Last week was a really cold week up here in Calgary. I rode to work once and the temperature other than that has been dropping to around -20 which is a bit too cold for me. I hummed and hawed about my exercise and even though I should transition immediately to indoor training I was a little slow. Last night I finally worked out indoors.

I got home from work, changed into shorts and popped in a DVD of the Survivorman TV show. I hit the exercise bike for 26 minutes and then my elliptical trainer for another few minutes and then relished the fact that my indoor workout was a great way to keep myself in shape.

Even though I ride my bike almost everyday from about March to October or November I really am not sure how good that workout is. I try to ride quickly but the breeze and the fact that I am moving stops the sweat from really building up on my skin and clothes so it is really hard to judge the workout.

When you are training indoors you can definitely feel how hard you are working out. Last night when I was on the exercise bike I could really feel how hard I was working and my next workout on the elliptical trainer will be a lot more difficult in that it will work my arms well. After having a few workouts indoors I am sure that my body will be sore again. Everytime that you change you workout you get sore because you are working the muscles differently then you did before.

Of course when I wrote the last articles about this subject I talked a lot about the weights in my basement and how you need to have those too. The strength training that you do will add a lot of calories burned, mix up your workouts and actually help you lose fat. Did you know that a pound of extra muscle that you put on will force your body to burn an extra 50 calories a day? This can add up really quickly.

What do you think? Are your workouts tough enough? Are you working out indoors or hoping to just wait until spring comes back?

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I think I made it clear last week in one article about doing weight workouts to increase your strength that it is importatn to do a very few sets with low reps to failure. I keep finding however referwnces to the 300 workout. The 300 workout si a workout inspired by the movie called 300 and is supposed to make you lean and incredibbly strong and buff. We will see how this influences regular workouts but this is long and mentally grueling with lots of sets and lots of reps for a workout.

Chris Aitkin is a martial arts trainer and expert and inspired this spin to the 300 workout which although I believe would work very well for overall fitness would also take a long time and really beat you up. I can’t wait to try it out.

Ever since the movie “300″ came out and the rippling abdomens and rock-hard pectorals of dozens of stars and extras made their debut, many versions of the so-called “300 workout” have arisen on the internet. As a trainer and someone who enjoyed watching that movie, I was interested in what types of exercises these body-breaking workouts were employing, and I managed to find three or four different variations on the same theme. Read the rest of this entry »

How long should you exercise? Experts say that you should exercise for at least 20 minutes a day. I don’t know about you but 20 minutes is not a long time to exercise. If you get up just 10minutes early and get 20 minutes of exercise the you will have to rush around and still get to work on time.

20 minutes for exercise is easy to find.

If you have dinner a few minutes early and then do the cleaning up and have your workout before starting your evening routine you will never miss the time. If you are really ambitious you can wolf down lunch and go for a walk or some other exercise at lunch.

20 minutes exercise twice a day for the extra ambitious

How about getting some exercise on the way to work. I feel blessed that I can ride my bike to work but soon the weather will turn too cold aqnd I will need to drive. But you can just park a few blocks from work and walk to work. After work you get that time to unwind walking back to the car or the bus or train.

Try to be creative. There are many ways to get exercise every day and if it is important you will find the way.

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 .
Read the rest of this entry »

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

Last night on the Biggest Loser I found that the over arching theme to the show seems to be that people were working out harder than they ever had before. Actually some of the people did not even know how hard that they could push themselves.

Our mind is very slow to adapt when it comes to diet and exercise. If you live a sedentary lifestyle of years and then begin to work out your body will think that it can run let’s say 100 feet. So you run 100 feet and your chest is sore and you are out of wind. Now let’s say you do this every day and after two weeks you finish this “workout” of running 100 feet and you are still winded and your chest is sore. Your mind thinks that you are just as strong but really you could push yourself a lot harder.

Discomfort is a trigger to the brain telling you that you have pushed yourself to hard and no one like to be in discomfort. Most trainers know that you have a sticking point in your own mind where you think that you cannot go any farther or harder. This is just a psychological sticking point that is not real but just a level that you are not comfortable going past. The trouble is that this is the level where all of your gains come from.

I am a victim of this lack of pushing myself as easily as anyone else. The thing that helps is to remember before your workout that you are setting low levels of limits on yourself and to set goals every single time that you workout.

Another way that you can make yourself work out harder on a regular basis is to read and see success stories. I am sure that this is the reason that I watch the Biggest Loser and also the reason that success stories are always so popular in the sports sections in newspapers be it home run kings or the greatest quarterback this week kind of stories.

Stop looking at how hard you are working as being the hardest that you can work out. There is always a step farther, a pound more, a minute quicker. Try today to make sure you have great goals and you will make greater improvements in your health and fitness endeavors.

I find that when I start working out hard or eating well that I just dive into the one thing and so many other things in my life suffer because I put the blinders on. This is of course wrong and I really got a chance to see it last week when my wife was complaining that she really wants to lose some weight.

Last week my wife decided that she wanted to make changes she came up with the following:

Eat less junk
Exercise more
Eat better
Lose weight

Well all of these things are related so you would think from the outset that, “hey this should be easy”, well it seems maybe no note so easy.

I told her then and I reiterate that when you have these related ideas you just don’t worry about the past and what happened (eating and exercise are really easy to have ugly baggage about) and instead just decide.

Decide to get up and workout after dropping the kids to school.
Decide not to eat the chocolate that I have left in the pantry.
Decide to eat the three meals and snacks during the day so that you are not looking for binge foods.

Over the last few days we have been eating much better in the house and my wife has made lots of great meals with lots of leftovers in the freezer for my lunch. Looks like we will be doing this together. Also today while sitting waiting for me to get home from shopping on a Sunday afternoon my wife spontaneously decided to workout which for both of us is rare on a Sunday.

A split schedule is a way to change up your workout so that instead of working your body all in one day you work your body over two or three days. There are a few rules that people tend to use to do these workouts and I will try to list the muscle groups that you will work on which days. The real advantage to doing a split schedule is that you get a chance to really push the muscles, do more exercises and hopefully rest them more in between workouts.

When you first start working out you probably work your whole body on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The idea of a split schedule is that you will work your whole body once or twice in a week. On a two day split you will work your whole body on Monday and Tuesday and again on Thursday and Friday.

Here are the major muscle groups:
Quadriceps, hamstrings, chest, back, shoulders, biceps, and triceps

Here is a list of the minor muscle groups
Abdominals, calves, forearms, lower back and traps. Usually you only do specific exercises for you calves and abdominals until you become an advanced weightlifter or bodybuilder.

First the rules
You don’t want to work a muscle group directly on consecutive days as you do not want to overtrain it.
You want to only do one or two big muscle group in a workout
Read the rest of this entry »

OK now we can talk about one of the main determining factors on whether you will go to the gym now or then or all of the time. You may think motivation will always carry you through but in actual fact if you are only a block away from the gym you will probably have a better chance of making it to the gym on a regular basis.

The closest health club to your house may not be the best one for you but the important thing is to look at your schedule and decide when and where you are going to work out. In the past I have worked out before work, at lunch and in the evening. Decide when in your schedule you would like to fit in your exercise and from there decide if you are going to work out before work? Are you going to go to the health club at lunch? Are you going to go to the gym after work or after dinner? One other time that you may think about a workout is on the weekend. If you are going to be working out during the week closer to your workplace then maybe going to the gym on the weekend is just not that important to you. On the other hand if you have a busy schedule during the week then going to the health club on the weekends may be one of your best options and in that case you will want the gym to be close to home.

I have found in the past that the price that a gym charges is based on how far it is from the downtown core. Here in Calgary I was once able to join a gym in a non residential area for $19 per month and another downtown for $55 per month..apparently a good deal though. You are going to find that if you want to have a buddy or spouse join a health club with you then it will have to be close for both of you and convenient for both of you as partnerships in the gym are really hard to keep.