Fitness Armour

Contrary to popular belief ab exercises are not the best way to reduce your waist size. Every time I step into a gym I see people spending tons of time concentrating on ab exercises. Although they may help you strengthen the ab muscles, they will never burn the fat off your waist line. Ab exercises simply do not increase your metabolism enough to burn the fat and get the results you are looking for. So forget about doing hundreds of crunches, situps, leglifts, and hours of cardio.

The most effective way to reduce your waist is to do full body exercises. Working the legs, chest, and back are multi-joint exercises that can increase your metabolic rate for up to 48 hours. Once the fat burning hormones are released that fat around your waist doesn’t stand a chance.

So when you go to the gym have your workout planned. Do bench presses, squats, dumbbell presses, and other exercises that concentrate on the big three areas – legs, chest and back. Leave the cell phone at home and don’t use gym time to socialize. You need to make your workouts intense. Maybe 30 seconds between sets and 2

Why do they make this mistake? Simple, it is what is presented to them in every magazine they read, and website they click on. However, novice trainees lack the neuromuscular coordination that is required to stimulate enough muscle fibers that would require a week of rest. Not only that, but a total body workout composed of compound exercises will stimulate a greater hormone response in the body than any split routine cut out of a magazine. I have witnessed and talked to many trainees that frequent the gym with nothing to show for it. Quite simply, they are working out all wrong. A three day per week total body workout can produce more lean body mass than any split routine when utilized correctly.

A total body workout should be set up from largest to smallest. This means you train the largest muscle groups first, and your smaller muscle groups second. Your largest muscle groups include your legs, chest, and back. Shoulders, triceps, biceps, calves, and abdominals are your smaller muscle groups. For instance, triceps play a secondary role in all pressing movements. If you were to train your triceps first, your strength on bench press, or shoulder

A fitness ball is an essential device in exercises as its unstable surface compels multiple muscle groups to work together to stabilize the body while performing the exercises, improving strength, balance and coordination. In this way using the ball helps develop the use of the core muscles.

The core muscles refer to your deep abdominal muscles, back extensor muscles, and your hip muscles. These muscles are all important since they support your lower back and provide a stable foundation for your body, and are considered to be vital in relation to stopping lower back pain.

There are a variety of ways that you can use a fitness ball. One way is to perform free weight exercises for your upper body while sitting or lying on the ball. This will require you to employ your abdominal muscles. Using the ball in this way, will not only strengthen the major muscle groups of your upper body as per the standard exercise, it will also train a variety of stabilizers that are not trained in the standard exercise.

You can use the fitness ball to perform a variety of weight free exercises. For example, you can perform push-ups

One of my jobs for Men’s Health is to film exercise videos. And recently, I filmed the exercises from Brady Quinn’s workout that was featured in the magazine.

The weightlifting exercises in Brady’s workout include the front squat, the bench press, some dumbell rows and deadlifts, pullups, and even stability ball leg curls. These exercises are perfect for building a great, muscular physique as well as improving performance. You really have to see them performed properly to understand the benefits.

According to Men’s Health, “Brady Quinn’s workout centers on exercises that build strength, stability, speed, and power in the least amount of time. Quinn trains his upper body and lower body in every workout, with basic, muscle-building exercises that keep his metabolism elevated.”

The front squat is a tough version of the regular squat exercise and works almost every muscle in the body. Your abs get a heck of a workout, even though its a leg exercise. Brady will get bigger, faster, and stronger with this type of exercise.

The workout was designed by one of the experts at the Athlete’s Performance Gym in Arizona, and I think that’s where Brady trained and did

Unfortunately, most people expect immediate results when undergoing a fitness program, and expecting so often leaves people disappointed when they don’t meet those high expectations. If you stop and think logically about how it took you possibly three years of living a sedentary lifestyle, eating fast food, and not exercising, then it is logical not to expect to drop 20 pounds of body fat and gain five pounds of muscle in the first month!

Rather than expect immediate results, you should focus on taking it one day at a time and look for the enjoyment and feeling of fulfillment in your new lifestyle. Trust that your efforts will pay off, and look, listen, and feel how your body is changing. It will surprise you how in-touch you can actually become with your body over the course of a few years. Observe whether or not you feel an increase in energy, or possible you are hungry more often than you were before (signifying an increase in metabolism). You may notice a feeling of rejuvenation for life–you’re now looking forward to each day because you’re feeling good! Along with that may come feelings of optimism and maybe even improved

You’ve heard about the benefits that consistent exercise bring, but what if you haven’t been consistent? Should you even start at all? This has been the subject of many medical studies and the results are unanimous:

Exercise helps improve your quality of life even if you start late.

Researchers are constantly finding new benefits to consistent exercise. It’s no wonder that Dr. Robert Butler, of the National Institute on Aging, once said “If exercise could be put into a pill, it would be the single most prescribed medicine in the world.”

Imagine if a pill could offer all of these benefits (without harmful side effects):

• Substantially reduces the risk of coronary heart disease and osteoporosis
• Decreases the risk for stroke, colon cancer, diabetes and high blood pressure
• Helps to achieve and maintain a healthy body weight
• Contributes to healthy bones, muscles and joints
• Helps relieve anxiety and depression
• Promotes well-being and reduces stress
• Is associated with fewer doctor visits, hospitalizations and medications
• Helps prevent and treat chronic medical conditions associated with old age
• Increases energy levels and promotes sound sleep
• Strengthens immune system

I know that I would take that pill – wouldn’t you? Exercise may not be something that you can gulp

Give Yourself a Break

One of the most important parts of this fitness recovery plan is not feeling bad because you got off track for awhile. If all you do is feel sorry for yourself because of how bad you are for getting off track, you’re not going to get anywhere. Just realize that life happened, and then start to take control again and move on. This is the quickest way to fitness recovery. Remind yourself of your lifetime fitness goals, and draw on them for encouragement.

Modify Your Original Plan

It is also a good idea to develop a new version of your original plan as well. It could be that the plan you were on before needs some revisions before your mind will allow you to get back on the plan again.

Ease Back In

Also, you may have to ease your way back into working out consistently. Consider it as a way of starting over. This also depends on how long you’ve been off, but don’t plan on just hitting everything full force again the first week. This is the same advice that you would probably give to someone just

If you’d prefer to measure for your own stick then this simple guide should give you a good idea of how to get the best result.

In the first instance put on your ordinary walking shoes and stand as naturally upright as possible. Allow your arms to fall to the side with a natural bend allowed at the elbow. Then, using a tape measure, get someone else to measure the distance from the wrist joint down to the ground. This should give you the ideal size for your stick.

Obviously some people require, or prefer, a shorter or longer stick but this should give you a starting point from which to decide upon your personal preferred length.
If it isn’t possible to measure for the stick then a simple calculation can be used to get a rough idea of size.

Convert a person’s height into inches (for example 5’6″ = 66 inches.) Then simply divide this number in half to get the size of stick, in this example 33 inches.

The first thing you need to know about toning your abs is that there is more than just one set of abdominal muscles that need to be worked on. In fact there are three, and each of them require equal amounts of attention or your entire workout plan can be rendered ineffective. The three muscle groups you need to concentrate are your rectus abdominis, your obliques and your transverse abdominus.

The rectus abdominis is the muscle group that is most commonly associated with the “six pack” although it is not the only one responsible for ripped abs. We’ll get to this part of toning your abs later, but first you need to concentrate on your transverse abdominis. This is the muscle that runs underneath your rectus abdominis and wraps around the lower part of your rib cage. Apart from protecting your internal organs, this muscle is responsible for both your core strength and your core stability.

This part of toning your abs is the most difficult, but is the most essential part of having a well developed abdomen. Doing deep breath-and-release exercises or water exercises are both good ways of developing your core abdominal muscles. Deep

• Our heart pumps blood to the whole body therefore it is essential that we keep our heart healthy. It should work at its maximum capacity for at least 20-30 minutes every day. Do anything that totally exhausts you for 20 minutes. You can brisk walk, run or climb stairs instead of taking an elevator. Exhausting your heart for 20-30 minutes per day keeps your energy level high all day.
• Join a gym or any other exercise program which you can follow regularly. Working out daily or at least 4 times a week not only keep you physically fit but also frees you of stress and tension.
• If joining a gym or going to gym is not possible regularly, buy fitness equipments and exercise at home whenever you get time. Moderate exercise can be done anytime of the day. Treadmills or exercise bikes and many other types of equipment are quite effective in keeping you fit. Investing on fitness equipments is always better than to spend money on treatments later.
• Make exercise your part of life, like using stairs instead of elevator or parking your car some distance away so that you need to walk to