Fitness is an Adventure

The Crux Move
"You can learn to lift a lot of weight slowly," says Scott Bennett, trainer to Olympic shot-putter Andy Bloom, "but when it comes to applying it to a sport, what sport requires you to move in slow motion?" In most sports, the difference between success and failure can often come down to an explosive burst of power. This is where Bennett's Olympic lifts come into play. Do them right and you'll be able to take all that strength you acquired in the weight room and apply it in the field, whether you're going up for a dunk or breaking away from the peloton.

The Workout
For superhero moves, you need to master the power clean. This dynamic lift recruits legs, hips, glutes, back, stomach, and shoulders in one fluid exercise that will buttress your quickness and power. Newbies should build up to a power clean by prepping their muscles to handle the four-part process. Three times a week, over the course of three weeks, practice your form, but sans weight during week one. Move gradually to an unweighted barbell in weeks two and three, and a weighted bar by week four. Meanwhile, you're going to build strength via squats, dead lifts, stiff-legged dead lifts, and upright rows (two sets of ten reps for each; check our Web site, www.outsideonline.com/workouts, if you need guidance for these). After the first week, add two sets of four jump squats—using no more than half your body weight on the barbell and springing off the floor at the top of the lift. In week three, add the following plyometric drills to the routine: ten forward and backward jumps, then two sets of four hops up onto a two-foot-high box. By the fourth week, you'll be ready to drop the preparatory lifts and drills and replace them with two sets of eight power cleans.

Toolbox:
The Power clean:
  1. Start with feet shoulder width apart. Squat down and grab the bar with hands shoulder width apart, keeping your back straight and eyes straight ahead.
  2. With your abs tight, stand upright using legs (not lower back, which remains straight) while shrugging the bar upward. Carry momentum up onto the balls of your feet, hoisting the bar past your waist.
  3. Squat under the bar, flipping your elbows outward to catch weight on the very top of your chest, then stand.


Labels:

Syndrome X: A Combination of Four Risk Factors

The combination for syndrome "X" is four major cardiovascular risks: diabetes, obesity, hypertension and excess levels of blood fats. The exact cause is unknown and poorly understood, but the components appear to be related.

Many diabetics are insulin-resistant. This means they produce enough insulin but somehow, the insulin does not metabolize efficiently. Patients with high blood pressure are prone to insulin resistance. Insulin lowers blood fats. Obese people are more likely to suffer from moderate elevations of blood sugar and hypertension. Therefore, the four factors of the syndrome relate, probably because of genetic influences.

Medications are necessary to bring syndrome X patients into a better metabolic balance. Customarily, this approach involves oral anti-diabetes medication (rarely insulin injections).

In addition, the following treatments may be included:

A weight loss diet with the emphasis on omitting "empty" calories such as sugar, a regular exercise program, drugs for hypertension and medicine to lower the levels of cholesterol and triglycerides -- the major fats in the blood.

A new type of anti-diabetes medicine called thiazolidinediones, has a major influence on syndrome X, by reducing insulin-resistance, blood fats and blood pressure. This means patience may only need to take one medication in addition to diet and exercise, which will control the syndrome and reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke.

Long term effects of this therapy are yet unknown but the concept is very exciting because it has the potential for revolutionizing the treatment not only for syndrome X, but for diabetes, hypertension and hyperlipidemia. Type 2 diabetes, the form that does not require insulin, is increasing in the United States, especially among children and young adults. Food is easy to obtain, humans are more sedentary today and young people often consume high-calorie, high-fat junk food diets.

Just about everyone benefits from more prudent consumption of low-calorie foods and exercise! Childhood obesity, for example, is rapidly becoming a national health issue. Children need to eat sensibly and exercise regularly. Video games, computers and television have replace kick-ball, tag and other entertaining activities children once took part in on a regular basis. Of course, adults need to eat sensibly and exercise regularly as well for their health and the added bonus of setting an excellent, priceless example for their children.

Strength Training Overview

Benefits: Why do strength training?

Strength training not only improves your muscular strength and endurance, it also increases your range of motion, improves your posture and helps prevent injuries. Hand weights, thera-bands, and fitness balls are some of the tools you can use to tighten and tone your muscles.

Frequency: How often should you strength train?

Any kind of strength training should be performed no more than two to three times per week. You must have a 24 to 48 hours break between training sessions, as this allows the muscles time to strengthen, and helps avoid injuries.

Intensity: How much resistance or weight should you work with?

You can increase the size of the weights, the resistance of the thera-band, and the difficulty of the exercises, as your muscles become stronger and you become familiar with the equipment. The number of sets and repetitions of each exercise should be changed as your body adapts to the new stress. Progressive increases in weight or resistance stimulate muscle growth.
Injury prevention:

How do you prevent injury?

Maintain good posture:
Incorrect posture can easily lead to injuries. If you start to lose your posture, stop the exercise and reposition yourself.
Listen to your body:
If anything hurts while you're training, stop doing the exercise.
Always warm up:
The muscle groups should be warm before every strength training session.
Always stretch:
It is important to finish your exercises with stretching.

Note: You must have a 24 to 48 hour break between training sessions, as this allows the muscles time to strengthen, and helps avoid injuries!

Labels:

How to be sexy - tips for geeks

We'll lead off our dissection of the mating game by describing to be sexy. This is a topic many hackers can use serious help with...

The sad truth (which many of you have no doubt already discovered) is that your bulging, tumescent hacker forebrain is just not going to turn on very many women by itself. Okay, you might get lucky and trip over one of the one or two percent of exceptions. But if you bet your sex life on hitting that jackpot you are going to spend an awful lot of Saturday nights alone.

[Comment from a geekgirl here? "Brains do turn some of us on, but..."]

Most women have broader criteria. As do most men; after all, a lot of us Y-chromosome types are notorious for being more immediately interested in a woman's cup size than her IQ. In order to understand why both sexes have the physical and behavioral turn-ons that they do, we need to take a look at the evolutionary biology of human mating.

While human beings often have sex for pleasure, the instincts that drive human mating behavior have been shaped by a deadly serious game of evolutionary selection. Sexually attractive people are those whose characteristics suggest they are well equipped to help you propagate your genetic line successfully. Good looks are sexy because they correlate with health and a robust immune system; wealth and status are sexy because they signal ability to sink high levels of investment into offspring, increasing their chances of surviving to reproduce.

Men's turn-ons average a bit more physical than womens' because women have a higher energy and risk investment in reproduction (childbirth was quite dangerous in pre-modern conditions); therefore, health and beauty have been stronger predictors of reproductive success in women than they are in men. But women are hardly immune to a handsome face and firm muscles -- in fact a good many hackers probably wish women were much less susceptible to these things.

Cathy observes: "You don't need to look like a male model to be `sexy' in the physical department. Even a single good feature can make you attractive enough to be a sexual success."

To be sexy, hackers need to learn how to emit fitness-to-reproduce signals. That much is easy; what's harder is to understand which signals are more or less under your control and how to amplify them.

Women have this relatively easy. Because so much of mens' mating instincts are cued to a woman's appearance, women have spent the last couple thousand years developing technologies to manipulate their appearance effectively - everything from lipstick to corsets. Female hackers can find most of what they need to know in the pages of teens and womens' magazines. Don't scorn that stuff; it works.

There are a few straight physical cues men can hack effectively. Firm muscles is one; a relatively low investment in bicycling or walking or a slightly higher investment in martial-arts training can fit comfortably into the hacker lifestyle. There's no need to overdo this; most women (especially most intelligent women) don't go for the gross-bulk-muscle weightlifter look. It's also useful to know that, given the shape and exposure patterns of men's clothing, a woman is likely to notice the tone of your arms, shoulders, and chest first and most. For a man in shape, a snug-fitting short-sleeved shirt or tank top is the closest sexual-signal equivalent of exposed cleavage on a woman.

Cathy: "I wouldn't overdo the muscle shirt thing -- it's too easy to give the impression that you're gay. Once you have reasonable amounts of muscle to show off, a simple T-shirt will do nicely -- provided it fits snugly and is clean."

Amy: "OK. This is important. Bathe. Bathe often. Wash your hair and brush your teeth. Furthermore, use the stuff you've already got. Muscle tone takes time. But way more than half the geeks I know have beautiful long hair. Very few of them have figured out that greasy hair is disgusting."

Cathy agrees: "I can guarantee that a woman will never willingly get in the sack with you if she thinks you smell bad. Watch your breath, also. Brush often! Especially after eating garlic or other strongly aromatic foods and before approaching a woman in a romantic situation! If you can't brush, tasting like Certs or Altoids is much better than tasting as though you just ate a dead rodent."

Amy: "Fact: Women love long hair! It's an instant chick magnet. It's better than walking puppies in the park! Wash it and wear it down. Toss it around on your shoulders a lot. When my guy does this, women will just walk up and start touching his hair! Wouldn't you like this to happen to you?"

But in general male hackers have it tougher, because the obvious physical signals are relatively less important and other behavioral and status cues more important. Again, this makes adaptive sense given the sexual differences in risk and minimum investment. In our ancestral environment, the man's key question was "is she able to survive the stress of pregnancy and birth to give me many children?", but the woman's key question is "is he both able and willing to provide for me and the children?". (Usually. A woman already mated might have been asking instead "Should I cheat with him, trying to con provider/hubby into raising his kids, in order to capture maximum genetic variation for my offspring?" in which case her criteria were likely to be tilted more towards physical sexiness as an indicator of health.)

Oversimplifying only a little, we can say that women form an instinctive answer to their primary question based on four traits: kindness, wealth, social status, and talent. How they weight these varies -- but men who are gallant, wealthy, powerful, and able have as powerful a sexiness advantage in the mating game as any supermodel (you can just look at who supermodels marry and/or shack up with to confirm this).

"But Eric," I hear you ask, "How am I going to impress her that I'm kind, wealthy, respected, and talented when I'm just a random geek?"

Well, duh. You've got at least one of these knocked already. You're a geek. You're talented -- you are one of the "cognitive elite" in fact. Don't think women don't notice stuff like that. Your bulging hacker forebrain may not get you laid by itself, but if you combine it with a reasonable box score on the other fitness signals you'll start attracting some attention.

For most hackers, probably the easiest instant behavioral signal in the "talent" category is verbal fluency -- articulate speech with good grammar and a large expressive vocabulary. Lean on this -- but not so much that you don't listen.

Amy: "Yes! Yes! Yes! Men who can speak fluently and intelligently are sexy! And as long as we're on the subject, I may like computers but there are other things to talk about."

There are other, traditional ways for men to push the "talented" button. Being a musician or poet is one, and not to be underestimated either. Accountants may do well on the wealth axis but you never hear about Romeo reciting bookkeeping entries to Juliet. For a population with the average IQ of hackers poetry composition should be a relatively easy skill to acquire, and probably more of us than not have the neurological talent for music to begin with.

Cathy: "I don't know whether Eric's right about poetry composition being easy, but that doesn't really matter. Women like having original poetry recited to them, even if it's bad -- it shows you've been thinking about her, and not just about how to get into her pants. If you don't think you're up to trying to write poetry, ask her who her favorite poets are, and practice reading their poems out loud alone until you have the courage to read/recite them to her."

Amy: "However, love sonnets composed in Perl are amusing for at most five minutes, and then only if they haven't been floating around the net since 1994."

Kindness. That's not really difficult either. Being courteous and respectful is something women notice right away -- and being a good listener is something they'll damn near fall in love with you for, over time. Note, however: trying to fake "good listener" is very dangerous, and likely to backfire. Which is why I've often told guys that if you want to have sex with a lot of women, you have to like women first (at least enough to listen to them).

Amy: "My husband always runs up and opens the door for me. He's not a sexist or chauvinist, but he is very considerate. What a yummy change from all the poor-mannered losers I used to date! Believe me, modern women still go all melty over manners and breeding. Dig deep into those backup tapes and find the etiquette your mom taught you. Mom was a woman and she liked you to behave like a gentleman. Maybe other women will too!"

Cathy: "Faking `good listener' backfires if she figures out from your body language or verbal tics (such as the infamous `Yes, dear' of the henpecked husband) that you're not really listening. You wouldn't like someone you were trying to communicate with to brush you off with a canned response, would you? Neither do we."

[Comments from one or more geekgirls on what special thing kindness means to you]

Wealth. This is probably the most difficult fitness signal to simulate if you don't actually have it; expensive is expensive. But you could probably afford to dress a little better than you do. Even if you wear hacker-casual clothes, picking well-made high-end brands with good detailing will pay off when she looks at you.

Amy: "Current wealth status isn't as important as future earnings potential. A few tricks... You don't want to present yourself as a loser. You want to look like the geek whose options are still vesting. Even if your car is a clunker, clean it up. If all you wear is Levis, trash the ones with holes. Wash your clothes as religiously as you check Slashdot. If you don't have money, it pays to show that the stuff you do spend it on is quality. But don't pretend you're rich if you aren't. There's nothing cheesier than a poser."

Cathy: "You can follow this advice even if the budget is limited. Land's End and L.L. Bean offer quality polo shirts, jeans and chinos for reasonable prices and have regular overstock sales on their Web pages and otherwise. At the very least, make sure the shirts and pants you have fit properly and are clean and free of (noticeable) holes."

Social status. Now this is where it gets interesting -- because women can detect this even when you aren't in a context where it's obvious. Being an alpha male in some status hierarchy changes your body language, your sex-hormone levels, and the smell of your sweat. Women home in on men with these traits something fierce -- ask any rock star.

Cathy: "Or ask Eric. His recent notoriety has definitely increased the amount of female attention he gets -- even from me. :-)"

But it isn't that important to a woman's receptors exactly what the status hierarchy is. It could be anything from the neighborhood bowling league up to the government of a world superpower. Or it could be the developer community of a well-known program. What she smells is success, not the specific kind of success.

In fact this effect is so important in human behavior that males actually form all kinds of odd status hierarchies just so they can have a shot at being top of the heap, even when they know in advance that top-of-the-heap won't convey much in the way of power or wealth reward. Clubs and organized hobbies are like this. The hacker culture itself was purely like this until the late 1990s. At bottom, these are all instinctively founded on sexual-selection games.

When we discuss the Art of the Pickup in a later essay, I'll explain how self-confidence is your most important ally when you're chatting up a woman. We're really talking about the same effect here; the signs in body language and physiology that we read as "self-confidence" are also correlates of being an alpha male.

Self-confidence is sexy because for hundreds of generations it has been an indicator of actual status and achievement that was accurate most of the time. Hackers often have trouble believing this; many of us have spent too much time at parties watching women go home with self-confident jerks. But it's true. The modern world no longer features mammoth-hunting, constant intertribal warfare, or manhood ordeals; as a result, there are a lot of overgrown boys out there with exaggerated pseudo-alpha opinions of themselves that women reflexively mistake for actual fitness.

Amy: "It's a simple algorithm. If you act like you know you're cool, people (read: chicks) will buy that you must have some reason for thinking you're cool. Therefore, you must be cool. This lets you climb the coolness ladder and you quickly really become cool. And chicks love guys that are cool. If you doubt this, buy a leather jacket, grow your hair out, and hang out at tradeshows."

It's not necessarily that those women are stupid, it's just that their instinctive templates for `sexy' haven't caught up with reality. Until selective pressure teaches women to have different instincts, there will be little point in trying to fight this.

Cathy: "Actually, some of those women probably are stupid. If they were more intelligent or more sophisticated, they would see past the pheromonal facade created by misplaced self-confidence more often."

Instead, the right counter-strategy for hackers is to work on your self-confidence while you cultivate the other sexy traits that should be readily available to people wired like us. Tone up the bod a little; be articulate; develop some sexy expressive skill like music or poetry; be courteous and a good listener; dress a little sharper; and look for some status hierarchy where you can rise to or near the top.

Trust me, if you do these things women will fall all over themselves trying to get at you. It's wired in about as deeply as your tendency to stop thinking when a woman displays her breasts or legs at you, and for much the same reasons.

Labels: ,

16 Tips To Looking And Feeling Great

Do you want to improve the quality of your life? Do you want to look and feel better than you have in years – maybe better than you ever have before? Do you want to protect yourself from disease and injury? And do you want to live a longer, more vital life?

I’m confident that you answered YES! to each of those questions, just as the hundreds of individuals I’ve counseled, coached, and trained in my career as a Certified Personal Fitness Trainer and Rehabilitation Specialist.

I’m now going to reveal to you the 16 essential strategies that have enabled my clients to achieve the health and fitness goals they always wanted!

16 Essential Weight Loss and Fitness Strategies

1. In the beginning, your fitness program should not be overly aggressive. One of the biggest problems people encounter when starting a fitness program is rapidly depleted motivation after only a few weeks due to an overly ambitious fitness program. Attempting to do too much too fast is worse than doing nothing at all! Because then you feel like exercise is too hard and it’s just not for you.

Start out slow, maybe just shooting for 1 or 2 workouts a week. Once you have successfully added that to your normal routine, then attempt to slowly add to your fitness program. Plus, most people don’t need to exercise more than 3-4 times a week. That doesn’t mean you can’t exercise more; it’s just not necessary.

2. Always have a detailed plan! In order to reach your health and fitness goals, you must have a road map to follow. I can’t stress this enough. If you are unsure of how to put together a fitness plan, or if you’re uncertain of the effectiveness of the one you have, I highly recommend you consult a professional fitness trainer. With a well thought out plan you are much more likely to be successful!

3. Set realistic, attainable goals. You must have tangible, quantifiable, short and long-term goals so you can measure and assess your progress. Too many people have totally unrealistic expectations of what to expect from an exercise and nutrition program. The best way for you to understand what is realistic and attainable is to talk with a fitness professional – not to buy into the “hype” of infomercials and diet and fitness products that are blatantly misleading.

4. Keep a journal! This is one of the most important things you can do. If you’re not tracking what you’re doing, how will you know what worked? There are quite a few great exercise and nutrition logs I’ve come across. You should keep track of all your exercise and also each day’s food intake.

We offer a great 8-week Fitness + Nutrition Journal that can be used to track strength training, cardiovascular exercise, and daily nutrition.

5. You must be accountable! Set exercise appointments with yourself if you’re not working with a personal fitness trainer. Use your appointment book to set aside times for exercise, just like you do for meetings or events. Don’t let things get in the way. Nothing is more important than your health! If you don’t have your health you can’t effectively do anything. I often have mothers tell me that they can’t find time to exercise because they have to take care of their children. I have 4 daughters myself, and a baby on the way, so I know exactly how hard it is. Whatever your situation is, making the commitment to exercise and your health IS possible, and very important. Plus, it sets a great example for the children!

6. Remember the benefits of exercise. Being physically fit affects every aspect of your life: you sleep better, eat better, love better, overcome stress better, work better, communicate better, and live better! Remember how good it feels to finish a workout, and how great it feels to meet your goals!

7. Exercise safely and correctly. So much time is wasted doing, at best, unproductive exercise, or at worst, dangerous exercise. Educate yourself on how to exercise correctly. The best way to do that is to hire a personal fitness trainer. It could be for just a few sessions to learn the basics, or it could be for a few months to learn everything. It’s completely up to you. But statistics prove that those who understand how to exercise correctly get better, faster results. And that’s what you want, right?

8. Enjoy your exercise! For example, if you hate doing strength training, try to find ways to make it more enjoyable. Circuit training might be a more fun and exciting way to fit this important part of fitness into your program. The key is you should enjoy it, and if you don’t you need to look for other exercises or activities to replace whatever it is you don’t enjoy.

If you don’t enjoy it, how do you expect to stick with it?

9. Make time to stretch! It has so much benefit and takes very little time. So many people suffer from various aches and pains of which most can be eliminated by basic stretches! Try to spend at least 5 minutes after each workout stretching. For more information on stretching and how it eliminates aches and pains, go to my other site http://www.losethebackpain.com

10. Don’t think you need to exercise 5 days a week! I touched on this earlier. Many people feel they’re getting fat because they’re not exercising. Totally not the case! Exercise is not the answer! It’s all in your eating habits. However, exercise can aid in burning body fat, plus there are numerous health benefits. Think of exercise as a bonus.

How many people do you know who exercise 3-5 times per week, but still fail to meet their weight loss and fitness goals? I’ve met hundreds!

First look at your eating habits, such as: when you eat, what you eat, how much you eat, where you eat, and how often you eat.

11. Never skip breakfast, or any meal! If you want to maximize your fitness or fat-loss efforts you’ve got to eat breakfast! So many people skip breakfast, and it’s the worst thing you could ever do when it comes to fat-loss. Skipping meals throws your blood sugar all out of whack and it sets you up to store your next meal as fat, almost guaranteed!

The importance of blood sugar on energy levels and fat loss is covered in great detail in my ebook, Burn Fat Fast.

12. Eat fat to lose fat. Healthy fats are necessary to your body for numerous reasons: regulating hormonal production, improving immune function, lowering total cholesterol, and providing the basics for healthy hair, nails, and skin.

The key is to eat the right types of fats. The “good’ fats are monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats like olive oil, canola oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, and avocados, to name a few. The “bad” fats are partially hydrogenated oils, and trans fats. Most processed foods contain large amounts of these bad fats.

13. Drink plenty of fresh, clean water. Yes, I know that you have probably heard this one over and over again. But there’s a reason for that – it’s that important! The recommended daily intake of water is 8 glasses, or 64 oz. You should even be drinking even more if you are active or exercise regularly.

And no, soda, juice, coffee, and tea DON’T count! Nearly every chemical process place in your body, takes place in water! Proper blood flow and digestion are both affected by how much water you drink, and poor blood flow and digestion can be linked to numerous health conditions.

14. Stabilize your blood sugar! If you want to burn fat and prevent your body from putting it back on, you must stabilize your blood sugar. In order to do this you need to eat small, balanced meals or snacks every 2-3 hours.

Fasting, skipping meals, and overly restrictive diets will enable you to lose weight – in the short run. The weight you lose is primarily water weight and muscle tissue, and in the long run has opposite effect of what you want. When you restrict your diet, your body instinctively thinks it’s being starved and shifts into a protective mode by slowing down the metabolism and storing nearly all calories as body fat. Plus, losing muscle tissue is the last thing you want to do. Muscle burns calories, even while you sleep. You should be focused on increasing, or at least maintaining muscle tissue.

15. Focus on increasing muscle tissue. As I mentioned previously, muscle burns calories, so if you want to increase your metabolism, you have to increase your muscle. The best way to do that is with progressive strength training. That doesn’t mean you have to join a gym, buy expensive fitness equipment, or follow some bodybuilding workout program; it simply means you need to challenge your muscles! You can do that at home in just 15-20 minutes, 2-3 times a week.

16. Get the help of an expert! Obviously, meeting your health and fitness goals is important to you, so why not eliminate the guesswork and start seeing the results you have always wanted? With the help of a qualified professional you can!

If your car breaks down, where do you take it? Mechanic, right? How about if you have a cavity? Dentist. So why is it that so many people attempt to solve their health and fitness problems without consulting an expert? I don’t know exactly, but I encourage you to make the investment in yourself- in your life- by hiring a professional to educate you and help you meet your goals.

So there you have it. The 16 essential strategies for an effective weight loss and fitness program that will have you looking and feeling great!

by Jesse Cannone

Labels:

5 Fitness Myths That Are Responsible For Thousands of Fitness Failures

Unfortunately, many people are misinformed and are also misled by the many promises of the weight loss industry. Everywhere you look, you see or hear of people promising “Dramatic Weight Loss” with products such as “The Fat Trapper”, or “Exercise in a Bottle”.

Then you also have the hundreds of diets out there such as “The Zone”, “Sugar Busters” or “The Atkins Diet”. I’m sure you have heard of many of these yourself. You might have even tried some of them. Unfortunately, these products and diets are not the quick fix, or the miracles they are portrayed as. They are also usually very dangerous.

Below are some common misconceptions among people with regard to exercise and nutrition.

1. You need to exercise to burn fat.

The truth is you don’t gain body fat because of a lack of exercise. You gain it because your blood sugar levels exceed what you are using. Basically, you are eating too many calories at one time.

2. Your metabolism slows down once you hit 30.

WRONG! Actually, hundreds of research studies have shown that the slow down in metabolism is due to a loss of muscle tissue. And the loss of muscle tissue is directly related to a lack of hard physical activity!

3. Pasta and bread are fattening.

Anything is fattening! Lettuce can be stored as fat! Any food or drink, which contains calories, can be stored as body fat if it causes your blood sugar levels to exceed what the body needs at that time. Bread and pasta are actually great sources of complex carbohydrate! The key is how much you eat and when you eat it.

4. Eating after 7pm will make you fat.

Absolutely false! It all depends on whether or not the body needs that amount of calories at that time. Keep in mind your body is constantly burning calories, 24 hours per day, just the amount varies.

5. Strength training will make you bulk up.

Another NO! It seems as if mostly women are concerned with this one. Muscle size is primarily affected by genetics and hormone production; therefore, most women don’t have the potential to build very large muscles.

Muscle burns calories, so the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn which makes easier to burn fat and harder to gain it!

By no means is this a complete list! There are so many I could write a whole book just about them. The key is in education, but not by reading fitness magazines!

by Jesse Cannone

Labels:

4 Tips to Get That Beach Body FAST!

Spring is here and summer is right around the corner and I know that if you are like most people, you are thinking about what you can do to get in shape quickly for that beach weather.

Are you going to be beach ready? You will after you read this article...

Tip # 1 - STOP storing new body fat!

It amazes me how many people start an exercise program to lose weight yet end up just packing on some more new fat later that day or the next. So the number one goal should be to first stop storing new body fat. You can do this very easily by eating small, balanced meals or snacks every two to three hours. There are multiple reasons why frequent feedings not only boost metabolism but also prevent storing new fat. Here are just a few:

Frequent eating conditions the body to use fat for energy because the body used to getting fuel and doesn't need to or tend to store is much fat. Part of it is because it doesn't worry about when the next feeding will be. I’m sure you’ve probably heard of the starvation mechanism and know what it is - basically the longer you go between feedings to worse it is as your body slows down the rate at which it is burning fuel to conserve energy. The body is then more likely to hold onto the food as body fat just in case it has to go another long extended period of time without food.

By eating smaller and more frequent meals/snacks you lessen the likely hood of providing too many calories at one time and therefore make it much less likely that you’ll store any new fat.

Tip # 2 – short mini-workouts

I know you’re busy as most people are and you don’t have time for marathon-style workout sessions 3 to five times a week. Most people don't need to exercise that much or that often and nor do you.

Short bouts of exercise are as effective and sometimes even more effective if done progressively than traditional exercise routines. The reason is that these short mini-workouts can be done daily (even multiple times per day) and this gives your metabolism a boost more frequently.

Just 10 to 15 minutes of moderate to high-intensity cardiovascular or aerobic exercise every day will increase blood flow and circulation, burn some extra calories, and most importantly give you that little boost.

Another reason is short mini-workouts are more convenient and practical for most people. Even if you have no equipment at home you can still get that all so important boost in metabolism. Here are just a few ideas:

1. run upstairs and walk back down run – repeat that for five or so minutes and you'll be exhausted. Plus, you'll totally elevate your metabolism and increase blood flow and circulation and have you feeling great!

2. perform 10 minutes of calisthenics (jumping jacks, kick butts, high knees, jog in place, mountain climbers, etc)

3. take a quick 10 minute power walk. Walk nearly as fast as you can and over time try to increase your distance and/or speed

Mini-workouts can work extremely well so don’t be afraid to experiment.

Tip # 3 – Stay hydrated!

Fat metabolism IS affected by how well hydrated your body is. People totally underestimate the effective that water has when it comes a fat loss and also on overall health. Over 70 percent of the processes that the place your body take place in water and things like organs can’t function optimally without enough water.

There’s still a debate on how much you need and I don’t think anyone will ever know for sure but to play it safe I would recommend you strive to drink at least 4 cups or more each day – and NO, tea and juice don’t count. Yes, they have water but they also often have sugar and other ingredients that actually limit the amount that is absorbed and used.

Tip # 4 – Exercise MUST be Progressive!

Training progressively with strength training is probably one of the most important forms of exercise you can do. Plus, this principle applies to all forms of exercise and fitness. So when you're talking about reshaping the body, boosting metabolism, and burning off that excess body fat, you have to ensure that nearly all of your workouts are progressive in nature.

Give the body a reason to change! Just because you go to the gym and do strength training a few times a week doesn’t mean anything – you have to provide a stimulus or reason for the body to make improvements.

The number of sets and reps doesn't matter, what matters is that the muscles and systems are subjected to a greater than stress than what the muscles are used to. Here are some general guidelines: one to three sets per exercise, as many reps as possible in good form on each set, perform slow controlled reps to maximize muscle involvement, change exercises frequently, etc.

Labels: ,