The selection of our exercise is greatly dependent on the goal. If you ask an expert, they will tell you to start with setting a smart goal. A smart goal means you have a goal that is precise, measurable, and easy to quantify. According to studies, it was revealed that men usually aim for muscle gain and women usually want to lose weight.
In short, healthy exercise aims to help you maintain a good BMI level with the loss of weight. This might be true for most people but sometimes people aim to keep their muscles while losing fat only. This is a little tricky and in most cases, this requires an intense change in diet and even intense change in lifestyle and exercise.
The best practice is to start with some diet changes that will primarily consist of protein-based food. To complement the workout you need something slow but intense so that you can burn the fat and for better metabolism and a healthy lifestyle you need to stick to a good workout that will help you burn extra calories.
Although there is a concept of BMI that helps you maintain a good weight according to your height, age, gender, and lifestyle, sometimes people try to build their muscles for better sculpture. For this reason, they look for exercises that can help them burn the maximum amount of fat while retaining the amount of muscle that they have gained.
With the help of this article, we will explore the main concept of body composition. For a better understanding of the lean strong body, we will also mention some of the basic changes in diet and lifestyle that can help you improve your body composition. To wrap it all up, we will suggest some simple HIIT workouts that you can use for improving your body composition.
What Is Body Composition?
Body composition is a healthy ratio of fat and mass that everyone has to maintain. The mass doesn’t just contain muscle, it also contains bones and body organs. Within the body composition, you have to calculate the actual ratio of fat as compared to the rest of the mass.
An ideal body composition differs based on gender. It can be between 21 to 24 percent in a female whereas for a male it can be somewhere between 14 to 17 percent. This ratio can be measured in different ways. Some people use the fat scale, others calculate the muscle mass.
There are so many tests that can help you calculate the fat in your body. People who have belly fat, fatty love handles, or flabby body structures have a high-fat percentage in their bodies. This also impacts the overall weight because of the difference in density. The goal of the body composition is to help you know in detail about the overall fat percentage so the lipid-related diseases can be predicted.
Simple Steps to Improve Your Body Composition
Your body composition is highlighted depending on three simple things. One of the basics is the diet and the other is exercises. The third and most important part is a lifestyle. Without a proper diet and lifestyle, exercises will not be helpful and vice versa.
For improvement in body composition, it is very important to have a protein-packed diet. This will not only help you heal better and decrease the recovery time, but the protein will also help you to gain muscle much easier.
For lifestyle changes, look for ways to increase your physical activity. If you have a desk job, try to walk as much as you can. Do not use a lift and if you have a drinking habit or you smoke, try to minimize it. The last part is to focus on the workout.
Most people start with an intense workout that helps improve their body composition but in the long run, they give up. You need to stay focused and keep in mind that consistency is the only good thing that will help you stay healthy.
What Is HIIT?
A high-intensity interval workout is a simple pattern of arranging the exercises. Each high-intensity exercise is followed by a short rest period. It is very important to maintain a simple ratio of rest throughout the workout.
If the rest period exceeds 40 seconds, this will eventually impact the progress. The HIIT workout aims to speed up the metabolism and help the body in burning extra calories that might otherwise take time. A simple way to maintain a good rest period is to keep it under 20 seconds for one minute of intense workout.
Top 5 Exercise for Better Body Composition
Usually, endurance-based workouts like running or walking are at an intensity of at least 5-6. However, for HIIT you need something with an intensity level of 7 or more. For this keep the intervals of 30 seconds for recovery as well.
Lunges: very good for calorie burnout and especially good for the lower body. There are so many different variations that you can add to your workout. Each variation has its significance.
Planks: planks help in strengthening the body especially working on the abs and core strength and it is very good for calories to burn out.
Pushups: it is good for upper body strength especially the strength of shoulders, back muscles, arms, and biceps. Apart from this, it is a good core workout.
Squats: it is a good workout for the buttock and lower body. So it helps in strengthening the back muscles to the legs.
Crunches: great for abs and overall body strength. There are so many different variations of crunches that help in improving the muscle content in the core.
Bottom Line
To sum it all up, these things might look easy and adjustable but they are small but significant. Staying consistent is the only key that will help you improve your overall routine.
In case you become bored easily, try to use other cardio exercises and add them to the HIIT workout routine that you follow. This will help you enjoy some easy variations in your workout.
