strength you're working."
Photo Credit: Mitch Mandel
Swap Cardio and Strength Training
Ballantyne suggests a different workout flip: If you usually do cardio first, do your strength work first and save your cardio for last. Or, "If you're doing weights, try using body-weight exercises instead, or vice versa," he says. Swap dumbbell chest presses for pushups, or dumbbell rows for pullups. "Doing lunges? Switch to Bulgarian split squats."
Photo Credit: Thinkstock
Lose Your Shoes
Just as removing a bench can get more muscles involved, removing the support of your shoes can challenge the muscles of your feet during each exercise—burning more calories, and decreasing the odds of injury. “[Working out barefoot] prevents an imbalance between the strength your legs can produce and the weight your feet can control," says Tumminello. Lifting without shoes can also increase your range of motion, says Jack. Increased range means more exercise in each rep.
Photo Credit: Beth Bischoff
Switch Your Grip to Better Work Your Back
When you're working with heavy weight—or your body weight is hanging from a bar—your grip can give out before the muscles you're supposed to be working in the exercise do. Bodybuilders know this—that's why they use gloves and straps for heavy lifts. You can get the same effect without equipment: Mix your grip on chinups—one palm forward, one palm back. In this configuration, not only will your grip last longer, your back, shoulders, and core have to work harder to keep your torso from rotating toward the bar.
See 20 more tips for building bigger muscles.
Photo Credit: Beth Bischoff
Save Your Shoulders from Injury
With exercises like pullups, dips, and even biceps curls and pushups, your shoulders can roll forward, putting the emphasis in the wrong spot and setting you up for injury, says Adam Bornstein, fitness editor at Men's Health magazine. "On a biceps curl, for example, if your shoulders come forward, they end up assisting," he says. If you keep your shoulders down and back, you'll work the intended muscles better. "Imagine tucking your shoulder blades into your back pocket. If you do that, it's difficult to shrug your shoulders forward."
Photo Credit: Beth Bischoff
Add Range of Motion for More Strength
When you add range of motion to an exercise—lengthening the distance the weight needs to travel on each rep—you make each rep harder, adding exercise to your exercise. On a lunge, you can increase the range of motion on each rep by elevating your front or rear leg on a step. On the dumbbell stepup, Ballantyne suggests raising the step or bench from knee level to midthigh height. If you try this tweak, Ballantyne says, lower the amount of weight you use for the exercise.
Photo Credit: Beth Bischoff
Amp Up Your Ab Work
If you've already been converted from crunches, the plank could be getting a little boring. Up the intensity of the exercise with this tweak from Tumminello: "Instead of having your elbows underneath your shoulders, walk the elbows out so the crooks of your elbows are in line with your eyes," he says. This increases the length of the lever on the exercise, making that 30-second hold feel longer than ever.
Photo Credit: Mitch Mandel
Work More Muscle and Improve Your Squat
"Add the calf raise at the top of your squat," says Tumminello. Not only will you recruit more muscle fibers (to burn more calories) and increase the range of motion (adding more work to the exercise), but "it's like a middle point between a squat and a squat jump. Your hips go into slightly more extension, and you have to be more explosive."
Discover some of the smartest weight loss tricks you've never heard.
Photo Credit: Beth Bischoff
Work More of Your Biceps with Each Curl
Your biceps doesn't just bend your elbow—it also works to rotate your forearm. By changing the way you curl, says Tumminello, you can work both functions at once, getting more from each rep. To do this, change your grip: With your palm forward, slide your hand so your thumb rests against the outside head of the dumbbell. "As you do your curl, you're creating more stretch against which your biceps have to supinate," says Tumminello.
Photo Credit: Beth Bischoff
Triple the Intensity for Your Arms
To increase the intensity of an arm workout, try the triple-set method, suggests Ballantyne. Triple your shoulder work by doing 1 set each of the bent-over lateral raise, side lateral raise, and front lateral raise consecutively. For your biceps, try incline curls, standing curls, then hammer curls. And for your triceps, perform the dumbbell single-arm triceps extension, followed by the dumbbell lying two-arm triceps extension, and finish with close-grip pushups.
Photo Credit: Beth Bischoff
Raise Your Weights to Challenge Your Whole Body
Just as changing your sets and reps can shake up your body's routine, moving your weight or hand position can vary the exercise to make an old move new: If you normally perform a lunge or squat with the weights hanging at your sides, put them on your shoulders, suggests Jack. Or change the width of your grip on any barbell move just a fraction. "If you move your hands out or just one finger-width, you'll feel and make a change," he says.
Photo Credit: Beth Bischoff
Challenge Your Balance and Core During Leg Exercises
Just as putting weight on one side of your body can challenge your core stabilization during an exercise, moving the weight during a move can challenge your core, says Jack. "For a lunge, put a core ball on your hip, and move it to your opposite shoulder as you move," he says. This challenges your core to stabilize your body—keep proper posture through the exercise—and taxes your abs with rotation. You can also try this variation with squats, performing a medicine ball or dumbbell chop.
Photo Credit: Beth Bischoff
Grab a Towel to Fire Up Your Forearms
"Throw a rope or a towel over the pullup bar," says Jack. In this configuration, you'll hold the towel in one hand, and the bar with the other, creating a grip challenge and a whole new stimulus. You can also perform this variation with a pair of towels, and on the lower bar for an inverted row. Another trick: Wrap the towel around the bar to make it thicker. "This completely changes everything for the load you're holding," Jack says. The thicker bar will blast your forearms on pullups, bench presses, bent-over rows—just about any exercise you can do with a barbell or dumbbell. But be careful: Use a fat grip only with weights you can control, and don't do it all the time, says Jack, as you can risk tendinitis.
Photo Credit: Beth Bischoff
Make Any Exercise Better
Get off your butt! When you stand up, "you have to control your posture more because you're no longer relying on a stable bench to do it for you," says Tumminello. For exercises like the dumbbell bench press, dumbbell lateral raise, biceps curl, triceps extension—basically any exercise you're doing sitting down—standing up can help you recruit more muscle in your legs, core, and back. "The more your body has to do during and exercise—the more muscles get worked—the more calories burned."
Photo Credit: Beth Bischoff
Get a Better Workout in No Time
Copyright© 2013 Rodale Inc. "Fitbie" is a registered trademark of Rodale, Inc. All rights reserved. No reproduction, transmission or display is permitted without the written permission of Rodale, Inc.