Archive for the ‘Exercise’ Category
Beginner Weight Training Tips
October 2nd, 2009 | 
Author: Weight training has long been recognized to have many health benefits. For those of you just starting out, these beginner weight training tips will help you to avoid some of the common pitfalls and mistakes many beginners make. By following these tips, you can look forward to lowering your risk of injury, getting more out of each workout, and avoiding some unnecessary pain.
Stretch Stretching is a long held practice that is designed to lengthen your muscles and loosen your joints so that you can move more freely. However, you don’t want to over-stretch as it can lead to unstable joints. Holding each stretch for 10 seconds or at the most 30 seconds, is sufficient.
Start with light weights It may be tempting, especially for guys, to prove how strong you are. As a beginner, you need to resist that urge, since this is the easiest way to become injured. Instead start with light weights, light enough to do 10 to 15 reps. Also perform at the max three sets.
The next day after your training you are going to experience some soreness. The level of soreness you have will depend on the amount of weight you tried to lift and the duration you spent on each exercise. If you used light weights and performed the recommended amount of sets, your soreness should be bearable. If you went overboard … Well, let’s just say that the pain will go away in a couple of days.
Develop proper form When you begin weight training, the most basic skill that you want to develop is proper form. This helps to avoid injury, as well as helping you to maximize the working of the muscle.
Some common mistakes that you need to look out for has mostly to do with your back. For instance, when bench pressing always keep your back on the bench. When performing leg exercises such as squats, keep your head up and your back straight.
To avoid joint injuries, do not lock your elbows. When you do, you transfer part of the force of the weight from your muscles to your joints, which can lead to overextension.
Go from light to heavy When weight training, you should always go from light to heavy weights. By exercising in this manner, you give your muscles a chance to warm up and increase the blood flow to that area. Also, this progressive type of training is the best way to develop and strengthen muscles.
Carry weights with two hands For safety, when you are transferring weights to different places in the gym, always use two hands. It may appear more manly to use one hand, but the weights can slip and cause an injury, if not to you, then maybe to someone else. And as a reminder, again do not lock your elbows.
Replace weights & wipe down As a courtesy, replace your weights to their proper place. Guys need to be particularly attentive about doing this, since you tend to lift more weights than women. If you don’t and a woman is following you on a machine, it can be very difficult for her to take off the weights that you have left on the apparatus.
Also, wipe down the bench after you have finished. No one wants to sit or lie down in your sweat.
Rest Muscle grows after you have finished weight training, not during. So the process can take place you need to rest your muscles. If you exercise your muscles everyday, they will not get a chance to recuperate and grow.
As such, most trainers recommend that you exercise your major muscle groups only once per week. The only muscle group that takes exception to this advice are your abdominals, which you can train several times a week.
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Exercise The Best Medicine
It’s a safe bet to say that the majority of people have a love-hate relationship with exercise. Even though we are continually reminded of its importance by our health care providers, the media, and of course our loved ones, we use a plethora of excuses to ignore the many health benefits that exercise can bring.
Had a stressful day at work? Exercise can help you relax because it stimulates the production of endorphins (our feel good hormones). For that reason, many doctors routinely prescribe physical activity as a treatment for depression and anxiety.
Suffer from insomnia? Regular exercise can not only help you fall asleep faster but it can also provide a deeper, more restful sleep. Studies suggest late afternoon workouts since the natural reduction in body temperature five or six hours after exercise can help bring on sleep.
Worried about cholesterol? Regular exercise boosts high-density lipoprotein (HDL) or good cholesterol while decreasing low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or bad cholesterol. This combination keeps blood flowing smoothly by lowering the amount of plaque in the arteries.
Suffer from arthritis? Exercise helps ease pain by keeping the joints moving while strengthening the muscles around the joints. Range of motion exercises are basic stretching exercises which keep the joints supple and mobile. Strengthening exercises help maintain and/or increase muscle strength without putting stress on the joints and endurance exercises strengthen the heart and lungs and improve stamina.
Diagnosed with allergies? Moderate exercise is thought to increase immune system efficiency thereby decreasing the possibility of allergic reactions. Choose you exercise locations wisely and to further reduce the risk of allergies after an outdoor workout, take a shower, wash your hair, and put on clean clothes.
Back pain a problem? Regular exercise can actually help alleviate back pain. Exercising distributes vital nutrients into the disc space and soft tissues in the back which help keep discs, muscles, ligaments, and joints healthy.
Pregnant? Research presented at the 2008 annual meeting of the American Physiological Society suggests that exercise during pregnancy has cardiovascular benefits for both the mother and the fetus. Dr. Linda E. May from Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences in Kansas City, Missouri concluded that “maternal exercise may be the earliest intervention to improve the heart of children and possibly the best.”
Choosing an activity you enjoy walking, swimming, cycling will make exercising fun! But before beginning any exercise program, consult your doctor to discuss a program that is right for you.
“There is no medicine that can help overcome the range of conditions for which exercise has been prescribed: obesity, depression, diabetes, arthritis, hypertension, and coronary heart disease.” Dr. Walter Bortz, Journal of American Geriatrics Society
By: Debbie Ross
The Art of Being Lazy
A good friend of mine called me lazy the other day. Now some people might be offended by such as statement, but I took it as a complement. She said, “I don’t understand how you stay in shape… you’re so lazy! I hardly ever see you work out and here I am busting my ass everyday in the gym and I’m still overweight.”
I wanted to explain to her my ’secret’ for staying in shape, but since she was in a hurry, I simply said, “It’s genetics.” I could tell by the look on her face that she wasn’t impressed.
I can’t tell you the number of clients who have come to me seeking help with weight loss, proclaiming that “they’ve tried everything!” but they just can’t seem to lose any weight. Once I review their case history and see what they’ve actually been doing to try and lose weight, the reasons for their failed efforts become obvious.
Often, it’s simply a matter of poor exercise program design. And it’s not for a lack of trying; many of these individuals really have tried every new exercise program that is printed each month in the fitness industry magazines, with the high hopes of looking like the impossibly fit Photoshop enhanced cover models.
So what’s the solution?
The answer might surprise you because it comes not from a celebrity fitness guru, but from an obscure economist who died almost 100 years ago.
Vilfredo Pareto was an Italian economist and philosopher who lived from 1848-1923. During that time he invented a mathematical formula demonstrating that 80% of society’s wealth and income was produced and possessed by 20% of the population. Vilfredo soon discovered that this same formula could also be applied outside of economics and in fact, could be found almost everywhere he looked.
It become known as Pareto’s Law or the 80/20 principle and when applied to getting into shape, it means that 80% of your results will come from 20% of your effort; the other 80% of effort is just wasted time and energy.
“Rowing harder doesn’t help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction.”? ~ Kenichi Ohmae
Most people have never heard of Pareto’s Law, much less applied it to their workout routines. As a result their exercise programs often look like this:
Monday:
- 30 – 40 min. of cardio
- Bench press x 4 sets
- Incline dumbbell flyes x 4 sets
- Pec deck flyes x 3 sets
- Triceps push-downs x 3 sets
- Triceps extensions x 3 sets
- Crunches x 3 sets
Tuesday:
- 45 – 60 min. cardio
Wednesday:
- 30 – 40 min. of cardio
- Seated row x 4 sets
- Lat pull-downs x 4 sets
- Standing barbell bicep curls x 3 sets
- Dumbbell concentration curls x 3 sets
- Hyper extensions x 3 sets
- Crunches x 3 sets
Thursday:
- 45 – 60 min. of cardio
Friday:
- 30 – 40 min. of cardio
- Leg press x 4 sets
- Leg extensions x 3 sets
- Leg curls x 3 sets
- Seated shoulder press x 4 sets
- Lateral shoulder raises x 3 sets
- Crunches x 3 sets
Saturday:
- 45 – 60 min. of cardio?
Rest between each set of exercises is usually 2 minutes or more if talking to other gym members about last night’s episode of Dancing with the Stars.
A quick glance over this program and it’s clear that this is way too much volume for the average fitness enthusiast. Not only would this person be spending upwards of 1.5 hours in the gym, but it would also shift their hormonal profile from an anabolic state (muscle building and fat burning) toward a catabolic state (muscle burning and fat storing). This is due to an inordinate amount of physical stress, as well as a lack of rest and recovery in-between workouts.
A good analogy would be walking up a down escalator and wondering why you’re not getting to the top.
Now before we go any further, I want to be clear that there really is no perfect exercise program and there certainly isn’t a one-size fits all program. However a truly good exercise program considers you as an individual by taking into account the following factors:
- Level of exercise experience.
- Equipment availability.
- Past or current injuries.
- Nutritional habits.
- Sleep patterns.
- Stress levels – emotional, physical, mental.
- Digestion and detoxification systems.
- Mental roadblocks to success.
- Family or friends support structure (or lack thereof).
- Focus and specify goals and the reasons for those goals.
- Proper evaluation of posture, muscular imbalances, balance, flexibility, mobility, strength and aerobic capacity.
- Any chronic health conditions including medications or supplements you are taking for those conditions.
- Incorporate primal human movement patterns of squatting, lunging, bending, twisting, pushing, pulling and gait.
- Use high intensity interval training if effective fat loss in less time is your goal.
- Keep workouts to no longer than 45 minutes, 3 days per week.
- Do 3 sets for each exercise, which is 1 warm-up set, and 2 working sets.
- Focus on compound movements using as many muscle groups together at one time. These include the following:
- Deadlift
- Squat
- Bench press
- Push press
- Pull-ups
- Bent over rows
- Lunges
- Core
“It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the inessentials.” ~ Bruce Lee
An example of a scaled down exercise program that I design for clients (after full evaluation), whose goal it is to burn body fat fast and build a respectable amount of lean muscle in the process looks like this:
Workout (1)
- Deadlift x 3 sets of 8-10 reps. (1 min. rest in-between each set)
- Followed by high intensity intervals on treadmill or bike (1 min. fast / 1 min. slow x 2 rounds)
- (A1) Bench press of 10-12 reps.
- (A2) Pull-ups of 10-12 reps.
- Followed by high intensity intervals on treadmill or bike (1 min. fast / 1 min. slow x 2 rounds)
- (B1) Lying leg raises of 12 reps.
- (B2) Swiss-ball crunches of 12 reps.
- Followed by high intensity intervals on treadmill or bike (1 min. fast / 1 min. slow x 2 rounds)
- Alternate A1 and A2 back to back for 3 sets. Rest for 30 sec. between each round.
- Alternate B1 and B2 back to back for 2 sets. Rest for 30 sec. between each round.
Workout (2)
- Barbell squat x 3 sets of 8-10 reps. (1 min. rest in-between each set)
- Followed by high intensity intervals on treadmill or bike (1 min. fast / 1 min. slow x 2 rounds)
- (A1) Bent over rows of 10-12 reps.
- (A2) Push press of 10-12 reps.
- Followed by high intensity intervals on treadmill or bike (1 min. fast / 1 min. slow x 2 rounds)
- (B1) Hanging leg raises of 12 reps.
- (B2) Cable push-pulls of 12 reps.
- Followed by high intensity intervals on treadmill or bike (1 min. fast / 1 min. slow x 2 rounds)
- Alternate A1 and A2 back to back for 3 sets. Rest for 30 sec. between each round.
- Alternate B1 and B2 back to back for 2 sets. Rest for 30 sec. between each round.
Workout 1 and 2 can simply be alternated throughout your training week. For example:
Week 1
- Monday (workout 1)
- Wednesday (workout 2)
- Friday (workout 1)
Week 2
- Monday (workout 2)
- Wednesday (workout 1)
- Friday (workout 2)
By applying Pareto’s Law to your exercise program design, it will give you better direction and efficiency, helping to strip away the inessentials and achieve your goals in less time and with less total effort. It is in effect working smarter, not harder.
Who knew that being lazy, could make you look so good!
By: Jason Simpkins
