Archive for the 'Fitness' Category

What Goes Up And Down Up And Down Up And Down?

Zebedee goes up and down – for all those under the age of forty Zebedee was an early Seventies icon of children’s TV who bounced around a pretend park sounding all chilled out and laid back.

Tigger goes up and down – most people will know Tigger, the cutest, fluffiest tiger you ever saw straight from the Winnie the Pooh stories and not that bright! Tigger bounced everywhere on his tail, particularly when he’s excited, and had a slight lisp which just added to his softness.

Pogo sticks – another of those great Seventies throwbacks. Pogo sticks consist of a pole with two footrests and a spring. The idea is you balance on the footrests and see how long you can bounce up and down. The reality is that most people, usually drunk people, would do three or four random hops and then fall off dramatically removing all skin from the shins in the process!

While we’re on the subject of the Seventies, there was also that great invention – the Spacehopper! This was a large rubber ball with handles that you could sit on and bounce all around. Inherently safer than the pogo stick you couldn’t fail to look like an idiot on them but boy, were they great fun.

Of course, the ultimate way of going up and down these days, or at least the only way we can discuss in an article of this nature, is to use a trampoline. Trampolines have been hot favourites for as long as they have been around. They used to be situated in amusement areas and you would pay a fee to use them.

However, these days, trampolines are available for everyone to buy and erect in their back gardens. More and more safety features have been added but this doesn’t detract from the fun. But where does this fun come from? How can simply bouncing up and down be such a source of fascination for young and old alike?

Well, basically, I guess it’s because going up opposes all forces of nature that we are used to, such as keeping our feet on the ground and not being able to fly or float. That feeling of freedom, of going against nature on the upward path, is something different to us as humans and not something we ever get used to.

The downwards path on trampoline travel is inevitable yet just as thrilling. Freefalling, albeit for a second or two, again goes against nature. It is probably the only point when we can fall without fear of pain. The feeling of freedom on a trampoline comes at a young age when children always love these games.

In fact, manufacturers now make trampolines specifically for the very young with safety rails for them to hold on to.

Trampoline jumping for adults is also fun. But more than that – it has been turned into a sport with a series of specifically named moves, twists, turns and landing techniques unique to trampoliners.

On top of all the fun of a trampoline there is actually a serious side with some serious health benefits. Jumping on a trampoline gets the heart pumping which in turn helps clear the lymphatic system and strengthens the lungs. It activates usually idle muscles, strengthening and toning as you jump and land and the soft, flexible landing of a trampoline ensures that the joints of the body are protected while you exercise.

All in all, we can see that exercising doesn’t have to be boring and fun doesn’t have to see us idle.

The Best Fat Loss Method

On the market you’ll see many approaches to weight loss. But which one should you choose as people have differing views as to the best method to shed pounds and burn body fat?

The best fat loss program will include more than just diet and nutrition. It will also include cardiovascular exercise and resistance training.

Simply dieting will help but you’ll achieve much better and more satisfying results by adding regular physical activity to your plan.

If you want to reshape your body, a diet plan alone will not be enough because through diet alone you will lose muscle mass and your body will look soft instead of toned and athletic. You can only do this by building lean muscle

The best fat loss program will always include additional exercise without exception.

The Right Way to Create a Calorie Deficit.

In order to burn fat and lose weight, the calories used must always be more than the calories consumed thereby creating a “calorie deficit”

This deficit can be created either through diet, exercise, or a combination of both. However, while it may be tempting to avoid exercise completely and just skip a meal to create a caloric deficit, the truth is that any weight loss program will suffer if you rely on skipping meals to create a caloric deficit. This is because the body’s “famine response” is triggered as a reaction to the deficit in calories and nutrition resulting from skipping meals.

When your body faces a large decrease in caloric intake, it will actually begin to store fat and slow down its metabolism in an effort to stave off starvation which is definitely not what you’re trying to achieve in a fat loss program!

Therefore, the best fat loss program is one that includes a small caloric deficit through the diet, with the additional calories being burned through exercise.

You can increase the body’s ability to burn fat and lose weight by choosing a fat burning program that emphasizes only dietary changes by adding a cardiovascular exercise routine to the fat burning program. By doing so, it will be able to burn more calories and still have the nutrients it needs to maintain muscle mass.

The body’s metabolism is elevated through resistance and cardiovascular training and you will not trigger the body’s survival mode defense.

A fitness program including cardiovascular exercise and strength training that keeps the metabolic rate elevated and proper nutrition that nourishes the body, are the basic components of the best fat loss program.

Maximizing the body’s ability to burn fat is key if want that toned, sculpted, and reshaped physique and while cardiovascular exercise is important for burning fat, it alone is not sufficient to reshape the body.

Indeed, people who have solely spent hours spent on cardiovascular exercise have failed many people in their weight loss and fat burning efforts because they haven’t included resistance training.

The best fat loss program should, therefore include all three key aspects: nutrition, cardio, and resistance training.

For strong, healthy muscles, resistance training is necessary. Muscles are metabolically active tissue, which means that in addition to helping you look toned, they actually burn calories even while you are at rest.

Lose Your Belly Fat And Show Off Your Six Pack Abs

Have you noticed that most people will never fail to include abdominal muscle exercises in their routines and yet somehow or other, they can never own that coveted 6 pack abs?

Have you been religiously doing your abdominal muscle exercises? Is your abs showing to your satisfaction? No? Why? Do you know that your abdominal muscle is one of the easiest muscles to build but yet why is it that most people have difficulty in developing that 6 pack abs?

Here is the truth. Those of you who are working out your abs regularly do probably own that much sought after six pack. Yes, you do. The only trouble is that your belly fat is covering them. Your abs will not show up well if you have a body fat ratio of more than 12%. The more fat you burn off, the more defined your abs will be. You will own that rippling washboard abs when your body fat is 10% or less. So if you have fat on your belly, forget about abdominal exercises and burn off the fats first.

There is another reason why people put in so much effort to develop their abdominal muscle and yet their abs are not showing although they have low body fat. Again, there is a simple explanation. They are doing the wrong exercises and working out in bad form.

Let’s take for example the most common abs exercises, the sit up and the leg raisers. Everybody seem to be doing these two exercises not knowing that these exercises really don’t do much for their abs. Don’t believe me? Ok…try this. When you do your sit up or leg raisers, place your palms on your hip on the area connecting to your thigh and perform the exercises. Tell me what did you feel? Ahhh….you are getting it. Those muscles there are doing most of the work. Those are your hip flexor muscles. Since your hip flexors are doing most of the work, how can you develop your abs effectively?

So you say, from now on I will do crunches instead. Well, I have another surprise for you.

Most people perform their crunches wrongly too. Think about it. Why is the exercise called “crunch”? It is because you must squeeze your abs so are that you are crunching them. In order to squeeze your abs hard, you have to curl up like a prawn and breath out all the air in your lungs at the top position and then squeeeeeeeze the muscles so hard that you feel a burn. That will take a few seconds to crunch out all the air before you lower to the beginning position again. You can’t do this effectively if you just go up, down, up down, up down rhythmetically. So, if you have been doing hundreds of crunches everyday with minimal result, now you know why. In fact, it is almost impossible for the average guy to do tens of properly performed crunches and not to say hundreds of them. The same squeezing principle applies to other abs exercises.

Ok….now that you know why your abs are not showing up well, so get on with burning your fats and perform your workout in correct form. You will then see your 6 pack abdominal muscle in no time.