The average person needs at least 20 minutes of exercise three times a week.  I know it doesn’t sound like much, but this will help to strengthen your cardiovascular health and your overall fitness. 

Another good idea to keep in mind is that you should burn 3500 calories in a week by doing some sort of physical activity.

This will benefit you and your heart as well.

When you start any type fitness plan it is a good idea to speak to your doctor first to find out what exercise plan is going to be best for you and your body. When you speak with your doctor make sure that you discuss special concerns like blood pressure, hypertension and any special diet needs that you have.

Source: physical activity

Popularity: 4%

First  you need exercise plus plenty of water and protein in your diet to make sure that you’re burning fat and building muscle. These are the basic elements in any healthy fitness plan.

When you are ready to take your fitness to the next level one of the best ways you can get the results that you are looking for is to join a gym. 

Just keep in mind that gyms come in all shapes and sizes, and they are not all created equal. As a matter of fact there may be a number of gyms in your local area.

Joining a gym can be expensive, so it is important that you careful consider all of the gyms near to your home in order to pick the very best one possible to meet your weight loss and exercise needs on a daily basis.

The first things you should consider when you are looking at gyms are the trainers. If you’ll be taking a class or working with a personal trainer, you’ll want to be sure that you’re working with someone who is experienced and will teach you the best habits possible.

Unfortunately, there are no set qualifications for trainers in the United States, so you should check out gyms that do require training programs of their trainers.

Source: Fitness

Popularity: 6%

Every guy wants bigger arms and bicep workouts can be great for building them, but some exercises will not get the results that you were hoping for. We look at upper arm exercises that should take care of that and build the bulging biceps that make a guy look big and powerful more than any other part of the musculature.

Sitting Biceps Curl

Due to the fact that you are sitting for this exercise, you have more leverage and will be able to lift more than you would in a standing curl. Try it at about one and a half times your usual barbell weight.

Sit on a bench with a barbell in your lap. Grip it from under with the hands shoulder-width apart, and curl it up toward the chin. You should be able to do 8 reps and then need a rest - if you cannot do that many or could have done more, adjust the starting weight next time.

After a rest of about a half minute, take a barbell that is 10% heavier and do a few more reps, however many you can.

Hammer Curl

This exercise technically does not work the biceps but the brachialis, which is underneath it in the musculature of the upper arm. Developing the brachialis will increase the overall size of the upper arms and push up the biceps so that they look bigger, even if you are at the point where you cannot develop them any further.

Take dumbbells and hold them with elbows by your sides and palms facing the thighs. Curl the dumbbells up toward the shoulders. Lower slowly and repeat.

Elbows must stay firmly by your sides so that the brachialis does all the work, not the shoulders. Note that the palms of the hands come up facing each other, not facing upward as in a regular curl.

For a variation on this exercise you can try curling the arms alternately, one at a time. This will increase your concentration on the single brachialis muscle that you are working at any one time. Concentration always tends to make a workout more effective.

Finally, do not over exercise your arms. Twice a week is enough. There is a point where more training will not increase anything in terms of size, even if your lift strength continues to develop.

If you have been working your arms too much and they have stopped developing, consider cutting back on your bicep training sessions to just once a week, and restrict those gym sessions to biceps only. Less is more in this respect and you should soon begin to see some growth again. When it comes to bicep workouts, size definitely matters!

More fitness information

Popularity: 23%

Stomach flattening exercises can be great. Some people take up abdominal crunches, situps and the rest and see a firm, flat belly in no time. But if you look carefully at the lifestyles of those people, ab workouts are not the only thing they are doing. If you are not seeing the results that you hoped for with belly flattening exercises, this could be why.

Eating For A Flat Stomach

Of course, very large meals will fill and stretch the stomach. It is better to eat small meals more frequently. Train your stomach to expect less at one time and it can shrink. If you need to lose weight then a healthy diet should be combined with an exercise program to tone up the muscles.

However, how much you eat is not the only question. Sometimes the stomach can become bloated due to other factors. These can include water retention (especially for women around the menstrual period) or a reaction to something you ate that is causing gas. Examples would be if you ate a lot of beans or fruit, or if you are intolerant of certain foods.

Fruit is best eaten alone or before other food. Fruit is quick to digest and if you eat it after a meal that includes meat, fats and/or grains, the fruit cannot pass through the stomach to the colon as quickly as it should. It stays backed up behind the slower digesting food and begins to ferment in the stomach, causing gas (just like the bubbles in beer).

Beans are best if well cooked. Canned beans have usually been cooked a long time in the canning process so they are often easier to digest than dried beans that you soaked and cooked yourself. It is said that adding a little seaweed such as kombu to the water when home cooking dried beans helps to reduce the gas.

Some people have food intolerances that can lead to bloating and gas. For example, yeast intolerance can have this effect. Yeast is in most breads, beer and some other foods. Candida albicans overgrowth can also be a problem. You would need to see a nutritional specialist or doctor to be tested for these problems.

Cleansing For A Flat Belly

Another thing that can cause swelling in the belly is hardening of the wall of the colon caused by an accumulation of unevacuated matter over the years. Most people are carrying several pounds of this matter, more and more as we grow older.

There are two ways to deal with this build up of waste in the colon. One is colonic irrigation which washes it out like a deep enema. You should see a specialist for this. The other is a colon cleanser or detoxifier which is a mix of herbs and other ingredients that claims to strip the waste from the colon wall. You can buy these online or in health food stores. There are many to choose from and some will be better suited to you than others. They may or may not be regulated. Consult your doctor before taking any remedies.

If you take care of these matters, you should soon find that the size of your belly will naturally reduce. This is the time to take up those stomach flattening exercises again, and you should see better results this time around.

Popularity: 22%

Though our body requires fat for energy, you ought to know the difference between the right quantity of fat and having too much of it. Definitely, watching movies at home with bags full of fat filled snacks on your lap but then, you have put on a lot of fat, even before the movie stops. The you would be busy speculating furiously as to the type of exercises you need to do to get those unseemly love handles out of the way, so what are you meant to do? Love handles are those extra tires of flesh oozing out round your waistline near the brim of your pants which not only look bad but are unhealthy too, so you need to make them disappear. If you make working out part of your daily routine, it can help you keep an attractive body.

Home Fitness

It’s not that easy to shed that extra pound around the waistline, it requires hard work and determination. Of course, this does not result in any harrowing experience as any physical work out should be enjoyable. Surely your mind is pondering about knowing the right form of physical exertion to make the love handles disappear. Nearly all of us enjoy watching movies at home so why not plan out your exercise program, while watching your favorite movie? Here are some workouts which you could do in front of the movie screen.

Get Rid of Extra Weight

Do aerobics workouts: This is a type of physical exercise that burns your fats and therefore makes you lose weight then if done on a regular basis, it also helps maintain the weight you want. Although it can be pretty tough to do this while watching a home movie, you can probably find a channel where an aerobics exercise is shown. This should only take a few minutes of your time and it is a easy matter to do while warming up for the next position.

Get In Shape

Try abdominal exercises: The top 3 in the list today are the captain’s chair, the bicycle maneuver exercise, and the ball crunch. It is not required for you to do all of them, but for your information, these three concentrate on both the rectus abdominis and the oblique muscles and help build abdominal muscles. Choose any one of them for getting rid of the love handles efficiently. You could choose to watch your favorite movie at this juncture but do not lose focus on your exercises.

Have a more nutritious diet: At times when you just want to relax and enjoy the movie, try having healthy snacks. Stop focusing on ice creams and switch to bites which are full in fiber content like celery or carrots since you just need to do the workouts at least thrice a day. So try to chip in your favorite movie along with some of those healthy snacks in between your physical exertion schedules.

Be determined to keep good health: The whole concept of resorting to physical workouts to make those love handles go away would take a lot of time and patience. The body endlessly keeps on accumulating fat and this makes it essential for you to keep a check on your diet as this might land you in a situation where you find it impossible to shed those extra pounds especially when you get older, so it is best to start with your workouts early in life. In fact, it is suggested that this must be part of your lifestyle so go get a balanced diet and exercise at the right time periods. The last word is that it is essential to remain well and in good shape all the time.

Popularity: 21%

Do you know there are three easy steps that you can implement today that can get you into weight loss mode? If you are looking for some technique to get your fat burning furnace roaring, you are in luck because I am going to share with you 3 steps that you can take so your body can burn more body fat.

There are tips and tricks that we can implement so that we can get more from our workout. This means burn more fat and save more time. All of us are looking for methods to lose weight quickly and get the most of our time. So, by implementing these 3 tips, you can definitely burn more body fat and see the results quite quickly. Without wasting more time, lets dive into it.

Step 1

Do your cardio after your intense weight training. This is by far one of the best method I have seen working for my clients. For those who do not know me, I have been doing personal training for more than 7000 hours since the 2004 and I find that my clients that follow my instructions and do their cardio after their weight training lose the most fat!

The reason behind this is because we are glucose depleted after an intense weight training session. Hence when you hit the cardio, your body will start using body fat straight away. If you do cardio before you weight training, you will waste time spending 10 to 15 minutes burning the sugar in your body and then only the body fat. Then when you do weight training, you will not have the power and strength to complete an intense weight training session.

During weight training, you only use sugar. So, it is more effective to do weight training first, burn of the sugar and then hit the cardio machine for maximum fat loss. If you are not use to do your cardio after weight training, you will feel that your body is heavy and find it really tough. Do it slowly. Do your cardio workout at the intensity of 70 % of your max heart rate the after 5 to 7 minutes; you feel that you can go on forever!

Step 2

Now this is a bit of a controversial issue. Some pros do not like this method and some do. I personally experienced great results from it. It is called low card dieting. Yeah, you have heard of it like a thousand times. I am not a dietitian, but for my modeling days, I use to go low carb for 5 days and then eat normal on Saturday and Sunday.

This is not Atkins diet. I do not eat lots of fats. I eat lots of vegetables; eat lots of fish, egg whites and chicken. I also drink lots of soup because I found out that soup could really satisfy my appetite. The bulk of the meals come from vegetables because it is healthy and keeps your stomach full. You will feel a bit tired during your weight training but that is normal. You are not there to do the World’s Strongest Man event.

The key to maintain on this diet is that you have to eat 5 to 6 meals a day. Always plan ahead. I cannot emphasize enough. You need to plan what time you eat and what you will eat. This will help you cope up with all the hunger pangs. If you fail to plan you plan to fail.

Step 3

This tips is actually very easy. It won’t need you to put in more time into you workout or change your lifestyle. If you have been doing cardio religiously 3 to 5 times a week, why not supercharge your fat loss by using a heart rate monitor. By using a heart rate monitor, you can laser target you fat burning zone. With the heart rate monitor you would also know whether you are really tired or pure lazy. I workout too, I know. In some days, I feel really tired and do not have the stamina to run but when I checked my heart rate, it is just fine. So, I know I am just cheating myself if I stop.

There you have it. Three tips for you to get into weight loss mode that you can implement today. The biggest killer I think is procrastinating. Get started today and look great faster.

Tony Leong reveals his 5 secrets to losing weight in his Weight Loss system. He is giving it away for free for a limited time only. Go to http://www.tonyleongweightloss.com/topweightlosssecrets to download it now. Click here to get your free stuff

Source: health

Popularity: 34%

More than a century ago a French scientist, Lamarck, said, “Function makes an organ.” This saying is just as true today as it was then. We may also add that lack of function unmakes an organ.

What happens, for example, when one uses his muscles too little? This leads to what has been dubbed, in this country, as a Flabby American. This means more than just flabby muscles. This means “flabby” or debilitated heart, blood vessels, blood, respiratory system, to name a few items. A flabby man suffers from an old sickly state, which has been given a fancy name: hypokinesis.

Hypokinesis creates a vicious circle: little activity brings about greater inability for activity, which leads to even greater restriction of activity, and the person begins to act sick or prematurely aged, avoiding physical exertion which used to be fun and now causes only pains and aches and makes one puff and feel tired.

What can be done about this? This can be remedied in a simple manner—start exercising! Do it gradually, and gradually you will become again what you used to be when you were younger—almost!

The result obtained from exercising may be compared with that obtained during immunization. A doctor injects some substance which may cause a temporary indisposition, but makes you immune against even a deadly disease.

Each time that you exercise until you feel slightly tired is comparable to one immunization shot, only in this case it is immunization against fatigue and not against a disease. After each exercise session, you become more resistant to fatigue and you can do more than before. There is, however, a difference between immunization and training.

During immunization you usually have only a short period of partial mobilization of the body which results in a dramatic production of specific weapons called antibodies. Once immunization is achieved you don’t need any more shots, sometimes for a few years, sometimes for life. During training, although the body is mobilized to a greater extent, the immediate results are slight and of a short duration. Thus, one cannot consider himself trained for life, or for a year or for a month, by just exercising on two or three successive days. One has to exercise frequently and continuously. Only in this manner can one obtain a lasting cumulative effect.

Few people realize the tremendous capacities of our internal organs. Let us cite just a few:

1. If all the capillaries of one individual were placed end to end they would form a string long enough to go four times around the earth, or close to 100,000 miles. And the heart which pumps the blood through all these capillaries weighs only ten ounces. No wonder that, if the heart weakens, sludges may begin to form in the vessels.
2. If we take from a sedentary man a bundle of muscle fiber equal in thickness to the lead of an ordinary pencil, and cut it across, there will be as many as 2,000 capillaries.
3. A drop of blood of a man at rest contains 250 million corpuscles. During exercise it is increased by 7.5 million.
4. At rest, about one gallon of blood per minute is pumped by the heart. During running this may increase to 10 gallons per minute.
5. If all the blood corpuscles of an individual are placed on the ground they will cover an area of about 5,000 square yards.
6. The surface area of the capillaries in the lungs equals the area of one-half of a tennis court for singles. Fantastic as these figures are, they may be even greater; and this result can be achieved through the fun of exercise.

Popularity: 50%

Let’s face it, getting and staying in shape can be a costly investment. And, if you’re not careful, its greatest cost is the one commodity you could use the most of: time (keeping monetary costs in check is another volume, entirely). Yet, even many seasoned exercisers often have difficulty changing their bodies with regular workouts. And worse, many think the more hours spent training heavily, the better the result. Not true! Often this break-neck pace leads only to fatigue, burnout, and injury.

What most people also may not realize, there are several, easy ways to redistribute your time and create ’smarter’ workouts. These common sense, turbo-chargers cost little or no money, will help change your body in a positive way, and all without giving up a lot of time.

Here, I’ve given you four simple strategies that can help you turbo charge your workout (and your body), too:

Warm Up and Cool Down Sufficiently. In short: take 10. Strive to take 10 minutes before heavy exercise to get blood flowing with light aerobic activity (walking, or a series of slow arm and leg circles) to get the large muscle groups moving and prevent injury. At the end of your workout, try to opt for 10 minutes of light stretching, aiming at the major muscle groups: arms, back, chest, and legs. This will help re-absorb lactic acid (metabolic waste that builds up during exercise and can lead to soreness).

Drink More Water. Just eight-8oz. glasses of water per day will carry away waste and toxins from your body. It will also help keep you cool during exercise and replace the fluids lost during your workout (you will usually lose 1 liter per 1-hour workout).

Get Adequate Rest. The body requires a sufficient amount of sleep for rest and tissue repair (usually around 7-8 hours per night for the healthy person). Sleep also provides the body time to lower levels of bacteria in the body. It actually stimulates the immune system! If you can’t get your eight hours, try to take a quick 10-20 minute power nap sometime during the day.

Go Easy on the Starchy Carbs. Try to “balance” starchy carbs (cereals, breads, white potatoes, rice) with protein and veggie alternatives.

My own personal case study: Even though I’d been exercising for years, I couldn’t shake the extra 10 pounds I’d gained in college. I exercised for about an hour every day rotating my routine between cardio and resistance training. Did I need to exercise more? I wondered. Maybe, but I couldn’t fit another hour into the day. So, I took a good look at my diet. What I found was, every day I was loading up with starchy carbs! Lots of cereal and toast. Lots of potatoes and white rice. Resolve: Just by balancing my meals with egg whites, sweet potatoes, green leafy veggies, and lean meats, I lost what remained.

If you could use a Jump-start in you workout or haven’t seen changes in awhile, these four ideas are well worth your consideration. Plus, just by changing one small thing, you could make quite a difference in your shape. It will add a new element of vigor to your workout! So, reap the big rewards of these small changes, they will pay dividends on your investment.

About The Author

Laura Turner, Certified Personal Trainer has developed a series of health fitness and nutrition tips available at http://www.1brand-new-body.com ”

Online Legal Advice
Acid Reflux Remedy
Trade Currency Online

Source: Get Fit

Popularity: 70%

Your aerobic threshold is the heart rate that will determine how to get the most from your aerobic workout. One of the questions I have been repeatedly asked by those new to aerobic exercise is how to tell if they are getting the most from their efforts. They are unsure if they are at the ‘right’ heart rate to get the most effective aerobic benefits.

First, a brief explanation of what ‘aerobic’ exercise is and why it is so important to your health. Your body converts food into energy by two very different forms of metabolism. Aerobic - with oxygen, and anaerobic - without oxygen.

Anaerobic metabolism is the creation of energy through the burning of carbohydrates in the absence of oxygen. This happens when the lungs cannot supply enough oxygen to the blood to keep up with the demands from the muscles.

Anaerobic metabolism is most generally associated with short, very intense, forms of exercise, mostly with weight training or sprinting. Anaerobic metabolism is crucial to increasing muscle mass. This why you will hear from weight lifters that they do very little, if any, aerobic types of exercise.

The biology of aerobic and anaerobic metabolism is very complex and with very little research you can quickly become lost in the complexity without a degree in biology.

I am going to simplify this complex process as the vast number of people who are interested in improving their health are not necessarily interested in becoming biologists.

The primary fuels used by the body for energy are glucose and fatty acids, with protein used when the first two are depleted. The first two are burned by the body aerobically during most of our normal activity, including moderate exercise. When the activity intensity reaches approximately 80% of the maximum possible the body switches to anaerobic metabolism.

Aerobic metabolism is very efficient and produces few negative byproducts. This is not true of anaerobic metabolism which produces lactic acid which causes muscle pain and is the reason our muscles ‘burn’ after intensive weight training.

Aerobic metabolism is like burning natural gas, clean hot flame with little waste.
Anaerobic exercise is like burning old tires, with lots of thick sooty smoke. Which one do you think is better for your body?

As long as you can breath without gasping for air you are burning your fuel aerobically. There are different formulas for figuring out your ‘correct’ aerobic threshold. Look on the wall of most gyms and you will see one of these formulas on a chart comparing age with intensity.

These charts are clinical formulas based on countless measurements of people exercising at different rates to come up with an average. These numbers are good as a general indicator, especially when first beginning your exercise program.

Far more accurate is your own personal aerobic threshold and you can figure this out fairly easily. Your own personal number is the heartbeat you have when you first become breathless…when you can no longer tell someone your name without gasping for breath.

This is the level that you will get the most benefit from your efforts. Keep your heart rate a few beats per minute below the point where you are beginning to gasp for breath. You need to maintain this level for a minimum of 15 minutes to attain the benefits of aerobic exercise.

Clinical studies have shown that doing aerobic exercise at least 3 or 4 time a week will increase the left ventricle- the chamber of the heart that pumps the freshly oxygenated blood into the body - by 15% to 20%. It will do this in four to six weeks!

As you continue to train your body you will be able to do more work, or go longer without exceeding your aerobic threshold. This very positive feedback will be helpful in keeping your commitment to stay with your program. You will have proof that your efforts are having a positive effect.

Another very important benefit of aerobic exercise is that when you have substantially raised your heartbeat you are moving a lot of blood through the body. This improves the nutrient flow to the cells and helps to get rid of waste materials that accumulate during normal cell function.

It also helps to move hormones and other necessary complex chemicals produced by some cells for the benefit of other cells located throughout the body. The cardio-vascular system, and its health, is the single most important factor in your good health.

The author has been an aerobics instructor for over 28 years. He has taught classes for private health clubs and has been a Certified Group Instructor for the Y.M.C.A. since 1980. He is currently developing web sites focused on Health and Fitness.

To read more on health and fitness by this author

Submitted By ArticleUnited.com

Source: Aerobic exercise

Popularity: 65%

Being a busy person that is constantly on the go does not mean that you don’t have the time to stay in shape and keep your body fit while you are traveling. Unfortunately, the excuses we make do not keep us in shape nor able to keep up with the high demands of a busy life. If you join a health club, you would be making a great decision and a much easier way to stay fit.

Many health clubs offer the same types of services in other facilities. Some even have guest passes to specific spas and athletic clubs around the country. Another way to stay fit while traveling is to stay at a hotel that has spas and sporting facilities. If your hotel does not offer these things, it is highly possible that the hotel itself has spa and exercise arrangements elsewhere.

To get this information, ask a clerk at the front desk and he/she is sure to provide you with the information you need. Today, many hotels have treadmills or other exercise machines. This will help keep you active and fit. It is also important to remember that most cities or towns have a YMCA or a YWCA. Search the Yellow pages and give the facility a call. When traveling, there are many opportunities you can take to stay fit.

At times, the specific location you are in might not offer any type of exercise facility or spa for you to visit. If this happens, you can be creative and turn your hotel room into your personal gym. Before you leave to go on your trip, bring along some hand weights, exercise bands, and any other type of exercise equipment that is travel friendly. With all of these items, you can easily turn your hotel room into a gym.

Use your elastic bands are a way to achieve resistance. While in your hotel room, use furniture such as chairs or beds that will help you work out. Depending on the furniture in your hotel room, you just might want to stick to body weight exercises. These are also great ways to keep your fit and in shape. To do this, find ways to combine pushups, legups, and crunches. Though these exercises do not exercise a huge range of muscles, you will still be able to work your heart and continue to build up your endurance.

When traveling, I think we all understand that working out is not the easiest thing to put into a busy time schedule. Many people who travel have very tight time frames and do not also have time to add in a complete workout session. Fortunately, there are many other ways to still exercise in order to keep your body fit. You can simply try stretching in your hotel room or taking a long walk around the hotel or town you are visiting. Many hotels today also have swimming pools. Go for a swim.

Swimming is a great exercise that is able to work the majority of the muscles in your body. You can relax and exercise at the same time. Since there are so many ways that you can work out while traveling, you shouldn’t have an excuse for not finding some way to exercise and keep your body fit. It doesn’t matter what time you work out, just find 20-30 minutes per day to do some sort of exercises, no matter the type. Even if you cannot do the exact some workout routine you are used to, switch it up a little. Any exercise is good exercise.

Tags:
Fitness,
Good Health,
Personal Growth,
Spiritual Growth,
Stress Management,
Wellness

Source: Wellness

Popularity: 66%