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Archive for May 14th, 2010

Bodybuilding and Fitness

Friday, May 14th, 2010

The first thing to keep in mind when you’re beginning a fitness plan is that you need to be safe. Many people overdo their workouts right out of the gate, challenging their muscles with as much weight as they can bear. But what they don’t realize is their likelihood of injury is greatly increased by starting out this way.

A safer and more reliable way to begin building muscle is to start slow. Even if your main concern is how to build muscle the fastest way you can, you should take it easy at first because if you sustain an injury you’ll have to wait until you heal before working out again, and this will put you back to square one.

Therefore, you should start with exercises that target muscle groups instead of specific muscles–in other words, compound exercises. Additionally, calisthenic exercises (those that rely on your body weight instead of external forms of resistance like weights or exercise machines) are generally safer, more practical, and of course cheaper. This doesn’t mean that you should never use weights or exercise machines, because you should. You just need to prepare your body first by developing the support muscles that muscle-isolation exercises are designed to ignore.

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Simple Pilates Exercises

Friday, May 14th, 2010

When is the last time you massaged your feet or exercised them? Yes, exercise them! We cram our feet into shoes on a daily basis constricting them for hours upon hours. We ask our feet to move us all day long, but never give them the love they need. Our feet are one of the most important components to the body. Yet, they are the least tended to. The feet are made up of 26 bones and about 33 muscles that act as shock absorbers to the body. According to Becky Mollenkamp in the July/August 2006 issue of Pilates Style, the feet take the force of several hundred tons each day. The feet need to be strong and flexible enough to take on this feat every day. Happy healthy feet are important to your balance, ease of movement, and help withstand the daily stresses. Think of your feet as the foundation of a house. If you have a crack in your foundation, the rest of the house will be affected. If your feet are misaligned, you may experience knee, hip, back problems and even neck and shoulder pain. By simply addressing your feet, you can ease or resolve a whole slew of body aches including foot conditions such as bunions, plantar fasciitis, and calluses.

Easy Foot Massage
Take a tennis ball and roll under your foot. Make sure to get into every part of the foot and pay special attention to those areas that are sore as you perform the action. This is great to practice when you wake up or after a long day of work. You will also notice after performing this massage that you will have more hamstring (back of your leg) flexibility. Bend over and try to touch your toes. Do the massage and then try and touch again. You’ll be able to go farther.

Towel Exercise
There are a couple of variations to the towel exercise. You want to make sure you sit in a chair on a slippery surface, such as a linoleum floor. You can also practice these without a towel, but the towel can help more with your alignment.
Variation 1: Place your feet together on a towel. Flex your foot with the heel still on the towel. Stretch your toes and lower on to the towel. Grab the towel with your toes and dome your arch to scrunch the towel up. Make sure your heel stays stable. Continue for 5-10 reps and then reverse. Flex your feet and curl the toes. Place the top of the toes to the towel and press away to straighten the toes. Continue for 5-10 reps. Check your alignment by the towel. If the towel pulls more from the outside than the inside or vice versa, focus on keeping the pressure even between the inside and outside of the ball of the feet.

Variation 2: Start the same as above. Flex your foot to lift the balls of your feet with the heel still on the towel and rotate your toes out as far as you can with your knees together. Place the feet down on the towel and rotate back to starting position. Continue for 5-10 reps and the reverse. With feet flat on the towel, rotate out as far as you can. Flex your foot to lift the balls of your feet with heels still on the towel and rotate the feet together and lower. Continue for 5-10 reps. Make sure to try and keep your feet even while rotating. Certain tightness in the ankle, shins, and feet may hinder the movement. You want to keep the toes level.

Inchworm
This exercise can be performed anywhere without anyone noticing as long as your shoes are off. Sitting on a chair flex your foot and lift your toes evenly. Stretch your foot out lowering the toes. Dome your arch, pulling your heel towards your toes. Then flex your foot to pick up the ball of the foot and stretch the foot out long without the heel moving. Continue for 5-10 reps and repeat on the other foot. You can perform this on both feet at the same time or standing up. The goal is to learn how to activate your arch to pull the heel closer to the toes without the toes over-working.

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Pilates Breathing

Friday, May 14th, 2010

As far as Pilates are concerned, the right breathing method is more than just a means towards doing the exercises correctly. They are not an ancillary issue that you can ignore if you have found another way to assume the correct postures. Rather, correct breathing is one of the core principles of these exercises. If you do not understand the significance of correct breathing, you cannot do Pilates the right way. Joseph Pilates, the Greek-German who developed this set of exercises, actually believed that breathing was the most important of his basic principles. He thought it was vital for getting oxygen for one’s muscles, and for cleansing out toxins that caused weakness and disease. Besides that, he also believed that the physical exercises should be precisely matched with breathing, to the point that each of the exercise positions in his plan had its own set of breathing directions. We see once again how integral proper breathing is to these exercises. In order to further understand the nature of the connection between Pilates breathing and exercises, we must go into some detail about the exercises. Firstly, most of them are to do with the torso, closely engaging the muscles involved in the chest and the lining-up of the spine. Of course, these muscle groups also tend to be involved with breathing. If your breathing is not compatible with the exercise, you might not give your muscle the workout it needs. In fact, you might even strain or otherwise injure yourself.

Futhermore, Pilates are also about focus and concentration. After all, centering is another key principle of Pilates, besides breathing. Proper breathing helps you to keep your mind clear, so you can get the precise postures exactly right. If you practice yoga breathing or relaxation breathing techniques, you might have an easier time learning Pilates. This is not to say that Pilates breathing is the same as those other types of breathing. It means that you will already be accustomed to paying attention to your breathing patterns, and adjusting them when necessary. You will not be as disoriented in the beginning as another person who has never tried to regulate their breathing before.

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Pilates Strength and Flexibility

Friday, May 14th, 2010

One of the hottest buzzwords in fitness circles for the past few years has been Pilates. Often confused with yoga, Pilates is a form of exercise designed to improve strength, flexibility, endurance and posture – and just about anyone can do it and see the benefits.

During World War I, Joseph Pilates, a German living in England, developed a series of exercises and equipment to help prisoners of war regain strength and mobility. When he emigrated to New York in the 1920s, he discovered those same techniques helped dancers prevent injury and improve strength while maintaining long, even muscle tone. That’s when the Pilates method was born.

Pilates is designed to fine-tune the mind-body connection. The practice emphasizes proper correct spinal and pelvic alignment and complete concentration on smooth, flowing movement. The idea is that you become acutely aware of how your body feels, where it is in space and how to control its movement. The exercises are designed to elongate and strengthen the muscles.

It’s different from traditional forms of weight lifting because it provides resistance as the muscle is lengthening, not just as it is shortening. When people are weight lifting, when they return towards gravity, they let the weight drop. But if you return it toward gravity with control, that builds the nice long, lean muscle mass that builds strength and improves bone density.

There are two main types of Pilates: mat and reformer. In mat Pilates, you do the exercises on a mat on the floor, generally using nothing but your own body weight (although occasionally you may use free weights, exercise balls and/or weighted balls.) In reformer Pilates, you use a machine to help create resistance as the muscle is lengthening. Both can be appropriate for beginners.

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Ways to Do Cardio Without Running

Friday, May 14th, 2010

If you are looking to learn how to achieve a highly effective cardio workout without having to pound the pavement or treadmill for hours on end then you have arrived at the right place. Cardio exercises without running can be done in a number of different ways, but I am here to discuss 2 of those ways for you. Take a minute and check out these 2 hard hitting cardio strength training drills.

Cardio Without Running!

1. Squat Thrust: Serious cardio involves anaerobic physical activity. Squat thrusts are a great way to strengthen your body’s cardiovascular and skeletal muscle system. If you are looking to drastically improve your fitness level and achieve a sick cardiovascular workout then you have found it with squat thrust. So what is a squat thrust?

The squat thrust is a whole body calisthenic that is tremendous for getting you into shape in a hurry. The great thing about this drill is that it can be done anywhere and at anytime. To execute this movement you will only need the availability of your own body weight and a good flat training space. This particular drill has 3 steps. Start out the first step of the drill by standing with your feet at shoulder width distance apart in length. From here simply crouch down to place your hands flat on the ground in front of you. Next, the second phase of the drill involves you kicking your feet back behind your body extending your body into an upright push up position. The final phase of the exercise involves you kicking your feet back up underneath your body bringing you backed to the crouched position in order for you to stand up.

2. Kettlebell Swings: How good is a car with no wheels? I would say that a car with no wheels is about as effective as your workouts without kettlebell swings! You may have all the components to have a great body, but if you can’t move then you’ll never get anywhere. This is where the ancient kettlebell comes into play.

Kettlebell swings are a tremendous cardio workout to build you some lean muscle. You see this particular exercise is very dynamic and involves you swinging a kettlebell or kettlebells back and forth from between your legs up to at least chest level in an arc like motion. This is done by you having to engage your hips and knees in a constant state of flexion and extension in order to pull it off. You will effectively train the muscles of your shoulders, glutes, hamstrings, back, and abs with this single hard hitting exercise. You will be shocked at just how exerting this cardio strength training drill can be only after a few reps! With this single lift you incorporate hundreds of your working muscles and you will incinerate the calories at an extremely rapid rate.

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