What type of Cardio?

Okay, now that I’ve covered the fundamentals of how to lose weight, we’ll now cover which cardiovascular exercises you should consider doing.  In the next few days, I’ll be updating you guys with information on

• Martial arts
• Swimming
• Running/jogging/walking
• Bicycling
• Step Aerobics

and why you should incorporate these activities into your routine.

Finally! The Plan

Yes, the plan I refer to is otherwise known as your routine.  When will you work out?  What exercises will you do?  How will you split up your workout?  In what order will you do your exercises?  These are just a few questions for you to consider when creating your exercise routine.

You should consider splitting your workouts into 3, 4, or 5 days in the week.  For example, a 3 day workout would look something like this.

• First day – 20 minutes of Cardio –> Chest, Back (with some other muscles used but primarily target these two) –> core session (abs) –> warm down
• Rest Day
• Second day – 30 minutes of Cardio –> Abs, Legs, Calves (lower body) –> warm down
• Rest Day
• Third day – 20 min of Cardio –> Triceps, Biceps, Shoulders –> core session (abs) –> warm down

You might have noticed I split up chest, back and triceps, biceps, shoulders.  That’s because many of the exercises you do will overlap these muscles.  So to maximize gains, you might want to consider letting the muscles rest a day or two before reworking them again.

Also try to incorporate a full body workout session every other week.  Why you might ask?  Here’s a short list of reasons:

1. Only one exercise is performed for each body part, so your muscles will be fresh with no accumulated fatigue, therefore you can train with stronger resistances/heavier weights.
2. Conditions the entire body.
3. Less deep soreness.

My personal opinion when planning your workout is to always make sure you find a comfortable time to perform them completely.  For me, I like to do my entire workout at night since that’s when I’m most flexible and awake.  Others might advocate cardio before breakfast and resistance training in the afternoon, but it’s truly up to you.  You should try out several routines before deciding what is most compatible with your schedule.

Resistance Training Continued

So, you’re pretty familiar with work out routines and looking to advance your workout routine past just body weight exercises.  In this post, I’ll cover the basics of resistance training and types of exercises that will maximize your gains.

**Note: Like any other exercise, resistance training should not be done properly also too much can damage your body seriously.  **

First we should familiarize you with resistance training.  Resistance training can come in many forms, most notably weight lifting and the use of resistance bands/cords or exercise machines.  The point is to  force your muscles to grow.  How does it happen?  In short, resistance training places stress on your muscles, so the fiber and connective tissues will tear and after sufficient rest your body will repair those tears and add strength, therefore size to your muscles.

Now that we have a general understanding of how our muscles grow and get stronger, we should move onto the most fundamental exercises in resistance training.  In this routine we will target the 8 major body parts: chest, back, shoulders, triceps, biceps, calves, legs, and abs.

Here’s a few exercises for each section:

• Back – Deadlifts, Barbell rows, T-Bar Rows, Pull ups
• Legs - Squats, Leg Press, Straight Leg Deadlifts
• Chest - Incline bench press, Flat Bench Press (both exercises can be done with either barbells or dumb bells)
• Shoulder - Military Press, Push press
• Triceps - Close grip bench, dips
• Biceps - Barbell curls, Incline curls, Preacher curls
• Abs - Weighted crunches, Cable rope crunches, Weighted leg raises

This list of exercises should be enough to get you started.  Here’s a few more tips to remember while training:

1. Do not hold your breath while doing the exercises.  Always remember to inhale and exhale.
2. Remember to keep a good posture with your spine straight and not slumped over.  Otherwise you may seriously injure yourself.
3. Don’t over train!  Start out slow and make your way up.
4. Try listening to some upbeat music if you find yourself getting bored.

If you have any questions about the exercises I listed above, feel free to comment and ask!

Onto Resistance Training

I advise most beginners not to start with weight lifting. Weight lifting done improperly can be damaging to your health.  What I will be covering in this post is something known as strength training.

Strength training comes in two forms: isometric and isotonic.   In short, isometric is any exercise where your body is holding still against a force. Isotonic exercise involves moving against the force. So an example of an isotonic exercise is a push up and an isometric activity is holding a weight at arm’s length. Both types of strength training will strengthen and tone muscles as well as increase bone mass.

Now to cover how to incorporate strength training into your workout and why. Here’s a few reasons why you should:

1. By building muscle, you not only will look better but enable your body to burn more calories while being stationary
2. You strengthen your body so you can help move that heavy box for the cute girl next door.
3. You can prevent harm dealt to your body, like throwing your back out.

Beginners:

**Before you do any sort of exercise, remember to warm up and stretch.  You don’t want to pull a muscle before you even start.**

When constructing a workout, you should make sure to do compound exercises.  What do I mean by compound?  Compound exercises are any type of exercise that involves more than one body part.  For example, the push up not only works your triceps but also your chest and back.  Remember to work out all parts of your body and not just one specific area.  “Spot reduction” is a common myth that exercising one particular area will cause you to lose fat there.  This is untrue, when you do lose fat the body as a whole will lose fat and not in one particular area.  Although, when you gain weight it always seems to be the middle section (inner thighs and stomach) that acquire fat first.

Here are sample exercises that target your entire body: (Body weight only exercises)

• Upper body exercises: Push ups: wide-grip, close-grip, knuckle (done with the bottom three, with your hands placed vertically under your shoulders), triangle
• Abs: Crunches, sit ups, flutter kicks, Russian twists, bicycles, the plank(isometric)
• Lower back: superman, TYI’s, leg ups
• Squats: 1) done with your back held straight throughout the exercise and 2) done with your back learning forward as you lower your thighs; lunges,

Helpful advice on how to organize your workout.

• Do each exercise in sets and slowly increase the number of sets.  For example, start out with 1 set of 10 push ups and as you become more able upgrade to 2 sets of 10 and so on.
• Don’t always work your muscles to failure.  If you work them to failure, they’ll need more time to recover and that might mean waiting a day or two before you can use it again.
• Keep a small log of your progress, so that you can judge accordingly when to increase the number of sets.
• Remember after you finish your work out session to stretch out your muscles.  I promise you, they’ll appreciate the way you take care of them.

Hopefully, you’ll find these exercises helpful for introducing you into the world of strength training.

An Introduction to Cardiovascular Exercise

Cardiovascular exercise/activity is often referred to as cardio.  It’s the key to any workout.  Whether you’re trying to lose weight or build muscle, cardio will lower your body fat and help increase your metabolism.  Cardio comes in all shapes and forms, it’s basically anything that elevates your heart rate.  Remember to pick an exercise you won’t get easily bored with.

Here’s a list of common exercises:

1. Walking
2. Basketball
3. Jogging
4. Running
5. Dancing
6. Martial Arts

But why choose cardiovascular activity?  Here’s five benefits that will directly impact you.

1. Improved Heart Health – The first one is an improved heart condition.  Your heart is a muscle just like any other and in order for it to become strong, it must be worked.  If you neglect to work it, it will weaken over time and can affect your health negatively.
2. Increased Metabolism – Aside from speeding up your heart rate, cardio also increases the rate of various other processes in your body, otherwise known as your metabolism.
3. Improved Hormonal Profile – Performing cardiovascular activities help your body release “feel good” hormones which will ease feelings of depression and decrease your appetite.
4. Improved Recovery Ability – Certain types of cardio can lower your recovery time after weight lifting.
5. Diabetes Management – For those who have diabetes, cardiovascular exercises can help your muscle’s ability to utilize glucose.  Those who exercise regularly have better control over their blood sugar levels and can help lessen blood sugar swings.

Busy lives often restrict daily exercise.  If you work Monday through Friday from nine to five, try to make some time for yourself during the night or take advantage of your free days, Saturday and Sunday.  Cardio should be completed at least three times a week for 30 minutes per session.

For beginners, try to find an activity that gets you moving and gets your heart rate up. For more advanced practitioners, you might be interested in High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), tempo training, and interval training.  Cardio is not something you want to overdo in the beginning because similar to any other exercise spending hours after hours on the exercise at a moderate pace will not give you greater benefits than doing the same exercise at a higher rate.  Still, remember to pace yourself when doing any type of exercise, you don’t want to expand all your energy in one burst and quit on yourself after a few minutes.

Number Two – Mentality

Your mental state is the second most important factor that will help you achieve the desired results.  Before you hop into any training, you should answer these quick questions first.

1. Why do I want to get fit?
2. How motivated are you?
3. Can you make exercise a priority in your life?
4. Do you REALLY want to lose weight, so much that you’ll give up that tasty coffee ice cream you eat every night?

Hopefully, your answer to question 1 involves more than just wanting to look “thin”.  You might want to consider seeking a specialist for help if you want to look “thin”.  Anyways, onto the question number 2.  How motivated are you to get into shape?  Why do I ask this?  For decades the number one New Year’s resolution has been to “lose weight.”  But how many of those people have actually succeeded?  Now if your doctor told you that you’ll die within half a year if you don’t lose weight, I bet you’d be scrambling to lose weight like your life depended on it (because it does…in this example).

Question number 3 will determine if it is possible to maximize your gains from working out.  Losing weight and maintaining weight is a lifelong commitment.  Commitment to exercise equals marriage.  You will be married to exercise and it should remain one of your highest priorities.

Finally, ask yourself once more.  How willing am I to lose weight?  You have to give up pigging out on half a carton of ice cream.  And if you can’t do that, you should carefully reconsider if you really want to lose weight.

Now, if you have answer all these questions and feel ready to continue to the next step.  You should keep this one statement in mind, “Keeping in shape is a lifelong commitment.“

Number One – Diet

Diet is the key to achieving the best results from your workouts.  It is the first step to losing weight.  Without going into specifics, weight loss results from your body burning more calories than you consume.  Now, I am not telling you to following “fad diets” (i.e. south beach diet).  I am saying, watch what you eat and minimize unnecessary foods.  In other words, eat healthy!

Hopefully you are familiar with the food pyramid, if not please search “food pyramid” in Google.  The food pyramid is what your diet should resemble.  While it is often hard to following what the pyramid depicts, your meals should have similar proportions to the chart.  Remember, if you happen to stray from the pyramid by consuming a meal or two at any fast food restaurant, be prepared to make up for it in your workout.

I’ll leave designing your meals to you, but here are a few tips to help you eat healthy.

1. Calculate your daily calorie needs, here’s a pretty accurate calculator: Daily Calorie Calculator
2. Drink at least 8 glasses of water a day
3. Eat slower, so you’ll feel fuller
4. Choose whole grains over refined flours
5. Don’t skip breakfast!
6. Avoid consumption of alcohol – especially if you want to lose that gut
7. Read the labels on food containers – beware of saturated and trans fat!

Burn fat and get in shape

I’ve had it with all those crappy exercise sites out there on the internet.  Every time I search in google: “how to lose weight” or “how to get ripped”, I get these results telling me to purchase ebooks after ebooks.  That, or multiple pages of scientific explanation on how the body burns calories and builds muscle.  But I don’t want to read through all that BS, I just want to know how to loose weight and get fit!

If this is what you’ve been thinking, you’ve come to the right place.  The following 5 items are the only components necessary to burning off that excess fat and getting fit. (Listed in no particular order)

1. Diet
2. Cardiovascular Exercises
3. Resistance Training (i.e. weight lifting) or body weight exercises
4. The Plan
5. Mentality

Yes! These five things are all you need to lose weight fast!  I’ll be going into more detail in the upcoming posts on each of the 5 topics.