Tag Archive for: wonderfully fit

Bodyweight Training – Fit to Fight

September 26, 2018/in Blog, Bodyweight Training, Fitness Programs

I love this saying: “Fit to fight”. I heard this from the #1 man of bodyweight training world records Paddy Doyle. And he has it right, you need to be fit to fight. More and more men and women are taking to bodyweight training as the way to optimal fitness in record time. MMA fighters and athletes all over the world are starting to take notice of the benefits of bodyweight exercises and getting results that push them to the next level.

Using your own bodyweight as resistance is not just a few pushups and sit ups it’s so much more. Bodyweight exercises are so versatile that you never have to do the same workout again. A man that has well over 100 bodyweight and martial arts world records is a man I want to learn from. Using your own bodyweight will make you a better athlete or will burn the fat from your waste line like a spreading wild fire.

The physical fitness aspect of bodyweight training will not only work in the ring or to make you physically fit, it will make you mentally fit that will carry you in life. The more you improve using your bodyweight as resistance the more you will push yourself. You will start to push yourself farther and harder, you will start to feel as if you are unstoppable. Martial artists and other athlete’s will become faster, stronger, more explosive with a ” I’d rather die then give up” attitude. Bodyweight training will get you fit to fight either in the ring or in life.

Bodyweight training will build a physical and mental toughness that you will be proud of. So become fit to fight. A short workout you can try will only take a few minutes so no excuses on time.

Pick 4 bodyweight exercises. For example Burpees, Pushups, Jumping Jacks, Bodyweight squats. Each exercise is to be done for 1 minute with a 1 minute rest in between each exercise. After you go through this 1 time rest for 2 minutes and repeat one more time.

Don’t be fooled by the simplicity you’ll be calling for oxygen soon enough.

Beating Panic Attacks Permanently

September 26, 2018/in Blog, Health and Wellness, Personal Training

Suffering from panic attacks can be one of the most frightening things of all, struggling to breathe and feeling your chest tightening and your legs trembling. Your heart is pounding and you’re gasping for air, you may well feel that you are suffering a heart attack when all this begins to happen to you, and that your time on this mortal coil is at an end.

The most likely answer is that you are suffering from a panic or anxiety attack, and you need to learn how to naturally stop and prevent these attacks so that you won’t have to go through the same thing again.

The first time you suffer an attack, you will probably find yourself in a confused and shocked state afterwards. It is natural to question why this is happening to you and what it is, and how could your body be reacting in this way. The fear of another attack is also a natural response, and the more anxious you are of this, the more likely another attack is to happen. If you have suffered from a number of attacks, you are likely so distressed that it will affect your daily life and stop you from operating normally.

However severe your attacks, and no matter how many you have suffered, these aren’t a disease and they can be prevented.

If you have had a number of attacks you will probably understand and have tried many things which haven’t worked. Medicines, calming breathing exercises, thinking positive thoughts and distraction methods aren’t effective in combating these attacks and stopping them from happening. The reason they don’t work is that they aren’t dealing with the problem, but are trying to switch the focus of the problem and trying to help you deal with what is happening, rather than preventing it from happening.

There is however a natural solution to help you prevent panic attacks from occurring.

It is a unique solution which has brought relief to over 54,000 people around the world and helped them to end their problem with panic and anxiety attacks. As the principle of this treatment deals with the source of the disorder, it is not only effective, but can promise the results required. Due to the years of study and a basis in advanced psychology, it can promise to make a real difference with permanent results that will cure the problem forever.

Bodyweight Training Exercises for Strength and Stamina

September 25, 2018/in Blog, Bodyweight Training, Fitness Programs

Are you worried about your body’s shape? Do you want to improve your stamina and be fit? Then start the bodyweight training exercises and see the change. Fitness experts say that exercise is very good for health and that is the best way to keep your body in shape. Along with a fitness training plan you would need a healthy diet to support your body with nutrients.

Otherwise your body would become weak and you will lose your strength. Stamina is very important and it can be improved only with the help of bodyweight training. One thing you should keep in mind is that bodyweight training doesn’t suit everybody and you need to check your weight from time to time. If there are drastic changes in your weight then you should immediately stop them and look at other alternatives to improve your strength.

Bodyweight training can be quite rigorous and women cannot support such exercises. Men who want to have a chiseled body and who wish to acquire the macho looks only should take up bodyweight training exercises. You can spend very little time and practice intense sessions if you want to finish it up quickly.

Such exercises will not only improve your strength but also increase body flexibility. People who want to burn their fat fast and shed extra pounds can take up these exercises and they will see a change very quickly. Many of the weight programs do not concentrate on the back and that is the reason why the waist line increases and women accumulate fat. The bodyweight training exercises will reduce the waist line and get rid of the girdles.

The advantage of these bodyweight training exercises is that you can practice them indoors and you wouldn’t need any gym equipment. It is a common notion among people that gym is the only thing that reduces weight and increases stamina. That is completely wrong and exercise is a very good way of losing weight and building your body.

A complete body workout for about 30 minutes or less than that is beneficial and you can speed up your exercise process. Planning the bodyweight training exercises is quite important and it will help you in maintaining a routine. Initially you would have to do a few warm-up exercises and then practice rigorously.

Leg raises, jumping jacks, push-ups and pull-ups should be the initial exercises you would do. Everyday 10 leg raises, 10 jumping jacks and 10 leg raises can be done and slowly the number should be increased. Intense bodyweight training exercises would require 50 to 60 of each of the exercises and they should be juggled.

Never exercise in the same way and keep juggling in between. That will ensure that the routine doesn’t get boring for you. Bodyweight training is the best way to sculpt your body and within no time you would be flaunting a chiseled body.

A healthy diet should always be followed while you are practicing the bodyweight training exercises. People generally do not eat well and go behind crash diets that just fill the stomach. All these might seem to be good in the first days of your training and as the intensity of the exercises progresses, your body will grow to be weak and it will not support you.

Sickness follows and you might even be bed ridden due to severe weakness. Eat healthy food that is rich in proteins and carbohydrates and always keep your body hydrated. This kind of a planned bodyweight training exercise will always keep you fit and maintain your stamina.

Low Carbs Diet Guide

September 25, 2018/in Blog, Carb Diets, Nutritional Consultant

So there has been a lot of talk about low carb diets and how remarkable they are. In this article we’ll get down to business on exactly what low carbs diets means so you’ll have a enhanced grasp on the how and why.

Let’s get this out of the way first: It’s not NO carbs, but it’s LOW carbs. You body is fueled by what you eat, and your body can’t operate properly without carbs. It is a essential energy source that supports all bodily systems, specially your muscles and brain.

What we don’t need is the quantity of carbs the average person consumes and particularly the types of carbs that are thrown in front of your face on every corner, magazine page and menu.

Let’s get down to the fundamentals which is being healthy, right? What better way to be healthy than to eat foods in their whole unprocessed state right? The closer the food can stay to it’s natural state, the better. Eating foods in this state will give you the most fiber and nutrients possible.

So you want a simple way to create a low carbs diet? Following these tips will really help out:

Go for fruits! – These are sweets in their most natural form.
Green means go! – Green vegetables are plentiful with chlorophyll and nutrients
Say NO to refined sugars! – Watch out for hidden sugars in breads, lunch meats, dressing, soda, candy and cookies.
Legume you say? – It’s not as strange as it sounds. These are foods rich in fiber like beans, peas and peanuts.
Whole gains only! – When eating carbs, stick to products that contain only 100% whole non-refined grains. These have a much better stabilizing effect on your blood sugar.
What’s all this talk about soy? — The miraculous bean has been used to substitute just about every food know to man. It’s a super food high in fiber and has also been known to diminish your risk of certain cancers and heart disease.

Here is a simple rule of thumb to go along with those quick tips: Permit yourself 5 servings of complex carbohydrates a day. A single piece of toast, serving of oatmeal, crackers, rice or a small potato.

I know everyone has different serving sizes, but for simplicity, half the size of your fist or it’s about a ¼ cup uncooked, ½ cup cooked. For a real thrust in slimming down, make your last serving no later than 6pm when your body is slowing down and has not a lot demand for these calorie dense foods.

Now let’s talk about a bit of the technical information on why so many have been so successful with a low carbs diet. First off most calorie dense foods come in the form of simple sugars and refined wheat products. When, not if, you get rid of these types of food from your diet, you will be cutting out a ton of calories. This also includes regular sodas and coffee drinks with added flavorings.

The first two weeks of a restricted carb diet, you body starts to break down glucose from your muscles and liver. The make up of glucose is a substantial amount of water, which is why you frequently hear the term “water weight.” For this reason during the first two weeks or so, many people can see impressive results which regrettably will taper off. This weight loss is predominantly water, but weight none the less.

If you keep up a diet with less than fifty grams of carbohydrates a day for more than fourteen days, that is when your body will start burning fat for energy! The name of this is called ketosis. A derivative of the breakdown of fat is called a ketone which is released in the blood stream and filtered through the kidney. Because of this increase in ketones in the blood, it is essential to drink more than the recommended eight cups of water a day while on this type of diet.

The Benefits Of Bodyweight Training

September 24, 2018/in Blog, Bodyweight Training, Fitness Programs

It’s been close to 10 years since I stopped training at a gym and have been training at home. I train with bodyweight exercises and some isometric exercises. If there is one thing I’ve learned it’s that bodyweight training can work wonders if you’re willing to be motivated enough to stick to it.

I started with a bodyweight workout routine earlier on as a desperate measure to make my workouts more efficient and it quickly became an eye-opener about the vast benefits of bodyweight training.

The Benefits are as follows:

Very little equipment

If you use your imagination, you can do these exercises without special equipment. All you need is some space and motivation. So bid farewell to time lost travelling to the gym. Get on floor and do push-up, hang from the door way and do pull-ups and squat with your bodyweight. As you get stronger, make these exercises more challenging by adding the single limb variations – e.g. Single arm push-ups, Single arm pull-ups and Pistol Squats.

The Gym is never shut

When you use bodyweight exercises, you are your own gym. You can workout anytime, anywhere.

Keeps you honest

When you training with weights, your bodyweight increases creating the illusion that you are lifting more. In case of a tie in powerlifting, the lighter athlete is selected as the winner. With bodyweight training, this isn’t so, if you get fatter, you will find you bodyweight movements getting worse.

Builds strength and develops joint health

When properly done, the bodyweight training system can develop incredible strength and stamina, often together. The fact that it doesn’t use unnatural loads to develop strength means your joints, ligaments and tendons grow strong too. Unlike in the bodybuilding style of training where the muscle bellies grow far stronger than the supporting tendons thus leaving you vulnerable to injuries.

Bodyweight exercises are natural

This is the most important factor supporting bodyweight exercises. These movements come to us naturally. Unlike bench presses and bicep curls which aren’t the way our bodies were designed to function. Our bodies have evolved over millions of years to be able to move itself, first and foremost; they weren’t really “designed” to lift progressively heavier external loads regularly.

Bodyweight exercises are basic to human nature. The body is designed to move and needs to do so more efficiently. Unlike training with equipment in a gym where it’s just the limbs moving, usually, bodyweight exercises are designed to utilize the entire body as resistance and forces the entire body to participate in the exercise.

The core goal of any fitness training routine should be the improvement of your own physical (joint) mobility and movement. Very few bodybuilding exercises like the squats and deadlifts can give this benefit. However, these movements do place a lot of stress on the joints and spinal column.

There are other reasons that I could mention and they’d make absolute sense to start with hardcore bodyweight exercises. But nothing, at least for me, trumps the fact that it is an incredible time and money saver. You don’t have to pay expensive gyms to workout, no time wasted travelling to the gym and no time wasted waiting for the equipment to be vacated. Nothing trumps bodyweight training when it comes to tackling these issues.

It’s time to start a Healthy life: A 7 day program

September 24, 2018/in Blog, Health and Wellness, Personal Training

How many times have you gone to sleep at night, swearing you’ll go to the gym in the morning, and then changing your mind just eight hours later because when you get up, you don’t feel like exercising?

While this can happen to the best of us, it doesn’t mean you should drop the ball altogether when it comes to staying fit. What people need to realize is that staying active and eating right are critical for long-term health and wellness — and that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

The more you know about how your body responds to your lifestyle choices, the better you can customize a nutrition and exercise plan that is right for you. When you eat well, increase your level of physical activity, and exercise at the proper intensity, you are informing your body that you want to burn a substantial amount of fuel. This translates to burning fat more efficiently for energy.

In other words, proper eating habits plus exercise equals fast metabolism, which, in turn gives you more energy throughout the day and allows you to do more physical work with less effort.

The true purpose of exercise is to send a repetitive message to the body asking for improvement in metabolism, strength, aerobic capacity and overall fitness and health. Each time you exercise, your body responds by upgrading its capabilities to burn fat throughout the day and night, Exercise doesn’t have to be intense to work for you, but it does need to be consistent.

I recommend engaging in regular cardiovascular exercise four times per week for 20 to 30 minutes per session, and resistance training four times per week for 20 to 25 minutes per session. This balanced approach provides a one-two punch, incorporating aerobic exercise to burn fat and deliver more oxygen, and resistance training to increase lean body mass and burn more calories around the block.

Here’s a sample exercise program that may work for you:

Warm Up — seven to eight minutes of light aerobic activity intended to increase blood flow and lubricate and warm-up your tendons and joints.
Resistance Training — Train all major muscle groups. One to two sets of each exercise. Rest 45 seconds between sets.
Aerobic Exercise — Pick two favorite activities, they could be jogging, rowing, biking or cross-country skiing, whatever fits your lifestyle. Perform 12 to 15 minutes of the first activity and continue with 10 minutes of the second activity. Cool down during the last five minutes.
Stretching — Wrap up your exercise session by stretching, breathing deeply, relaxing and meditating.

When starting an exercise program, it is important to have realistic expectations. Depending on your initial fitness level, you should expect the following changes early on.

From one to eight weeks — Feel better and have more energy.
From two to six months — Lose size and inches while becoming leaner. Clothes begin to fit more loosely. You are gaining muscle and losing fat.
After six months — Start losing weight quite rapidly.

Once you make the commitment to exercise several times a week, don’t stop there. You should also change your diet and/or eating habits,’ says Zwiefel. Counting calories or calculating grams and percentages for certain nutrients is impractical. Instead, I suggest these easy-to-follow guidelines:

Eat several small meals (optimally four) and a couple of small snacks throughout the day
Make sure every meal is balanced — incorporate palm-sized proteins like lean meats, fish, egg whites and dairy products, fist-sized portions of complex carbohydrates like whole-wheat bread and pasta, wild rice, multigrain cereal and potatoes, and fist-sized portions of vegetable and fruits
Limit your fat intake to only what’s necessary for adequate flavor
Drink at least eight 8-oz. glasses of water throughout the day

I also recommend that you take a multi-vitamin each day to ensure you are getting all the vitamins and minerals your body needs.

I suppose that’s all I can think of for now. I should extend my thanks to a doctor friend of mine. Without him, I wouldn’t be able to write this article, or keep my sanity.

Enjoy life, we all deserve it.

Why the Kettlebell is the Only Weight Loss Tool You’ll Ever Need

September 21, 2018/in Blog, Fitness Programs, Kettlebell Training Advice

Want to get into lean, slim, toned and sexy shape? The only tool you’re ever going to need to complete this goal is the kettlebell.

Let’s take a look at why this is the perfect solution for those particular training goals and what you need to do to make it happen.

Enter: Resistance Cardio

The first huge advantage that training with a kettlebell has is that it allows you to use what is known as ‘resistance cardio’. This basically means that you’re combining resistance training (this is the term used to describe training that requires muscular force to push or pull a heavy object) with cardio (any exercise that continues for an extended period and thereby gets your heartrate up and helps you burn fat).

By using a movement like the kettlebell swing for 70 repetitions for example, you’re going to be forced to lift the weight while also repeating a rapid movement that will mean you have to burn calories stored as fat.

When you combine these two different training modalities, you are building muscle and you are burning fat at the same time. This is great for getting an attractive body because you’re not going to simply become skinny (or worse, ‘skinny fat’). Rather, resistance cardio will allow you to tone and burn at the same time. The fact that you’re engaging muscle means the muscle will be protected from deterioration as you’re training.

Moreover, resistance cardio will allow you to burn more fat in a shorter space of time than you could otherwise. This is because you will be forced to apply more effort in order to complete the movement, thereby taxing your system more and burning through more calories!

The Benefits of the Kettlebell Swing

The other great thing about building muscle while performing a cardio workout, is that the more muscle you add, the more you increase your metabolism. If you have lots of muscle, you will burn more calories even while you’re sleeping! At the same time, each workout that causes muscle damage will trigger the release of anabolic hormones like testosterone and growth hormone that actually increase the rate of fat loss.

The kettlebell swing is a particularly useful move because it targets the entire posterior chain – the muscles in the legs and back involved in jumping. These are some of the largest muscles in the body and thus this results in a massive flood of hormones and a lot of effort on your part.

And finally, for women who are looking to get toned buttocks and legs, the kettlebell swing is ideal because those are the exact muscles that it trains. This is the same combination of muscles as those used in squatting and if you do a Google search for ‘women who squat’, you’ll see that they are famous for having particularly round and firm glutes. If that’s the look you’re going for, then there are few moves better than the humble kettlebell swing!

How to Get a Flat Abdomen in 30 Workouts

September 21, 2018/in Blog, Health and Wellness, Personal Training

You have been working out at the gym and you are looking great. You know you have worked hard and deserve the results you see in the mirror. Except for that stubborn belly fat that just will not seem to shift no matter how hard you try. Does this sound all too familiar?

Do not worry you are not alone. This is a common problem for most people. The good news is, there is a way to get a flat abdomen in 30 workouts, and you do not need gym membership to achieve it.

You are probably watching your weight and ensuring you eat plenty of proteins, good fats and lots of fruits and vegetables, low GI foods and whole grains and fibers. No workout program will work successfully unless combined with a sensible approach to diet. The next step is to check what exercise you are doing to try to flatten that abdomen.

Most people think that to lose belly fat you need to do exercises that focus on the abdomen.

Isolated exercises do not work and have limited results giving you that flat stomach you desire. This means your routines do not need to include unpleasant crunches and expensive equipment. The most effective way of removing the fat is by combining interval cardio training to burn the fat, with resistance exercises that focus on the big muscle groups in the buttocks, back and thighs. These are your fat burning muscle groups and by working them you will burn the belly fat and tighten your abdominal muscles at the same time.

Remember quality not quantity is the key to fast abdominal fat loss. A simple workout routine that you should do for 30 days may look like this.

Use an exercise bike or tread mill if you have access to them, or otherwise try skipping or running and do interval cardio exercises by interspersing a period of 2 minutes of fast paced cardio that raises your heart rate, with 4 minutes of rest and continue this for approximately 20 minutes (burn calories and raise heart rate).

Follow up cardio training with 15 reps of exercises such as squats and lunges with free weights repeated twice each session.

Once the principle of cardio and large muscle group activity is the focus, learning how to get a flat belly in 30 workouts is simple.

Top Kettlebell Movements For Complete Home Workouts

September 20, 2018/in Blog, Fitness Programs, Kettlebell Training Advice

The kettlebell is often heralded as a fantastic training tool thanks to its ability to train the body in a less conventional manner that involves more of our supporting muscle groups and challenges balance and focus at the same time.

This is only one advantage of the kettlebell though. What’s just as impressive is just how versatile the tool is – allowing you to train every muscle group in a vast variety of different ways. In fact, a kettlebell is versatile enough to provide an entire body workout and can be a ‘home gym’ all on its own!

kettlebell

Here are some kettlebell movements that demonstrate this nicely:

Kettlebell Curl

The kettlebell curl is a movement that works similarly to a regular curl and targets the biceps. The difference is that the center of gravity is lower down, thereby altering the angle and changing the direction of the force.

Goblet Squat

Something that is very hard to do when training from a home gym is work the legs using squatting motions. Squats are widely regarded as some of the most functional movements and are particularly popular thanks to their ability to engage lots of large muscles in the posterior chain. The problem is that they require a large, heavy and unwieldy squat rack and bar! Or do they?

Using a kettlebell, you can hold the weight against your chest and then squat from there. This moves the weight forward slightly but is otherwise effectively the same movement as any other squat!

Straight Legged Deadlift

The deadlift is another movement lacking from most home workouts and once again, the kettlebell comes to the rescue. A deadlift can be performed as normal, simply by squatting and grabbing the handle with both hands.

Likewise though, you can also train similarly while keeping both legs straight and bending only at the back to hit the erector spinae. This works better considering the slightly lighter and taller nature of a kettlebell.

Turkish Get Up

Now for something entirely unique. The Turkish get-up is a movement that requires you to lie on the floor next to your kettlebell and then simply stand up with it. This is much harder than it sounds and involves a complex sequence of movements that train the muscles in unison.

Kettlebell Swing

This is perhaps the king of kettlebell movements and involves performing a squat like motion while swinging the kettlebell behind yourself between your legs and then up in front of yourself. The key is to use a continuous motion and to use your hips to thrust the weight forward rather than engaging your legs or back too much.

Kettlebell Clean and Press

This movement is good in all kinds of ways and involves squatting down to grab a kettlebell in on hand, then throwing it up to lean against the shoulder, standing up and pressing it over head. This trains a huge range of different movements but what’s perhaps most effective of all about it is that you are training on just one side of the body – meaning you need to work very hard to maintain balance and to stabilize yourself.

How to Get Rid of Cellulite

September 20, 2018/in Blog, Health and Wellness, Personal Training

If you are a woman, it is highly likely that you have had, do have or will have cellulite at some stage in your adult life. 90% of all women develop it and contrary to popular belief, it has nothing to do with obesity. Many women who develop the condition have a healthy range BMI (Body Mass Index).

Cellulite is created by pockets of fat trapped beneath the surface of the skin producing the all too familiar dimpling of the skin that some describe as like orange pill in appearance. Although it is predominately a female condition, some men do develop the condition. It occurs predominately in the areas of the body containing the largest number of fat storage cells, mainly the abdomen, buttocks and thighs.

A good diet and regular exercise will not stop cellulite formation; however, it does improve its overall appearance. It tends to be more obvious in overweight women. Women around the world spend money and time trying to eliminate or prevent the problem, but most find it extremely difficult to remove.

There are different treatments, which have had different results for different people. The major treatments are as follows:

Eliminate Body Fat

Although body fat does not cause cellulite, it does make it look worse. Losing weight and exercising will improve overall health and metabolism and will improve the appearance of the problem areas. Caffeine, alcohol and smoking increase the chances of developing cellulite. Reducing intake of these may help.

Creams and Massage

There are varieties of creams available that state they treat and reduce cellulite. Some are available through pharmacies and others through specialist beauty products. Health stores sell some herbal creams. Massaging these into the skin is probably the reason they work if you see any improvement, as there have been reports of temporary improvement of cellulite after deep massage. Its long-term effect is debatable.

Cosmetic Surgery

Cosmetic surgery provides limited results as the liposuction removes cells from deeper levels than where the cellulite occurs. It provides minimal improvement.

Cellulite Stockings

Comparatively inexpensive, these stockings do not cure cellulite, but they improve the appearance of badly effected buttocks and thighs and many women use them esthetically, with immediate improvement while wearing the stockings.

It is important to discuss appropriate treatment plans with a doctor who can advise the best individual treatment approach.