Why the amount of effort you put in to a workout isn't necessarily a measure of how effective it is.

In this culture of high intensity workouts, going for the burn and 'go hard or go home', it's easy to fall into the trap of believing a workout is only effective if you worked up a good sweat and finish feeling slightly sick.

While I'm all for getting myself into a hot, sweaty mess every now and then, if that's all your training is about then you might be missing out on other important elements of fitness.

With the rise in home workouts and bodyweight exercises this year, hiit training and other high impact classes have become the order of the day. While these are great for getting the heart rate up, stress busting and can seem more time effective, there's a few boxes they don't manage to tick. And despite often being marketed as a short cut to boost fitness, the truth is that progress takes time.

Other elements to fitness that it’s important to focus on are correct breathing, core strength, mobility and low impact long duration cardio. This last one in particular, while not necessarily being that glamorous, is vital for building your baseline cardio engine in order to fully benefit from the higher intensity burn.

If you're not mobile enough to move well without relying on various compensation patterns, then at best your progress will be limited and at worst, you will end up with an injury.

Without a strong core, every movement we create is built on shaky foundations...build your core!!

As I stated previously, there are a lot of benefits to high intensity workouts, but for a truly healthy and resilient body, remember to include all other elements of training into your routine too.