Stair climbers have long been a mainstay piece of equipment in many home fitness centers. They are considered to be the third most popular choice in home exercise equipment that is available today.

Stair steppers are simple to use since they simulate the beneficial action of climbing up stairs. Of course, with real stairs you are done when you reach the top, but with this fitness equipment you can continue climbing as long as your legs endure.

Why are stair climbers good
One of the reasons that stair climbers are so popular is that they are very effective at strengthening and building the muscles in your legs, thighs and buttocks. These large muscles are responsible for a great deal of overall body strength and are also responsible for a large percentage of the calories that you burn each day. Once you build up this group of large muscles, the effects on your metabolism will be significant because a faster metabolic rate equals more calories burned.

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Looking to make a change and lose some weight? I have reviewed the top diet on the internet and you can go and read over 200 comments people have made about why this diet has worked well for them, as well as some of the problems.

Here is an article on what to look for if you are out in the marketplace for a treadmill. A treadmill is a great piece of equipment to have around the house because it simulates walking or running and can be supplemented with hand weights to try get a bit more of a workout out of the equipment, Be careful of your coordination though.

If you are going to buy a treadmill it is indeed a very good investment as exercising in the open or going to a gym might not be equally possible at all times. The climatic conditions are the main hurdle along with the availability of time for a professional person to go for a fitness program at a certain time daily. Keeping one’s own treadmill at home can solve this problem, making it possible to exercise daily according to one’s own ease.

As there are to be seen various varieties and styles of treadmills available in the market, choosing one to fit you and your home best becomes quite difficult. Making a checklist to narrow down your search would be a good option that will help you in selecting a good equipment for you.

By making a checklist and researching for the different makes, you may be able to buy a good treadmill for you.

Add Various Guarantees Offered To Your Checklist
There are different assurances provided by various treadmill manufacturers, ranging from 2-5 years or may be of 10years. While checking the warranty, you must get it clarified whether it includes the motor only or other parts of the mechanism are also guaranteed .
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I am trying to get a jump start on the winter for everyone by finding some great articles on how best to look for and buy exercise equipment for your home. Most people will just join a gym to use expensive exercise equipment but really there are many reasons to instead buy fitness equipment. I have a few pros and cons on this.

Buying Exercise Equipment

Buying exercise equipment is not for everyone and can be expensive. First things first, I do own some exercise equipment. I have written about this before but I have a exercise bike and a elliptical trainer and these are trade in used exercise equipment that we got from trading in our older, other equipment that we bought years ago. It seems to be a great way to me to buy high quality equipment and then trade it in for other equipment when you are bored of it.

OK, so how much will it cost? I think that a good piece of exercise equipment costs between 500 and 1,000 dollars so this really is a big expense for most people. I remember getting crappy stair climbers in the 80s and they just ended up being good clothes hangers just as my elliptical trainer is but at least the elliptical trainer gets used for working out as well.

Priority of buying cardio equipment

The key to buying and using cardio exercise equipment is the schedule and commitment to use the equipment. I hate to say it but if you pay a bundle of money for exercise equipment it will be a motivator to use the equipment, not only that but the equipment will be smooth and comfortable to use. Find a daily time that you will use the treadmill or bike. I think that if you do not use the equipment in the morning then try to use it in the evening while you are watching TV. It is good exercise and the scheduling will force you to commit.

One last thing. Using cardio equipment over time can become really boring for most people. The best way to use cardio equipment is to get a distance goal to hit. Pull out a map and look at some distances that would be fun to drive to that you can simulate with your new or old exercise equipment. Maybe a roadtrip of 100 miles this month or a great roadtrip trip over the course of a year.

So for the rest of the week I am going to scour the internet for some great buying guide type articles, stuff that I will learn from as well as you so that the next time that we go out looking for exercise equipment we will be able to make better decisions.

In a paper published in The Journal of Physiology, Helge, Stallknecht, Richter, Galbo, and Keins from Copenhagen shed light on fat oxidation during exercise and physical activity. Their observations suggest that fat oxidation during exercise reflects a fine interplay between the cardiovascular, neurological, endocrine and muscle metabolic systems.

During exercise and physical activity, the primary fuels used by muscles are carbohydrate and fat. When mild exercise is performed there is a tendency to burn relatively more fat and less glucose, but as exercise becomes more intense, a higher fraction of the energy demands of the muscle are supplied by glucose, until at the highest intensities almost only carbohydrates are used. Is this shift in fuel source a property of the muscle itself, or does it represent the interplay between what is happening in the muscle and the exercise-related responses in the rest of the body”

The study, performed at the Copenhagen Muscle Research Centre at the University of Copenhagen, examined muscle fuel utilisation in response to graded exercise performed with only one leg. Nine healthy males performed one-leg exercise at 25, 45, and 85% of maximal workload. Their results showed that, when only a small mass of muscle is contracting, and blood flow and oxygen supply are not limited by central circulatory capacity, the shift in fuel source from fat to glucose as exercise intensity increases does not occur.

The Journal of Physiology findings show that the adaptations in the rest of the body are the key to this fuel source shift during whole body exercise. They also help scientists understand why athletes “hit the wall” during events like the marathon, and they have implications for the adaptations made in middle-aged adults who are using exercise to prevent or treat conditions like diabetes and obesity. If the mechanisms can be fully understood, it may be possible to develop agents that allow fat oxidation to be maintained even during intense exercise with a large muscle mass.

Interval training is a way of doing cardio that will give you the ability to make gains in time and distance much more easily than any other method. The principle of interval training is that you push yourself really hard and then you slow down.

This repetitive form of training leads to your body needing to adapt to changes and this is really great for you. The body begins to build new capillaries, and is better able to take in and deliver oxygen to the working muscles. Muscles develop a higher tolerance to the build-up of lactate, and the heart muscle is strengthened. These changes result in improved performance particularly within the cardiovascular system.

When people begin running they automatically do interval training where they will alternate walking and running to get a better workout in. As people get better at running they will start just running and not stopping until the 30 or 60 minute run is over. The upside of this is that you will get a much better workout and feel fantastically exhausted at the end, the downside of interval training is that you are going to be pushing your comfort zone so the workout itself is going to be painful

So how can you implement interval training into your regular workouts? I have a few examples. When you begin running as I said before you are going to have trouble running for any length of time so you decide that you are going for 20 minutes and you will do cycles of jogging for 30 seconds and then walking for 30 seconds. As you get better at running you will be able to jog for one minute and then walk for 30 seconds. You will notice that your rest stays the same but the running time increases until you get to the point that you do not need a rest for your 30 minute run.

As an advanced runner you are not going to slow down for a walk but instead your will run for 5 minutes and then break into a spring for 30 seconds or a minute and then slow back down to your regular pace. As another way to do interval training you can go to another location that is more hilly and use the uphills to change up your pace. The hills are going to force you push harder to keep the same pace and of course the downhills are going to use different muscles but as far as exertion goes you will find the running easier.

Try interval training soon either indoors on a treadmill or outdoors as long as the weather cooperates.

I received an email from the creator of Turbulense Training and that is a guy named Craig Ballantyne. Craig told a story about how he created Turbulense Training and the techniques the way he made them but the part I was most interested to show you was the way that his Turbulense Training workouts look. Hidden at the bottom of the story was this bit.

I remember the exact day and exact workout that this all came together into the Turbulense Training program. It hit me as I was finishing my intervals. I knew I had found something that was like fat loss magic.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a way to put it in a pill. But I’ve
been able to put it down on paper in all of the Turbulense Training manuals.

The exact workout I used that day went like this…

Warm-up
1 set of Bodyweight Squats
1 set of pushups
1 set of Squats with the empty bar
1 set of light dumbbell chest presses
1 set of moderate weight barbell squats
1 set of moderate weight dumbbell chest presses

Strength Training Superset #1
Barbell Squats paired with Dumbbell Chest Presses
3 supersets, aiming for 8 reps per side per set

Strength Training Superset #2
DB Rows paired with Barbell Forward Lunges
3 supersets, aiming for 8 reps per set

Stationary Bike Intervals
After a warmup, I did 6 intervals of 45 seconds work and 45 seconds rest, finishing with a cool-down.

And from that point in time, I’ve tried to share this and all the
other Turbulense Training workouts with as many men and women as possible. The same men and women that I would see day-in and day-out performing the same ineffective slow-cardio fat loss programs, and not making a darn change month after month. And every day they would see me, soaked in sweat, feeling great and looking lean, and finishing another Turbulense Training workout.

As you can see most of this workout is based on tiring and quick workouts. A bit of the way that circuit training works. This is a great way to workout and as I have mentioned before Craig’s program is all the rage at the Mens Health and Mens Fitness magazines. To find out more about Turbulense training just go check out his site

I wanted to post this question and answer from the guy that created the Turbulence Training program because I know how many people just run through their cardio without doing it the right way. It is not a pleasant jog or a sprint you are looking for but instead something in between that you should strive for. Read on….

Question
I’ve been told to exercise in my “fat burning zone”. What’s the best cardio method for weight loss.

Answer:
Cardio is not the only solution.

Clearly it adds to the energy deficit and overall calorie balance that favors fat loss.

BUT it’s not the “be all & end all” of fat loss success – and that is anecdotally supported by the number of overweight distance runners.

I almost never recommend long, slow cardio…simply because no one I train or consult with has the time for this, and it doesn’t work any better than shorter, less frequent, more intense interval training sessions.

Five or six days of 45-minute cardio sessions in my fat-burning zone? Yeah right, like anyone has time for that.

If I told you that you could get the same results (or better, as recent research suggests) in three 20-minute interval sessions each week as you could from three or five 45-minute slower cardio sessions each week, which would you choose?

Yes, intervals feel about 10x’s harder than regular, slow, boring cardio. And yes, you won’t be able to read your people magazine when doing intervals. And you might breath a little heavy. So if you’re worried about sweating, than maybe fat loss isn’t for you.

But if you don’t mind going against the crowd, intervals are worth every second for the superior results.

Now here’s one reason why Turbulence Training may actually work better for women than men…

More women tend to start Turbulence Training after having spent months or years using slow cardio and light (if any) weights. And selfishly, I could not be any happier – because when these dedicated women start using the shorter, more intense strength and interval sessions they make rapid progress and make me look like a genius.

The accolades come pouring in…I have dozens of testimonials from women thanking me for saving them TIME while helping them finally breakthrough stubborn fat loss plateaus (and eliminating the pain from their overuse injuries that occurred due to high volumes of cardio). Their words make me feel like a million bucks because the Turbulence Training workouts are making these women feel like a million bucks.

Your knees are the pivot point for any kind of exercise be it running, biking or just about any team sport as well. Being critical to exercise it is important to keep your knees strong. There are a few things that you can do to protect your knees and care for them so that you can avoid the debilitating knee surgeries that so many people in even their 30s and 40s need to get.

You knees are made up of cartilage at the join on both the top and bottom bones and ligaments and tendons around the sides and through the middle. Over time it is the cartlage that wears and sometimes chips off, I can tell this myself as sometimes I will get a bit of a locking in my knees for a few hours until the bits of cartilage floating around become unstuck in the joint.

First of all there is a difference between protecting your knees and having an injury that involves the knee. As you no doubt have noticed your knees only going in one direction and either hyerextending (stretching to far) or having your knee go sideways can create an injury that will take anywhere from a few days to a few months to heal. If you do have a basic injury to your knee it is incredibly important to let it heal for as long as it takes. An injury that does not heal fully will be very susceptible to re injury afterwards as we have seen in many pro athletes.

If you injure you knee it will swell up very quickly as there is quite a bit of blood flow in your lower body so besides the obvious of going to the doctor to have you knee tested you also want to take down the swelling. Ice you knee for a half hour once an hour so 30 minutes on and 30 minutes off for the first day. On the second day and after alternate heat and ice for 20 minutes each as often as you can. The ice will keep the swelling down and the heat will help you speed up the healing. In this early healing time even though you may have a bit of strength in your knee always wrap your knee and be very careful not to push it at all you definitely do not want your knee to get hurt again this soon after.

I had a lot of problems with my knees over the years especially my left knee because I always did come back too quickly from injury. Now my knees seem to be pretty good because my main lower body exercise is low impact. I bike as much as I can and this has strengthened all of the muscles around my knee so that I am now quite strong. One problem that still persists though is running, I can not seem to do any consistent running for more than a few weeks without my knees hurting and having to give it up.

Another thing that will help your knees is to not lock out your knee during weight workouts. When doing squats or leg presses it is important to not lock out your knees as this is another way that you can cause harm to your knee cartilage.

Soccer has always been known as a great alternative to jogging as a great form of exercise but a new study seems to show that Soccer is actually much better as a form of exercise than jogging.

University of Copenhagen sports scientist Peter Krustrup and his colleagues conducted their research on 37 men. The researchers strapped heart monitors to their chests and compared blood samples and muscle tissue before and after matches and jogging sessions. The men were split into groups of soccer players, joggers, and couch potatoes.

After 12 weeks, researchers found that the body fat percentage in the soccer players dropped by 3.7 percent, compared to about 2 percent for the joggers. The soccer players also increased their muscle mass by almost 4.5 pounds, whereas the joggers didn’t have any significant change

So why these results? Well I think that the excitement that people feel when playing a team sport helps but more importnantly to play soccer means to jog around some and sprint some and the faster-slower type exercise confuses you muscles and helps you get in a much better workout.

Do you agree? Now that winter is coming it would be a great time to look into one of those fun indoor soccer leagues.

I just noticed yesterday that the tour De France has started up again for the year. I am a biker but I only ride as far as to work everyday, I have never ridden my bike a hundred miles before. Every year I watch the tour and I do not watch it just for the drama and entertainment value I watch it partially just to see that there is no real limits except for the ones that we create for ourselves.

This year the Tour de France will cover 2200 miles in 20 days. For someone that has never ridden a 100 miles in a day, also known as a century ride, this kind of race still astounds me. Not only are many of the stages of the Tour De France over 100 miles long but there are a series of stages that go through the mountains were the climb may be tough but also the lack of oxygen at higher elevations makes these race stages even more difficult.

There is another shadow race that occurs the day after each Tour de France stage and this is where people get together and race the same stage that the pros did the day before.

So next time you are on the couch and thinking about how you can get just a little more exercise in your day to lose weight just remember that over the next three weeks over 150 of the best riders in the world are racing as fast as cars to try to be the first to get through Paris.

Later this week I will post a sample training schedule that the Tour de France racers use.