Archive for the “Workout Plan” Category

Stretching in the morning for many people, exercising the first thing in the morning is convenient. It may or may not be the most welcome time, but it is convenient. Some people are morning people like me, ready to dash out into daily living with oomph. Many more people are very slow getting going in the morning and need a few minutes to really wake up. Nothing can or should be done about the way we wake up.

The thought of indulging in a few exercises upon awaking is enough to discourage almost anyone. But try them a few times and perhaps you will see a difference. stretching exercises can be profitable.

Why stretching in the morning?

When we sleep and therefore let our muscles sleep, blood tends to collect in the internal organs, or “splanchnic circulation.” Very little blood is needed in the muscles, or “peripheral circulation.” If on waking there is no noticeable muscular activity, blood very slowly leaves the splanchnic pool, resulting in sluggish circulation to the brain and muscles. The person wakes up groggy, listless, and without energy. Read the rest of this entry »

Well spring seems to have finally arrived here in Calgary and not a moment too soon. There has been a lot of snow and late snow at that across Canada and the northern US.

Many people have been trying to follow through on New Years resolutions and others of courese did not bother. Well here we are at the beginning of May and as the month starts we look down to see a bit of flab, or the muscles don’t look as firm as we would like or even our eating amy not be up to our wished for standard.

Don’t despair it is not to late to be ready for Summer.

I know that I pushed myself harder then usualy back in February and March to get ready for our family vacation to Hawaii and was pretty happy about the changes that I made. Really all you need to do is make a few short term goals. Read the rest of this entry »

Spring is here and it is a really good time for you to start getting in shape if you haven’t been over the Winter. Here are a series of things to watch and be careful for so that you do not end up with a painful injury right out of the start of your spring exercise.

Here are pointers to keep you out of trouble and allow you the most fun—pointers to help you avoid nuisances and injury. These are tips you otherwise will learn the hard way. Hardened sportsmen and competing athletes know that the best workout can be wrecked by inattention to several small, yet important, details. It will not take you long to discover your own sensitive and tender areas. Experience will soon be your guide. Do be most attentive in the beginning of your workouts outdoors.

Protection For Exposed Areas

In your “exercise infancy” pressure surfaces and exposed areas are subjected to unaccustomed abuse. Lips are very susceptible to chapping and cracking, not only in windy or cold weather, but during almost any activity rigorous enough to cause mouth breathing. Worse yet, there is an unexplained tendency during strenuous exercise to lick the lips, which further aggravates chapping. A thin coat of vaseline or lipsil should be applied over the lips and around the mouth to provide reliable protection. Read the rest of this entry »

A cooling-off period should follow any workout. Cooling off, or more accurately tapering off, consists of slowing down to a crawl but keeping moving. After a vigorous game of squash, you might leisurely yet purposefully mosey around the court for two or three laps at a decelerating dawdle. There are sound reasons for a relaxed dawdle.

While you are actively engaged in exercise your heart is pumping out blood much faster in order to keep the muscles supplied with oxygen and nutrient. During this exercise the blood, having left the muscles, arrives at the other end of the muscles, or the veins. Blood reaches the muscles due to the forceful pumping action of the heart. But there is no such mechanism to effect return of the blood to the heart.

Blood flow during workouts

Once blood passes across the muscles and into the veins, the main channels to the heart, some pumps must be found. Unlike the arteries the veins are thin-walled and almost devoid of muscle. They are easily compressible. When veins are filled with blood, the pressure of adjacent contracting muscles produces a ‘ ‘milking action” on the veins with the propulsion of blood toward the center of the body because veins have valves which direct blood flow to the heart. Read the rest of this entry »

I am much more of a low intensity exerciser than I am a high intensity exerciser. Some people wonder what this means because they kill themselves working out but I would rather exercise in longer boughts of exercise throughout the day instead of killing myself on an elliptical trainer for 30 minutes.

There is a misconception that I believe still exists today: The harder you go on the cardio the more fat you burn. I’ don’t really agree with this at all. If you learn about the basics of the human body and how the energy systems work you find out that it is in fact the opposite.

How fat burning works

Fat burning occurs and peaks during sustained low intensity exercise in the presence of oxygen. This means that when energy is required quickly for short or medium bursts of intense exercise ATP and Glycogen becomes the source of that energy. They can be used instantly and without oxygen resulting in a by-product that everyone has experienced, Lactic Acid. Anaerobic Exercise predominately uses these fuels during brief periods that cannot be sustained. Aerobic Exercise utilizes fat as the dominant fuel because the low amount of intensity is sustainable allowing blood supply to the muscles that is rich in oxygen, fats’ catalyst. Read the rest of this entry »

I just ran across a great post written by Leo over at Zen Habits. I have mentioned before that I have tried to be a runner in the past and my body seemed to let me down. This Spring i am hoping to do a 10k and am still figuring out my training routine which can not be a good sign.

Anyway Leo just ran his second marathon and although it is nice to see what people think about and experience during something as grueling as a marathon the really great thing to me with the article is the experience of this compared to his last (actually his first) marathon and the tips that he gives for how to be successful in running a marathon.

One of the things that I always think about and like to write about here is instant gratification. you know the “don’t eat this” “make sure you do this exercise” kinds of posts. One of the great things about Leo’s post is that he kind of takes you through his plan for the marathon, how well he executed on his plan and finally some tips for people thinking of doing a marathon from his very fresh eyes of doing it this last weekend.

We all love watching X-Weighted and one of the real highlights of the show is not just the transformations in just a few months but also the no nonsense way in which Paul Plakas helps, pushes and fights against what people want to do in order to make them that much better.

I just saw on a comment from Paul on my X-Weighted post that Paul has his own website now which is great!

Paul’s fans as well as many people that want to be on the X-Weighted show email me and comment quite often so now people can go straight to the source. I am not sure how much Paul has to do with getting people onto the X-Weighted show but perhaps if you visit his website you will be able to find this out.

Also, if you live in the Edmonton area Paul Plakas is a personal trainer as well as a fitness show trainer and I am sure would be a fantastic one. Visit the new site and find out more about Paul and send him an email.

So you think that losing weight is too hard? Well, think again or a while, because choosing a suitable workout plan that would actually help you lose weight is even harder. The weight loss industry is getting bigger and bigger and there are so many workout options out there that it often becomes difficult for the average person to decide which are suitable and which aren’t.

These three questions are enough to get you started in deciding if the exercise programs that you are looking at are going to be a good fit for you so that you will do an exercise program long term instead of just for a couple of weeks.

Is the workout program easy to demonstrate? Before choosing any weight loss workout or exercise, make sure that it is easy to understand. It doesn’t matter how well the professional fitness trainers will understand the workout plan; what matters is how well YOU understand it, because it is YOU who is going to sweat it out in the gym. If any workout is incomprehensible to you, you will have a tough time carrying it out! Some workout plans are written in such a way that they are very difficult to understand for the layman.

Will I be able to carry it out the exercise program? It is not enough to just choose a workout plan; in fact a workout plan is meaningless if you cannot carry it out properly. There maybe many different reasons why trying out a given workout plan might seem impossible for you. For example, maybe that the workouts don’t fit into your lifestyle! If you are used to sitting on the couch for hours and if your workout plan demands that you do intense exercises for hours, you won’t be able to do it, would you? What you need instead is a workout plan that consists of lighter, shorter exorcises that you can carry out easily! For some others, time is a huge problem. If you have a 9 to 5 job, it may seem difficult for you to find even an hour for the gym. If this is your case, then you need to choose workouts that you can do at home. Don’t worry; there are plenty of home-based exercises that will help you to burn as much fat as you would by hitting the gym!

Will this workout system actually help me lose weight? Make no mistake -there are actually two groups of exercises out there. One group will help you tone up your muscles and give you the six-pack abs that you desire, but if you are looking forward to losing weight then this group of exercises is not suitable for you. There is another group of exorcises that will actually help you shed off pounds; it is this group that you should really choose! Research thoroughly and check whether the workouts you are choosing will make you fitter or actually help you lose weight!

Choosing the right weight loss workouts for yourself can seem to be difficult at first, but with a little research, you will be able to find suitable exercises for yourself!

Well the title is a bit of an exaggeration, but there is a new fitness program based around getting exercise in 6 minute bursts. I kind of think of this as a exercise program that takes place between TV commerical breaks but it is interesting anyway.

Fitness pro Tracey Mallet devised “Sexy in 6″: Six weeks of six-minute exercise sessions throughout the day.

“Short blasts of energy, short blasts of workout you can do between your upper body and lower body,”

Combining cardio, strength, Pilates, and yoga for interval cross-training.

“No down time, so it’s easy fun and you burn more calories and the after burn is so much greater,” says Mallett.

Read the rest of this entry »

With kids in the house and priorities everywhere I decided that this year the only way that I would be able to get weight workouts in would be to keep them short and increase the intensity. Here were my thoughts on the perfect workout for me.

I am not 20 anymore so I knew that I had to be realistic about my goals

I need a quick workout

I wanted to do my whole body in one day

I wanted to be able to recover from weight workouts but still be able to do cardio on a lot of the exercise days of the week

I ended up coming up with a quick 25 minute workout that would be as hard as I could and feel a little wiped for an hour or so but still have my evenings free to spend with my wife and kids. So here is what I came up with: Circuit training with weights in about 20 minutes.

Warmup, 5 minutes of cardio, eighter a bike with some light weights or the elliptical machine

1. Warmup set of really light bench press, shoulder press, and one armed bent over rows across my bench.

2. A long set of the following

10 reps Bench press
10 reps each of alternating front laterals (front of shoulders), side laterals (side of shoulders) and bent over rear laterals (back of shoulders)
10 reps one armed bent over row across bench for each arm
10 bicep curls
10 tricep extensions
10 squats
25 each of crunches and leg lifts

This is one long set that takes about 7 or 8 minutes and each exercise is done to exhaustion. I am really winded at the end and it took a bit to figure out how much weight each exercise should use so that I was done at 10 reps or so

3. repeat step two

4. stretch a bit, and I am done

This workout has worked really well for me, it is quick and hits every muscle group, actually each muscle group is really hit hard and I a, pretty shaky by the end of the workout. I do this workout three times a week on alternating days and it does not really cut into my schedule much. Of course this is only one kind of workout, you would want to change things up exercise and rep-wise and probably change to a longer workout at times during the year to really shock the muscles on a regular basis.