What is a workout finisher?

A workout finisher is an exercise of series of exercises which you perform at the end of your workout. These are generally done to add some extra volume and intensity.

Finishers are versatile. It can be a kettle bell exercise or any other unilateral exercises or it may also be push-ups until you fail or a planned circuit. Your finisher should be fast paced, brief, and taxing. It should be something in line with your current goal. It should be something that you enjoy.

It works for everything

Whether you want to burn more fat or build lean muscle, workout finishers will help you to maximise the results. You can have a fat loss finisher or a muscle building finisher and the purpose of them will be different. The finisher for building lean muscle will have an objective to break down the muscles and then repair it through proper recovery. On the other hand, the objective of a fat loss finisher is to have a long-lasting effect on your metabolism.

Lose fat

When you include a fat loss finisher at the end of your workout, it will improve your metabolism and keep it at that for up to 24 hours even after completion of your workout. It is very important to know how to set up the finisher so that you have this desired result. For losing fat, you will need to combine different muscle groups in the finisher so that you can burn more calories within the exercise.

For better results, you will need to rotate from up to lower body exercises. It is more helpful because it has a greater metabolic effect as the blood has to do from one muscle group in the upper body to another muscle group in the lower body. Because your blood will be travelling more, it will burn more calories.

Build muscles

If you want to build muscles, first focus on the muscle you want to develop. You will need to provide variation in two places- variation in cadences and in your rep counts. It is important to break down muscle effectively and see actual gains. It is also necessary to break through plateaus. If you one consistent gains in your muscle building program, you will need to add rep variations. The muscle finisher is very effective and doing so. You generally performed at high reps, fast cadences and low sets. The main goal here is to flow more blood to the muscle, increase growth hormones in the body, create muscle tears and increase lactic acid levels which will result in more muscle damage.

You can choose a muscle group that you want to work on and then take two or three of exercises you like.

A few points

Before you leave the gym, you can put in extra five minutes to perform a few finishers because that will be the difference between an adequate workout and an awesome workout. It is up to you to decide which one of them you want.

The person who created your training program may have clients who are not as capable as you and as a result the training program may lack something extra. But you have the capacity to add that extra to your workout because that will make a difference between you and the other people. You can take things into your hands by performing a finisher.

Your finisher should be hard, weak and entertaining. You can practice something that you want to get better at. You can also include a planned circuit as finisher, which is not a part of your workout. It's like a add-on to your existing workout.

References

1. Workout Finishers
2. Exercise and Physical Fitness
3. Exercise & Physical Activity