If you are anything like the rest of us, you probably also made the New Year’s resolution to regularly lift weights, jog, and sweat out those calories.

But the actual change happens when we go from making those loft goals to putting in the hard work required consistently to make our workouts worthwhile.  

If you are new to the gym membership world or a seasoned fitness fanatic, use these nine tips for making your workouts more impactful to get better results.

Consume Protein Before Bed

Protein brings assistance to your muscles to build them back up after a workout.

Use the nighttime when you are no longer working out for the day to have some snacks rich in casein, a slow-digesting protein that keeps amino acid and muscle protein synthesis rates up throughout the night.

To get the casein protein you need, have some cottage cheese or Greek yogurt before you go to bed or after your workouts have been completed.

Get into Massage

Post-workout massages make you feel good, but they also influence genes in your muscle cells to decrease inflammation and increase their mitochondria, which are like fuel for your body to exercise and recover afterward.

Your muscles will get fitter between your activities as they recover and adapt to exercise, a process that massage can assist you with.

Work Out with Free Weights

When you are exercising by using free weights like dumbbells and barbells, you are pushing towards better hormonal responses than similar activities on exercise machines.

Why is that the case? The reason is that free-weight exercises tap into a more comprehensive range of muscles because whenever you move a free weight, there is no machine to guide or support you.

Therefore, all of your synergistic muscles have to work to help you get your reps in with free weights.

Start Your Workout with Carbs

Carbohydrates are your body’s main source of fuel for high-intensity workouts to put forth a better effort in terms of caloric expenditure and muscle growth.

With that being said, make sure to eat some toast or oatmeal before you head out of the door for that regular morning workout.

Begin Workouts Stretching 

Pre Workout activities are essential to consider to get the most out of your actual workout routines and prevent being in unfortunate pain late.

Dynamic stretches are a key part of warming up because you’ll be moving through various stretches instead of holding the stretch in place, which is

gradually raising your body temperature, increasing your heart rate, and warming up your muscles for activity.

Engaging in a dynamic warm-up also helps with your range of motion to be able to get deeper into each exercise.

Recovery Days are Important 

If you are trying to build up some muscle, you should know that what happens outside of the gym is very important to the process.

Working out causes you to create micro-tears in your muscle fibers. Then after that day's sweat session, your body rebuilds those damaged muscle fibers, making them stronger than before.

But your body will need days off to repair, recover, and rest. If you skip right over this step, you miss out on proper muscle-making and increase the risk of overtraining if you are someone who works out frequently.

Make good use of active recovery days and get good sleep each night.

You can do some light stretching during your active recovery days, do some restorative yoga, or simply go for a leisurely walk.

Listen to Music

One of the first things we do before getting ourselves ready for a workout is picking our favorite playlist of songs to get us fired up for our fitness routine.

Just so you know, music lifts the body’s levels of serotonin and dopamine, hormones that are related to fostering body recovery.

When your workout is finished, listen to some relaxing tunes that you enjoy to help your heart rate and blood pressure return to normal.

Drink More Water

Make sure you don't arrive at the gym dehydrated.

If you are losing just 2% of your body weight in fluids, then your workout will feel harder, which will reduce your fitness performance and your body’s ability to recover after you leave the gym.

You should be drinking ½ to 1 ounce of water per pound of body weight each day.

To help yourself stay aware of whether or not you are drinking enough water during your workout, replace any fluids you lose by weighing yourself both before and after a severe sweat session because you shouldn’t be losing more than two percent of your body weight.