Posts Tagged ‘Strength Exercises’
The right core exercises can mean the difference between great progress and definite results with your core training program or not getting any results at all.
There are hundreds of muscles in the core of your body – the abdominals (all layers), lower and mid back, pelvic region, obliques and the popular ‘love handle’ areas are loaded with muscles of all different sizes, shapes, lengths and angles – which require specific exercises to produce the desired strength training effect for optimal fitness.
The following exercises can serve as a core training primer for beginners or they can be added or substituted into your current core workout routine.
1 – Lying face up, hand down at your side. Bring your legs up, knees slightly bent with the bottom of your feet toward the ceiling. This is your start position. While keeping the abdominals pulled in (contracted), slowly lower your right leg, until the heel touches the ground, and then raise it back up. Do this fifteen times. Then switch legs.
2 – Lying face up with knees bent, feet off the floor. Arms are extended as if reaching toward the sky if you were standing. As you breathe out, slowly bring your knees toward you by contracting your abdominals (pulling inward). Then breathe in as you return to the start position.
3 – Lying face up with knees bent, heels on the ground and toes pointing up. Lift your **** off the ground to engage the core muscles. Now, here is where the fun starts. Lift one foot off the floor, extending that leg until it is straight, bring it back to the start position (heel on ground) and then do the same with the other leg. Keep alternating until you do a total of twenty, ten on each side.
If this exercise sequence is too easy, go through it again and see how you do. You can add these exercises to your current routine or if you are a beginner you can use this as a stand alone routine to get you going. If it was too challenging, decrease the number of repetitions to about five and do this every other day. Gradually increase the repetitions as your core gets stronger.
A big mistake many people, even trainers, make is to mimic the core training routines of bodybuilders or power-lifters. The problem with that is most people are not bodybuilders or power-lifters – and these people tend to over-train anyway (I know this because I used to do it myself!). The problems here range from a lot of wasted time to serious, long term injuries.
This happens every day to people who try to exercise without proper guidance and it’s one the reasons why physical therapists are so busy!
The proper workout must be designed to provide the most effective exercise training stimulus to the entire midsection, in the shortest amount of time (because we are all very busy people, right?), with minimal risk of injury. The problem is it is extremely rare to find an abdominal and core workout routine that fits all of these criteria.
These are the exact principles I follow when training my personal, one-on-one clients AND they are the same principles I follow in my own fitness training workout program. Structure your own program according to the principles outlined above, with the proper selection of core exercises for effective and safe results.
By: Joey Atlas
About the Author:
There are hundreds of muscles in the core of your body – the abdominals (all layers), lower and mid back, pelvic region, obliques and the popular ‘love handle’ areas are loaded with muscles of all different sizes, shapes, lengths and angles – which require specific exercises to produce the desired strength training effect for optimal fitness.
The following exercises can serve as a core training primer for beginners or they can be added or substituted into your current core workout routine.
1 – Lying face up, hand down at your side. Bring your legs up, knees slightly bent with the bottom of your feet toward the ceiling. This is your start position. While keeping the abdominals pulled in (contracted), slowly lower your right leg, until the heel touches the ground, and then raise it back up. Do this fifteen times. Then switch legs.
2 – Lying face up with knees bent, feet off the floor. Arms are extended as if reaching toward the sky if you were standing. As you breathe out, slowly bring your knees toward you by contracting your abdominals (pulling inward). Then breathe in as you return to the start position.
3 – Lying face up with knees bent, heels on the ground and toes pointing up. Lift your **** off the ground to engage the core muscles. Now, here is where the fun starts. Lift one foot off the floor, extending that leg until it is straight, bring it back to the start position (heel on ground) and then do the same with the other leg. Keep alternating until you do a total of twenty, ten on each side.
If this exercise sequence is too easy, go through it again and see how you do. You can add these exercises to your current routine or if you are a beginner you can use this as a stand alone routine to get you going. If it was too challenging, decrease the number of repetitions to about five and do this every other day. Gradually increase the repetitions as your core gets stronger.
A big mistake many people, even trainers, make is to mimic the core training routines of bodybuilders or power-lifters. The problem with that is most people are not bodybuilders or power-lifters – and these people tend to over-train anyway (I know this because I used to do it myself!). The problems here range from a lot of wasted time to serious, long term injuries.
This happens every day to people who try to exercise without proper guidance and it’s one the reasons why physical therapists are so busy!
The proper workout must be designed to provide the most effective exercise training stimulus to the entire midsection, in the shortest amount of time (because we are all very busy people, right?), with minimal risk of injury. The problem is it is extremely rare to find an abdominal and core workout routine that fits all of these criteria.
These are the exact principles I follow when training my personal, one-on-one clients AND they are the same principles I follow in my own fitness training workout program. Structure your own program according to the principles outlined above, with the proper selection of core exercises for effective and safe results.
By: Joey Atlas
About the Author:
Joey Atlas, M.S. – Exercise Physiology, is a fitness consultant, trainer and writer in Jacksonville, Florida. He is the creator of ‘Abs of Stone – Core of Steel’, a complete Core Exercise Fitness Program. Joey a fitness consultant, trainer and fitness copywriter in Jacksonville, Florida.
See http://www.AbsofStoneCoreofSteel.com/Core.html for more free exercise tips & information.
eeking answers to what are the best fat burning exercises? If you are like many people you may be confused as to which exercises burn fat more effectively. After all there are many different articles and experts that have different answers or secrets to burn fat.
Some will tell you the low to moderate aerobic exercises are the best fat burning exercises while others believe it is the high impact aerobics that burn fat best. And then there are those who will tell you strength training is best for burning fat. So with all these experts giving different advice, how can you determine what?s the best for you.
The truth is all these experts are correct. Both strength training and aerobics, at any level, will help you burn excess body fat. Aerobic exercises are the most effective at burning calories and fat while performing the exercise while strength training gives you the benefit of increasing your metabolism. With a higher basal metabolic rate, you will be burning more calories each day while doing every day activities including sleeping.
So if all these methods help shed fat, why is it important to know the best fat burning exercise? Well if you are trying to maximize your fat burn then you need to understand how each exercise will help so that you can pick the most effective workout routine.
Strength Training
Strength training exercises are those exercises that challenge your muscles through resistance. The higher the resistance the more challenge the exercise will be. Although strength training itself is not a high calorie or fat burning exercise, it does help tone and strengthen your muscles and increases your lean muscle mass. The more lean muscle mass you have the more calories you burn due to an increased metabolic rate.
Weight lifting offers the most versatility for adjusting the resistance. You can continually increase the weight and challenge to your muscles. However not everyone has access to weight lifting equipment nor do they necessarily need to perform weight lifting to increase their muscle mass.
Resistance band exercises and dumbbell exercises are a great alternative to weight lifting. With resistance bands, you can easily adjust the resistance to your muscles by shortening the band for higher resistance or loosening for lighter resistance. They are fairly inexpensive and easy to travel with so they make a great on the go exercise.
Dumbbell exercises also are fairly inexpensive and easy to store. You can buy several sizes so that you use heavier weights for higher resistance and lighter weights for less resistance. You can also do body weight exercises where you are just using your body and gravity to provide the resistance. The bottom line is that any strength training exercise that helps you build lean muscles will help you burn fat.
Aerobic Exercises
It is aerobic exercises where there is the most debate as to which exercise is best to burn fat; low to moderate intense level or high intense level aerobics. With the low to moderate intense aerobic workouts your body uses approximately 60% of fat for fuel. However, the low to moderate level aerobics also burn fewer calories overall as compared to high impact aerobics.
The high impact aerobics will give you a higher calorie burn overall but only use about 35% of fat for fuel. Hence the reason for the debate and confusion as to which is the best fat burning exercise routine.
To best understand the difference between the two types of aerobics, let?s use an example. For instance, if a man weighing 175 pounds took a brisk walk at 4 mph for 30 minutes, a low to moderate level aerobic exercise, he would have burned approximately 158 calories. If 60% was fat, he would have burned about 95 fat calories.
Now if this same man jogged or ran for 30 minutes at 6 mph, a high impact aerobic exercise, he would have burned about 420 calories with 147 of these calories coming from fat; or 35% of total calories burned. So you can see he had the highest total calories and fat calories with the high impact aerobic workout.
Unfortunately not everyone is at a level in their exercise routines to be able to keep up this fast pace for this amount of time. So let?s assume that this man ran for only 20 minutes instead of the full 30 minutes. In this case he would only burn 280 calories total and 98 fat calories. Even with the shorter duration of the high impact aerobics he was able to burn more calories as well as a few more fat calories.
Again this is a high impact level and if you are not in a position to run at this pace for even a few minutes, then your best fat burning exercise will be a low to moderate level aerobics. To increase both the total calories burned and the fat calories try increasing the duration of your low to moderate aerobic workout.
As you begin to adjust to your aerobic workouts, try increasing the speed as well. Mix up your aerobic exercises by doing low to moderate level with spurts of high impact aerobics. This high impact interval training exercise will give you the benefit of both low to moderate to high impact aerobics calories and fat burn. So make the most out of your fat burning exercises.
By: Gen Wright
About the Author:
Some will tell you the low to moderate aerobic exercises are the best fat burning exercises while others believe it is the high impact aerobics that burn fat best. And then there are those who will tell you strength training is best for burning fat. So with all these experts giving different advice, how can you determine what?s the best for you.
The truth is all these experts are correct. Both strength training and aerobics, at any level, will help you burn excess body fat. Aerobic exercises are the most effective at burning calories and fat while performing the exercise while strength training gives you the benefit of increasing your metabolism. With a higher basal metabolic rate, you will be burning more calories each day while doing every day activities including sleeping.
So if all these methods help shed fat, why is it important to know the best fat burning exercise? Well if you are trying to maximize your fat burn then you need to understand how each exercise will help so that you can pick the most effective workout routine.
Strength Training
Strength training exercises are those exercises that challenge your muscles through resistance. The higher the resistance the more challenge the exercise will be. Although strength training itself is not a high calorie or fat burning exercise, it does help tone and strengthen your muscles and increases your lean muscle mass. The more lean muscle mass you have the more calories you burn due to an increased metabolic rate.
Weight lifting offers the most versatility for adjusting the resistance. You can continually increase the weight and challenge to your muscles. However not everyone has access to weight lifting equipment nor do they necessarily need to perform weight lifting to increase their muscle mass.
Resistance band exercises and dumbbell exercises are a great alternative to weight lifting. With resistance bands, you can easily adjust the resistance to your muscles by shortening the band for higher resistance or loosening for lighter resistance. They are fairly inexpensive and easy to travel with so they make a great on the go exercise.
Dumbbell exercises also are fairly inexpensive and easy to store. You can buy several sizes so that you use heavier weights for higher resistance and lighter weights for less resistance. You can also do body weight exercises where you are just using your body and gravity to provide the resistance. The bottom line is that any strength training exercise that helps you build lean muscles will help you burn fat.
Aerobic Exercises
It is aerobic exercises where there is the most debate as to which exercise is best to burn fat; low to moderate intense level or high intense level aerobics. With the low to moderate intense aerobic workouts your body uses approximately 60% of fat for fuel. However, the low to moderate level aerobics also burn fewer calories overall as compared to high impact aerobics.
The high impact aerobics will give you a higher calorie burn overall but only use about 35% of fat for fuel. Hence the reason for the debate and confusion as to which is the best fat burning exercise routine.
To best understand the difference between the two types of aerobics, let?s use an example. For instance, if a man weighing 175 pounds took a brisk walk at 4 mph for 30 minutes, a low to moderate level aerobic exercise, he would have burned approximately 158 calories. If 60% was fat, he would have burned about 95 fat calories.
Now if this same man jogged or ran for 30 minutes at 6 mph, a high impact aerobic exercise, he would have burned about 420 calories with 147 of these calories coming from fat; or 35% of total calories burned. So you can see he had the highest total calories and fat calories with the high impact aerobic workout.
Unfortunately not everyone is at a level in their exercise routines to be able to keep up this fast pace for this amount of time. So let?s assume that this man ran for only 20 minutes instead of the full 30 minutes. In this case he would only burn 280 calories total and 98 fat calories. Even with the shorter duration of the high impact aerobics he was able to burn more calories as well as a few more fat calories.
Again this is a high impact level and if you are not in a position to run at this pace for even a few minutes, then your best fat burning exercise will be a low to moderate level aerobics. To increase both the total calories burned and the fat calories try increasing the duration of your low to moderate aerobic workout.
As you begin to adjust to your aerobic workouts, try increasing the speed as well. Mix up your aerobic exercises by doing low to moderate level with spurts of high impact aerobics. This high impact interval training exercise will give you the benefit of both low to moderate to high impact aerobics calories and fat burn. So make the most out of your fat burning exercises.
By: Gen Wright
About the Author:
Julie Barros is the creator and author of Exercise 4 Weight Loss.
For even more fat burning ideas, check out this article on fat burning foods.
Be sure to use this exercise calorie calculator to calculate your exercise calories.
Quitters never win, and Winners never quit. So if quittin’ isn’t on the table – what are you gonna do?
In one of Winston Churchill’s legendary speeches, to a graduating class, he walked in to the Auditorium, cigar to the side of the mouth wearing his customary overcoat and top hat.
Moments later, he took off the coat and hat, laid down the smoking cigar on the lectern, and began -
“NEVER GIVE UP! NEVER GIVE UP! NEVER GIVE UP!” And that was it, the shortest but clearest message they could possibly have received.
Things will always be happening (economy – blah, blah, blah), but what is much more important is what you’re gonna do, to hell with what’s happening!
Its not about excuses “the gym’s closed when I get home from work….It doesn’t open on a Sunday…” It doesn’t matter. There is always something that you can do. Take one of our students Brian. He’s committed to losing 20LBS, and has decided (note this word) that if he has to work late which he sometimes does that, in his own words – “I will not go to bed unless I have exercised or done a minimum of 30 push ups.” This goal works for him in that it is not an overwhelming task for him when he does have to work late, and it also keeps him on track – builds the habit.
Do you think he will succeed in achieving his goal? Well, I do. We all know someone who’s getting rich, getting fit, getting more right now. So become that person. It is ALWAYS mental/ belief.
Like training, the way that you get results in your life is in daily attention, consistency, dedication, and of course not quittin’. It doesn’t all happen in one training session, but if you keep it up, increase the intensity, give yourself something to aim for then holy **** you’ll get there!
The one exercise that has been used by winners and warriors down through the ages, and right up to today is body weight exercises for developing incredible strength, will and determination. Forget weights and get with the body weight training systems used by Michael Jordan, Floyd Mayweather and a long list of the most vital and extraordinary athletes of all time.
Bodyweight training programs typically comprise a sequence of exercises such as body weight or free squats, many variations of pull-ups and push-ups and a variety of exercises similarly designed to enhance and improve overall balance and body conditioning.
They are much safer than conventional weights exercises because you are working with your own body exclusively, and directly impact much more of your body through the particular movements. This is your life, and we believe that you deserve to live it at the highest possible level.
By: Stevey McGeown
About the Author:
In one of Winston Churchill’s legendary speeches, to a graduating class, he walked in to the Auditorium, cigar to the side of the mouth wearing his customary overcoat and top hat.
Moments later, he took off the coat and hat, laid down the smoking cigar on the lectern, and began -
“NEVER GIVE UP! NEVER GIVE UP! NEVER GIVE UP!” And that was it, the shortest but clearest message they could possibly have received.
Things will always be happening (economy – blah, blah, blah), but what is much more important is what you’re gonna do, to hell with what’s happening!
Its not about excuses “the gym’s closed when I get home from work….It doesn’t open on a Sunday…” It doesn’t matter. There is always something that you can do. Take one of our students Brian. He’s committed to losing 20LBS, and has decided (note this word) that if he has to work late which he sometimes does that, in his own words – “I will not go to bed unless I have exercised or done a minimum of 30 push ups.” This goal works for him in that it is not an overwhelming task for him when he does have to work late, and it also keeps him on track – builds the habit.
Do you think he will succeed in achieving his goal? Well, I do. We all know someone who’s getting rich, getting fit, getting more right now. So become that person. It is ALWAYS mental/ belief.
Like training, the way that you get results in your life is in daily attention, consistency, dedication, and of course not quittin’. It doesn’t all happen in one training session, but if you keep it up, increase the intensity, give yourself something to aim for then holy **** you’ll get there!
The one exercise that has been used by winners and warriors down through the ages, and right up to today is body weight exercises for developing incredible strength, will and determination. Forget weights and get with the body weight training systems used by Michael Jordan, Floyd Mayweather and a long list of the most vital and extraordinary athletes of all time.
Bodyweight training programs typically comprise a sequence of exercises such as body weight or free squats, many variations of pull-ups and push-ups and a variety of exercises similarly designed to enhance and improve overall balance and body conditioning.
They are much safer than conventional weights exercises because you are working with your own body exclusively, and directly impact much more of your body through the particular movements. This is your life, and we believe that you deserve to live it at the highest possible level.
By: Stevey McGeown
About the Author:
If you want a strong and lean body, then go to http://www.truecorestrength.com for Stevey’s FREE Tips on Bodyweight Exercises For Strength and Endurance.
