Match your Body Type to the Perfect Fitness Routine!!

With so many fitness routines at hand, one might easily get confused as to what to choose. Well, you can choose based on a variety of reasons, intensity of workouts, time per workout, location, and so on. But another very good reason to base your choice on, is your body type!

Well let me elaborate. Different fitness routines impact the body in different ways. Depending on their intensity, location and equipment (if any), different (or all) parts of the body are targeted in the workouts. So your choice of routine, or even routines should be based on what you want to look like 6 months down the line.

What do you notice in each of those runners?

They all are slim very slim and trim. Running, especially as a cardio routine, or long distance tends to take a lot of endurance and stamina. This forces your body to shed any extra weight that it has carrying around, and only carry the essentials for the run. This leads to a slim body that can take you miles without stopping. Even though its a great way to lose fat, it also loses muscle mass. If you want to look all slim and trim long distance running is the way to go!

Routine: Long Distance Running

Resulting Body: Slim and Trim, minimal fat and muscle

Another one of my favorite type of routines is MMA. MMA is a sport that not only teaches you self defense, but also strengthens your body as a whole. It gives you wiggle room to decide how much of your total body weight you want to be in fat and how much in muscle.

Even in official weigh-ins for a weight class, you get to decide if you want to fight with muscle, or sheer mass. And if you don’t actually fight, you still get to bulk up a little and gain some serious amount of muscle and a lot of strength.

MMA is also a culmination of a lot of different fighting styles, which means that you essentially get the best of all worlds. It gives you speed agility and strength. So all in all, you have a well rounded body with a considerable amount of muscle and little fat.

Routine: MMA

Resulting Body Type: Strong, minimal fat

Yoga is one of those things that people don’t associate with strength, or muscle building. On the contrary, yoga is quite helpful in gaining core body strength and get an even toned body that gives you a fitter look; both on and off the yoga mat.

Its a great way to stay fit, while avoiding getting any visible muscle cuts. Even though that whole idea is bs that if you workout, especially in a gym, that you will start getting bulging muscles. Somehow people, especially women, tend to believe this story. Anyways, if you fear something like that happening, yoga is the thing for you.

Routine: Yoga

Resulting Body Type: Even toned, flexibility

Olympics is not really a big deal to me, I mean sure it’s the highest platform to play on for any sport. But Olympics is to me what cricket is to basketball fans. But I still remember the Olympic Games of 2008, when Michael Phelps had the world mesmerized by winning 8 freaking gold medals. He was the living embodiment of a human fish, and his body was, and is, a testament to what swimming can do to you.

The best thing that I like about swimming is the fact that it is a lower body routine just as much as its an upper body routine. Look at his legs in the picture, the amount of muscle that he has maintained in his quads and glutes is phenomenal. Swimming is a great cardio routine that makes you insanely muscular in your limbs, and have minimal fat. It also makes your body streamlined and gives it the perfect shape. It doesn’t make you body builder muscular, but just the right amount of muscle to height ratio that you don’t have to fear being looked at weirdly.

Routine: Swimming

Resulting Body Type: Muscular, Streamlined, strong af legs

We all have different body structures, genetically. Our bone structure, height to muscle ratio, and metabolism leads to different natural body types that are more suited for different things. No one is saying that you can’t have that insane transformation and become the next Arnold, but sometimes its easier to get fit following the routine that fits you the best.

Although here I talked about how you can choose a routine based on what body you want. You should also keep in mind what body type you have and then work around that, rather than just going totally berserk and working on something that will takes ages to yield results. Again, and I cannot emphasis this enough, do what makes you happy.