The 4 Main Training Types You Need to Know

Are you looking to work out and stay fit, perhaps you are looking to lose weight? What should you do? Run, work with weights or something completely different? Exercise is a highly personal activity and as we are all individuals, there are some things that we prefer doing over others, and different people may disagree with those choices.

If you really want to enhance your workouts and really see results you need to diversify the different types of training you participate in. To do that though, you first need to understand the basic types of fitness training available to you. That’s what we are going to discuss in the following post.

Flexibility Training

With flexibility training, you can improve your ability to stretch out your muscles and it helps to improve the manoeuvrability of your tissues and joints. Over and above all this, however, it reduces the chance you have of being injured and enhances your overall performance. Flexibility training includes the likes of hip rolls, butt kicks and yoga.

Strength Training

Group of fit people working out together on the floor with weights during a health club class

The basic aim with strength training workouts is to not only build up your strength and increase your muscle mass but also reduce the chance of injury or strain to your body, improve your balance and stimulate bone growth. As well as turning you into a beast with an intimidating body (if you work hard enough), strength training can also help make everyday tasks like standing up from chairs, going upstairs and carrying groceries much easier. Strength training normally involves weights of some kind, such as dumbbells, kettlebells and weight resistance machines.

Aerobic Training

Group of healthy fit people cardio workout in gym

These are the exercises you are most likely to be familiar with, even if you have never set foot inside a gym. Aerobic training involves exercises that increase your breathing and heart rate. These are specifically designed to improve your cardiovascular health and are a crucial part of making sure your body functions efficiently and effectively. Aerobic training helps you to improve the strength of muscles that are involved in your respiratory system and they can help you to reduce your blood sugar levels and blood pressure while increasing the amount of fat you burn.

It is believed that around 30 minutes of aerobic exercise can be beneficial for good heart health.

Some of the most popular and best aerobic exercises include stair climbing, brisk walking, cycling and swimming.

Balancing Training

push-ups using the ball in gym

Balancing training is often the most overlooked of all training types. Even though it is one of the best for helping us in our everyday lives. By improve your balancing, you can reduce the chance of accidental falls, trips and other accidents and stay active and healthier for longer, even into old age.

Balancing though also helps you from an athletic point of view. When you perform free-weight moves, such as deadlifts or lunges, you can improve the strength in your stabiliser muscles. To really put your balancing abilities to the test, you can even try exercises relying on a single let, like pistol squats and single-leg deadlifts.

ABOUT PAUL WALLACE Personal trainer of 15 plus years and creator of FT-Fit one of Glasgow’s largest fitness classes