The Busy Fitness Pro

Posts Tagged ‘Fitness’

It is estimated that 80% of home exercise equipment is not used after the first year.

So, you’re planning to buy a piece of home exercise equipment… and you have promised yourself that this time you are really going to use it!

Maybe you already have a collection of different exercise devices… but you are convinced that with this new contraption you will definitely reach your fitness goals.

Or you keep saying to yourself… “If I only had that fitness machine I would be motivated to work out”.

Around 80% of home exercise equipment buyers said the same thing… and the equipment they bought is gathering dust in the corner somewhere along with their dreams of muscle tone, more energy, weight control and feeling great.

Don’t part with your hard earned money before you make sure you will be one of the 20% that buys home exercise equipment and actually uses it, because as we all know… you are only going to get the physical benefits from the home exercise equipment you buy if you actually do the exercise.

Who Buys Home Exercise Equipment And Then Doesn’t Use It?

According to Consumer’s Union, it is the beginner, or inexperienced, exercisers that are most likely to purchase home exercise equipment and then not use it.

As a matter of fact… beginner exercisers don’t use 2/3 of the home exercise equipment they buy.

Although buying home exercise equipment seems like the logical first step to improved fitness… it is the beginners that give up using the equipment more than people who already enjoy an active lifestyle.

Let’s see why this happens…

Using Home Exercise Equipment Is An Exercise In Self Control

Most people over estimate their self control.

Even though they exhibit determination and enthusiasm when researching the home exercise equipment to buy, seeking out the best price, purchasing and installing the equipment in their home… most people just don’t have enough self control to use the equipment in the necessary manner to reap the rewards.

Thinking about exercise, talking about exercise, researching exercise and purchasing home exercise equipment is not exercise.

There is no home exercise equipment that will completely transform you and help you reach all your fitness goals without an investment of time and energy.

As a matter of fact… the costs of seeking fitness are immediate, while the benefits are delayed.

Most beginners get frustrated putting in the time and energy necessary to reap the long term physical rewards using the home exercise equipment .

As a result, 2/3 of the home exercise equipment finds its way into garages, closets and basements with the closing comments… “That thing didn’t work.”

Prove Yourself Worthy Before Buying Home Exercise Equipment

Most beginners buy home exercise equipment because they took a good hard look in the mirror and didn’t like what they saw… or they assessed their physical abilities and found them lacking.

Next step… buy a piece of home exercise equipment!

Well, hold on there… not so fast.

As I’m fond of saying… Fitness is a journey, not a destination.

The bodily changes and improvement of physical abilities you seek can only be obtained for the long term by incorporating consistent physical activity into your lifestyle.

Prove yourself worthy of the purchase of home exercise equipment by first adding physical activity to your lifestyle by using the effective, versatile and efficient piece of home exercise equipment that you already have… your own body!

If you are really serious about improving muscle tone and energy levels while controlling weight and feeling great… start by performing a workout program of bodyweight calisthenics exercises.

Bodyweight calisthenics exercise is the perfect method to use for the beginner, as well as experienced, fitness enthusiast when starting a physical fitness training program… and should remain part of a well balanced fitness training regime.

As a matter of fact… you should not start using home exercise equipment of any kind until you first have developed the ability to control the movement of your own body.

Once you have effectively added physical activity into your lifestyle… you can buy that piece of home exercise equipment to augment, vary and diversify your physical training with the confidence that you will actually use it.

In conclusion…

Bodyweight calisthenics exercise is the perfect place to start your physical fitness training program.

Properly done… bodyweight calisthenics exercise will develop a strong, lean and athletic body that actually performs as good as it looks.

Once physical training has become a habit… buy home exercise equipment to improve your already effective training.

The body and physical abilities you seek are not determined by the equipment you have at your disposal… but rather by your desire to improve and incorporate physical activity into your lifestyle!

Save yourself a lot of time and money by proving to yourself that you are not overestimating your self control… because if you fail to successfully add bodyweight calisthenics exercise into your lifestyle, you will most likely fail to use the home exercise equipment you buy.

So what are you waiting for?

Use your own body as your gym… and get started on your own personal fitness journey today!

Technorati Tags: Fitness, Fitness Machines, Home Exercise Equipment, Physical Activity, Physical Training

If you’ve always wondered why your abdominal muscles refuse to shape up, no matter how many hours of crunches you punish your body with, California researchers have some very welcome news for you.

According to a recent study published by the American Council on Exercise, pushing yourself to accomplish a thousand crunches every second day isn’t the most effective way to tone, tighten and strengthen your gut. In fact, the classic crunch – or abdominal sit-up as it is better known – is amongst the most ineffective ways to work your abs… second only to those gimmicky abdominal exercise equipment advertised on late-night television shows. What’s more, rather than carving the flab away from your abdominal muscles, crunches are actually harmful to your back, and are the most common reason for back strains, sprains and other injuries.

Over the years, numerous fitness experts have rallied to and fro about the most effective ab exercises. After years of scientific research and experiments, scientists conclude that in order to bring about the best results, abdominal exercises must stimulate the two major muscle groups in your mid-section – the rectus abdominus which is the long flat muscle extending along the length of the front of your abdomen and the obliques or the long flat muscles along the sides of your abs. The more intense the stimulation – the better the results

On the basis of these criteria, the top three ab exercises are:

Exercise One: Hanging Leg Raises

To do this exercise:

- Hang from a pull-up bar, your legs extended straight down.- Raise your legs upwards, bringing your knees up and towards your chest. - Slowly lower your knees to the starting position and repeat.

When performing this exercise, try not to swing your legs and use the momentum to push your knees upwards. Instead, let your abdominal muscles do the work. Use a slow and controlled motion, concentrating on your ab muscles.

Start with bringing your knees up to your hip level, and then raise your knees higher as your abdominal muscles grow stronger. A tougher and more intense variant of this exercise is the straight-leg version, where you lift both your legs towards your chest, without bending your knees.

For those of you who find bent-knee leg raises too easy, and straight leg-raises too Herculean, try the tuck-straight variant, where you bend your knees on the lift up, and straighten your legs as you bring them back down to the starting position.

Hanging leg raises really push your rectus abdominal muscles and are a time-tested favorite with athletes and body-builders alike. This exercise targets your entire core section, building you a stronger, firmer and more toned midsection, and is one of the few exercises which actually give your lower abs a thorough workout.

Exercise Two: The Plank

To do this exercise:

- Lie face down on a mat.- Lift your torso up on your forearms with your palms flat on the floor.- Push off the mat, raising your body on your toes. Lift your knees off the mat. Your body should be balanced on your forearms and your toes.- Keep your back flat such that your head, shoulders, hips and heels are in a straight line.- Tuck in your abdominal muscles to keep your hips from jutting upwards.- Hold for 20 – 60 seconds and then slowly lower your body back to the starting position.

The Plank is an excellent strength and stability exercise which builds core strength, stability and taut abs. This exercise targets your rectus abdominus and your obliques, while also strengthening your back and glutes.

When performing this exercise, concentrate on bringing your belly-button towards your spine, by squeezing your abdominal muscles as tightly can you can. While most adrenaline-addicted bodybuilding enthusiasts scoff at any exercise that doesn’t call for at least a several hundred repetitions, the plank is undoubtedly a lot more challenging than it seems at first blush. This exercise makes you push against the dual forces of gravity and your bodyweight to keep your back from arching and sagging, by tightening all your abdominal muscles.

Exercise Three: The Side Plank:

A slightly more advanced variant of the basic plank, the side plank is very effective in building core strength and stability. When performed correctly with perfect form, this exercise can tremendously strengthen and tone your abdominal and lower back muscles.

To do this exercise:

- Lie on your left side with your feet stacked, one on top of the other. Your left forearm should be placed flat on the floor, extended at a right angle from your body. Rest your left arm on your left side.- Lift your body upwards on your forearm, with your weight balanced on your left forearm and the side of your left foot.- Be sure that you aren’t arching your shoulders and / or holding your breath. Remember to keep your right shoulder, your hip and your foot in a straight line.- Hold this position for as long as you can, and then slowly lower your body back to the starting position.- Switch sides and repeat

For a more advanced version of this exercise, lift your arm and extend it straight towards the ceiling, such that it forms a straight line with your supporting elbow.

If you’re having trouble with balancing your bodyweight, start with lifting your body on your left forearm and the side of your left knee, maintaining a straight line with your head, right shoulder and right knee.

Although surprisingly uncomplicated, this exercise will make you break a sweat with the core stability and strength it calls for. If your oblique muscles aren’t strong enough, this exercise can be very challenging. Start simple, increasing the duration and complexity of this exercise as you gain more strength and balance.

Exercising your way towards a perfect set of six-pack abs is a relatively simple and uncomplicated process… given that you learn to distinguish the fact from fiction. Rather wasting your time, and hard-earned money, on fad products, expensive gym memberships and bogus miracle weight-loss pills, focus on reliable, scientifically proven ab-toning techniques… your fitness levels (and abdominal muscles) will know the difference!

Technorati Tags: ab workout, crunches, exercise, Fat Loss, Fitness, Sit Ups, Six Pack Abs, weight Loss

Discover The 5 Reasons Why Exercise Machines Are A Waste Of Time
In today’s day and age we live in a technology dependent society. Almost everything we do revolves around some kind of mechanical or electrical device. This includes what just about everyone looks for in a gym. If you’re like most, when you walk into a fitness center, you usually look for the amount of equipment or how many resistance training machines there are on the exercise floor. “Is there a machine for my chest, back legs, arms etc…” This has been the biggest indicator when clarifying a gym’s effectiveness. Well, being that our population’s obesity epidemic is spreading world wide, and fitness levels have dramatically declined in the past twenty five years or so, I think it’s time to re-evaluate and determine what went wrong.
It has been during the past twenty five to thirty years when our obesity problem really started to take off. And due to the fact that our society has always been in search for the ‘quick fix’, exercise really started to take off as well. Since exercise was “in”, and we desire the “magic solution, resistance training machine companies are heavily marketing their equipment. I hate to break it to you, but when it comes to getting healthy and more physically fit, nothing will yield better results than hard work, dedication, and motivation; not gimmicks or machines. Machines actually are an inferior method of exercise.
It’s time to go back to our roots and look like we did hundreds of years ago. When you think about it, humans have always done some form of activity, and we have always been obsessed with strength and physique. So my question to you is did we have machines hundreds of years ago? My next question is as a whole, who looked better as a population, us now or mankind hundreds of years ago?
Now I’m not saying exercise machines are useless, everything has its place, but I can come up with a couple of dozen reasons why exercise machines are not optimally efficient. Instead of boring you anymore than I already have I’ll provide you with my top five.
Here we go:
1.) Exercise machines are NOT an optimal form of exercise for most. Exercise machines are great for isolating specific muscles (i.e. – the standard leg extension machine for the quads), but because exercise machines are anchored to the ground, your stabilizer muscles (muscle that surround your joints and protect them from injury), do NOT get developed. Exercise machines do not allow you to stabilize the weight you are lifting in three dimensions, and since daily activities such as work and athletics do require you to use these important muscles (the stabilizers), exercise machines are an inferior method of exercise
2.) Exercise machines are NOT ideal to improve posture. Over the years in the fitness industry, I have seen an incredible amount of people that have poor posture. This includes forward head, rounded shoulders, flat lower backs, and other misalignment in spinal curvature. This is due to the lack of strength in postural muscles, making it hard to fight gravity, and since gravity is almost impossible to escape, those who can’t fight gravity efficiently will almost always have poor posture. By performing exercise on machines your body does not have to fight gravity, and on most traditional gym equipment your body doesn’t have to stabilize itself. However, by performing exercise in a prone, upright, or supine position, you can engage and load postural muscles to help with fight gravity, resulting in better posture.
3.) Exercise machines are just flat out BORING! I can remember a couple of years ago when I worked at a large health club filled with fancy ground based machines, I would sit and watch people go through their work outs. One day I saw a gentleman working on the chest press machine. It was hilarious. He actually appeared to be falling asleep. I mean yawn after yawn during repetitions. I think if the guy was on a lying leg press he may have actually dozed off.
Now let’s analyze that situation. If he were on a flat bench performing dumbbell chest presses, do you think he would have been in that state of mind? Only if he wanted a nose job by dropping the dumbbells on his face. I have in the past and still do observe exercisers on the free weight floor. What I see is always a look of determination, motivation, and enthusiasm. My point here is that by participating in a free weight, non-machine based program, it not only forces you to concentrate and work harder, but it’s more fun, and the feeling of accomplishment is far superior than just going through the motions on exercise machines.
4.) Exercise machines CANNOT improve balance or stability. As I stated earlier, ground based exercise machines DO NOT require the use of your stabilizer muscles. These muscles not only protect your joints, but they also are responsible for your ability to stabilize and balance. Instead, try to incorporate some non-traditional methods of exercise like the use of a stability ball, or balancing on one leg, or doing some low level plyometrics. These types of exercises are extremely beneficial to increasing balance, stability, and agility. No machine can give you any of these qualities by itself.
5.) You can mimic any exercise machine exercise without the machine and get the same benefits plus a lot more. Every exercise machine that is on the market today has been developed based on movements that the human body does naturally. With that being said, you can perform any exercise machine exercise without the use of an actual exercise machine. The chest press machine is essentially a bench press, the leg press machine is a squatting motion, the rowing machine (you know the one for your back muscles) can be done with free weights, and the list goes on and on. But the catch is that when you do these movements with body weight or free weights you get all the same benefits plus the development of balance, stability, and definitely more calories burned. Let’s not forget that when you perform body weight or free weight based movements, you will always engage you core muscles.
I don’t know about you, but if I have my choice I’m sure you can guess what it is. That’s right good old fashioned body weight, free weight, or other non – machine based movements. Now, it’s important to realize that I’m not saying that exercise machines are useless, but would you rather work out for hours at a time with boring exercise equipment, or would you like to get more bang for your buck by getting more out of one exercise like a squat, some form of a press, a rowing motion, a lunging motion, or even a twisting, or bending motion? Instead of using one to two dozen boring exercise machines all you have to do is have fun while incorporating the six movements I just mentioned and you’ll be well on your way to achieving your fitness goals more efficiently and faster than ever before.

Technorati Tags: Boot Camps, Bootcamp, Exercise Machines, Fitness, Fitness Bootcamps, Jason Zaretzky, Optimal Performance, Rockland County Bootcamps, Rockland County Ny, Rocklandsportstraining, weight Loss

Which do you prefer, aerobic or anaerobic exercises? Do you know the difference? Does it make a difference? Not really. The words aerobic and anaerobic represent different ways the body gets energy for exercise.
In aerobic, meaning with oxygen, exercise involves or uses oxygen to fuel metabolism, and the main fuel comes from burning fat. This type of exercise involves relatively less muscle fatigue. Aerobic exercise is of moderate intensity. Anaerobic, or without oxygen, exercise is higher-intensity exercise where the muscles rely on fuels other than oxygen. Anaerobic exercise burns sugar as the main source of fuel. Either way, you still burn fat.
Light exercise cleans out lactic acid (a waste product) and stimulates cell regeneration. To burn fat, rather than sugar, there are several things to remember:
- Breathe deeply. Use your diaphragm to draw in air, through your nose, and hold the breath for a few seconds. Then exhale through your mouth.
- Exercise at a comfortable level. If 10 is extreme exertion, exercise at a 7. You should still be able to carry on a normal conversation while you work out. Doing this for 45 minutes a day will restore energy and make you feel great!
You may think you don’t have time to exercise, but you should make time. The benefits to your health and well-being far outweigh the cost in time. Since proper exercise increases energy, you won’t need to sleep as much as you have in the past. So, take a little of your nighttime sleep to exercise. You’ll be better for it.
Or use your lunch break to exercise instead of having a heavy lunch that adds fat. Your productivity will increase. You’ll be more alert and energetic. And the time you save in added productivity can be applied to those other important tasks you aren’t willing to trade for exercise.
Rebounding (also known as cellularise) is a great way to get aerobic exercise. A rebounder is a mini-trampoline that provides excellent, non-impact exercise through bouncing. If you have access to this type of equipment, try it! It’s a fun exercise for all ages and types, and it’s less expensive than other types of exercise equipment.
Whether you have access to a rebounder or not, use any break or time out to get in some movement and deep breathing. Any type of exercise will have great benefits. It will improve your heart, making it stronger and larger. Deep breathing will make your lungs stronger, too. The movements you use to exercise promote proper blood flow to your joints as well as to your muscles, so you reduce possible joint pain by engaging in regular exercise. And research suggests positive links between exercise and overall health – preventing almost every type of disease.
Many of us spend most of our days sitting crouched at our desk, typing away at our computer, focused on the job at hand. And while we do this, our bodies get stiff, tired, and full of natural toxins. Proper exercise flushes the system and stimulates internal organs, including the brain. It restores energy and improves attitude.
Your investment in just a little moderate exercise will repay your effort with benefits that last a lifetime. You’ll live better, live longer, and enjoy life more when you commit to and follow through on a regular program of exercise.

Technorati Tags: aerobics, deep breathing, Fitness, Fitness Exercises, walking for fitness

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