Fitness Tips For Life

I have not posted about this before, but about a year or maybe a little longer ago i wrote a little review on the Fat Loss for Idiots diet.

When I first read about the diet I was initially skeptical because that whole “Lose 9 Pounds in 11 Days” bit sounds more than a bit stupid  but I have certainly been proven wrong as many people seem to have lost that in the first week and then continued to lose for a few weeks after at least. Eventually of course most people need to really ramp up the exercise to lose tons of weight but initially at least there are some great losses to read about.

I ended up writing a positive review about Fat Loss for Idiots and since I have commenting on this blog turned on it seems that people have really taken to discussing how the diet is going for them and what they like and don’t like about Fat Loss for Idiots.

So far over 200 comments have been posted about the diet and I have been blown away by the amount that people are sharing and how supportive everyone has been to each other, it is really fantastic to see.

Thanks for visiting. To get started why not subscribe to the 21 day fitness plan at the top of this page. Look in the red box, it is right there.. Thanks Bill

In this second weightlifting article I want to start by hoping that you are not feeling to sore from your first workout, you will make short term gains regardless but you will want to have interest in doing weights over the long term. Today I want to go over the benefits of strength training as well as go over the Tuesday/Friday workouts.

There are many great benefits to doing weight training. The first benefit is that extra muscle mass will burn more calories allow you either to eat more food or lose fat quicker. The second benefit is that you will improve your posture and the way you move on a daily basis as you will get rid of those little aches and pains caused by weak core muscles. And finally you will feel better about yourself because of the changes that YOU are making to your body.

Here is the 2nd Day of a Two day split

Upper Back Exercises

Bent over Rows, to do a row you hold a light weight in your hand and put your right knee on one chair and your right hand on another chair now with your back straight raise you left hand parallel with your body and slightly back so that the stress is on your upper back muscles. Do three sets of ten repetitions of this with each arm. Read the rest of this entry »

Strength training will probably be the hardest thing to get started now that you have cardio under your belt. The tough thing about weight training for everyone is that they do not realize how hard they are pushing themselves in the beginning and end up being sore for four or five days afterwards. For the first few workouts just go through the motions and do not push yourself to hard so that your muscles can recover from these initial workouts.

Weight lifting bodyparts

The body can be split into eight muscle groups: shoulders, chest, back, biceps, triceps, Quadriceps, hamstrings and calves. We are going to start with a two day split right off the bat so that the workouts do not take as long and so that you can recover half of your body each day instead of the whole body. On Mondays and Thursdays you will work shoulders, chest, triceps and calves. On Tuesdays and Fridays you will work back, biceps, quads and hamstrings. Today we will look at the Monday/Thursday weight workout. Read the rest of this entry »

Many people have questions about how many sets they should do for and exercise and how many reps as well as how many exercises for each muscle group. The question is very large and the answer is even larger as it depends on what your goals are.

How many exercises per muscle group

First of all we should look at the number of exercises that you are going to do per muscle group. There are nine muscle groups that we can distinguish just for simplicity; calves, quadriceps, hamstrings, abs, chest, back, shoulders, biceps and triceps. The best way to work a muscle is to work all of the muscle fibers and the only way to do this is to do exercises that work the muscle from different angles so that you can tax each part of the muscle. Often advanced body builders will do three or four exercises for each muscle group. This means for example that for your shoulders you would do front lateral raises for the front deltoid, side lateral raises for the medial deltoid and reverse flyes for the rear deltoid.

Number of sets per exercise

Next we will look at the number of sets you will do for each muscle group. I believe that it is important to not overtrain your muscles and the best way to do this is to reduce the number of sets that you do in each workout. The way that I get the sets going when I have had a long layoff is to do one set for each exercise and three exercises for each muscle group.

You will be able to gauge when it is time to increase the number of sets by listening to your body. Your muscles quickly adapt to any kind of weight training and so after a couple of weeks you will be able to add a set to one of the exercises and then another set to another exercise maybe a week later and as you get stronger you will feel you have more in you after you have rested a bit after a set and can come back with another set to further push your muscles. It is most important though to go to failure in each of your sets then it is to just do more sets. Try your best to make each set more difficult instead of trying to get more sets in per muscle group.

Read the rest of this entry »

There are a few things that you can do to gain muscle weight fast. The first thing to remember is that to gain muscle weight fast you need to take care of your diet, you need to train correctly and finally you need to rest very well so that you can make the most of those workouts.

In the last article I pointed out that most people do not use weightlifting as a form of exercise although it is critical to do this instead of just cardio to help drive up your metabolism. There are a few problems though. Most people as they try to gain muscle weight fast make the critical mistake of overtraining while also not eating and resting enough.

So lets look at the proper way for eating, resting and training to maximize gains and minimize overtraining in your quest to gain muscle weight fast. Read the rest of this entry »

There are several reasons that people do not lift weights but several more reasons why it is important to add weightlifting to your health and fitness regimen.

This week I am hoping to write a few articles that will help you understand what it takes to lift weights as well as the how and why weightlifting is important, but today lets just start with the basics.

First of all did you know that fewer that 10% of the population actually does any weightlifting in their pursuit of fitness? I know that the number is low for a few reasons. Read the rest of this entry »

Your chest is a large muscle muscle group the more scientific term is the pectoral muscles. The funny thing is that for most people the chest is undeveloped because we really don’t use it as much as a arm muscle or leg muscle.

The best chest exercises are Bench Presses and Flyes.

There are also different ways to hit the chest muscles using angles. Think about bench presses as an example. If you change the angle of the bench so that it is higher at the end then it will put more tension on the upper pecs, flat bench presses are great for hitting the entire pectoral muscle. If you can find a decline bench then bench presses on this will really hit the bottom part of your chest. You will find declines are easier to do heavier weights with and this is because there is just more muscle there. Read the rest of this entry »

I just watched the Biggest Loser and they had Dave from Mens Fitness on. In a challenge tonight it was a better food choice type challenge The contestants were supposed to be choosing one food over the other.

Multigrain bagel with light cream cheese vs a McDonald’s style have and Egg McMuffin

OK, I like the Egg McMuffin lots. Thesy are yummy and greasy and not good for you and neither is the bagel. The Egg McMuffin was deemed to be better but man that is a lot fo calories

Burritos vs 18 light beers

We all know that burritos are not really good for you and they were apparently a better choice than 18 light beers but come on. The kicker was that 17 light beers would have been better. Would either of these be a healthy choice? Beer will slow you metabolism, the Burritos have protein but are really fatty.

Calories are not the only thing that matters for healthy eating. Watch the carbs, watch the fat!

Then to make things worse the trainers tip from Bob Harper was to eat Dark Chocolate. Again I love chocolate but isn’t it a bit irresponsible to be touting the wonders of dark chocolate a couple of days before Halloween?

I am still watching the show on the PVR right now but just had to comment on that.

I have been looking through some of my blog posts for this year and realized that I have posted a lot about eating and not quite enough about exercise. You do exercise a lot don’t you?

Well if you are like most people the answer may be a sheepish no…that’s ok, change is near.

I wanted to kick off some exercise posts by today letting you know 5 exercise myths and why you have to stop believing them. Read this mythbusting a few times so that you are not as scared about getting scared about exercise. Read the rest of this entry »

I have been meaning to start off a series of articles on the best exercises for each bodypart and a bit of a write up on each muscle group but I just found a great page with little animations of 70 core exercises

70 Core Exercises with descriptions

As you are probably aware the core of your body, your midsection has a lot of muscles. You use core muscles for bending over, getting up, standing, walking leaning to either side. an a host of other ways as well.

I have hurt my back a couple of times including once really badly earlier this year, (and a better way to warmup) and I am sure you know as well how hard it is to suffer along with a bad back or sides or abs.

So check out the exercises. They may help a bit with weight loss, they will definitley help your posture and how large you look and these exercises are critical for getting you in better physical condition