Posts Tagged ‘sculpt’
1 – Choose the right exercises for your fitness level
Choosing the right exercises for your fitness level is key to losing weight. You simply can’t go to the gym and straight away pile on pounds of steel on the barbell or select the highest speed and resistance on the treadmill. You should take it slow so that your body can adapt easily and to avoid injury which would completely ruin your exercise schedule.
The main resistance exercises you should be focusing on are pullups, pushups, bench press, squats, dips and lunges. These exercises involve all your major muscle groups and thus will allow you to build more muscle and burn more fat than if you tried resistance exercises that focuses on single muscle groups.
With respect to cardio you should set the resistance level and speed level to the lowest setting, overtime you may increase the speed and resistance.
2 – Your workout should be intense enough
When you workout you need to make sure that the intensity of the exercise is high enough. With high intensity exercises I DO NOT mean exercise through pain, I simply mean high intensity exercises to the point of moderate discomfort.
High intensity exercises will allow you to lose weight a lot quicker than if you did low intensity exercises. High intensity exercises will also build you more muscle which will allow you to prevent injuries from intense activities and also to allow you to move more freely and be able to lift and carry heavy objects with ease. As a rule of thumb “High intensity = Quicker results. ”
3 – Your workout should progress over time
As time flies by when you workout you need to take your exercises to the next level by either increasing the resistance of the exercise or by increasing the number of repetitions of that exercise. If you don’t progress by increasing either the resistance or the number of repetitions your body will not allow you to lose weight since it doesn’t have any reason to change. You need to force your body to lose weight.
For example, pushups. Once you could do 1 set of 12 pushups you can make the exercise more difficult by placing your legs on a higher surface such as a chair or a set of stairs or you could increase the number of repetitions of pushups from 12 to 13 or more.
4 – Decrease rest times
By decreasing the time you rest between the sets of your exercise you are allowing your body to adapt to the decreased rest times. For example, If you usually take a 1 minute break between each set then reduce that to 45 seconds. This will force your body to work more efficiently.
For more great fat burning and muscle sculpting tips visit Truth About Abs.
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Warning: this style of workout is WAY different than anything you’ve ever tried before and may result in a dramatically leaner, stronger body so that your friends no longer recognize you in a matter of weeks!
Alright, I exaggerated about your friends recognizing you, but this workout is still great for busy people that always use the excuse that they don’t have time to go to the gym, or even for the normal gym rat to try out for a few weeks to break out of a plateau.
Please keep an open-mind and don’t worry so much about what other people think, because this is quite different and you may get some funny looks, but you’ll get the last laugh with your new rock hard body! To be honest, most people are too self conscious to try something like this. If that’s the case for you, then that’s your loss.
Here’s how it works:
Instead of doing your traditional workouts of going to the gym 3-4 times a week and doing your normal weight training and cardio routines for an hour at a shot, with this program, you will be working out for just a couple minutes at a time, several times throughout each day, 5 days/week.
The program will consist of only bodyweight exercises done for about 2-3 minutes, 6-8 times per day, throughout each day. Now obviously if you work a normal office job, you are going to have to not be shy about doing a few exercises in your office and having your cube-mates watch you. Actually, I’ve found that some people that have tried this have actually gotten their co-workers to join them! If you have a private office, then you don’t have to worry about anybody watching you. If you work from home, or are a stay at home mom, there’s no reason you can’t fit these in throughout the day while at home. If you end up having a busy day with meetings and so forth, and can only fit a couple of these 2-minute workouts in, then so be it, but try to get as many done each day as you can.
If you’re on a normal 9-5 office schedule, I recommend doing your 2-minute workouts every hour, on the hour, with the exception of lunch. For example, you could try 9 am, 10 am, 11 am, 1 pm, 2 pm, 3 pm, and 4 pm.
Some of the exercises that are the best to focus on are:
-bodyweight squats (and variations)
-pushups (and variations)
-forward, reverse, or walking lunges
-up & down a staircase if one is available
-floor planks (holding plank position from forearms and feet)
-floor abs exercises such as lying leg thrusts, ab bicycles, etc.
-one-legged bodyweight Romanian deadlifts
This list is not fully comprehensive, but I wanted to keep it relatively simple. If you know other good bodyweight exercises, you can add those to your routine also. If you want to keep it real simple and don’t want to get down on the floor for anything, you can stick to squats, lunges, and pushups and still get great results.
The good thing about these workouts is that you do enough in 2-3 minutes to get your blood pumping, heart rate up a bit, a large portion of your body’s muscles worked, and your body temperature raised. However, it’s usually not enough to break a sweat in only 2 or 3 minutes, so you don’t have to worry about sweating or getting smelly in the office or where ever you may be. At most, you might just get a little moist on the skin.
Here’s an example routine (adjust the reps up or down based on your capabilities):
Mon/Wed/Fri
9 am – 10 pushups/15 bodyweight squats, repeat 1X for 2 sets
10 am – plank holds (hold the planks as long as you can taking short rest breaks for a total of 3 minutes)
11 am – 5 pushups/10 bodyweight squats, repeat for 4 sets
1 pm – plank holds (hold as long as possible in 3 minutes)
2 pm – 8 pushups/12 bodyweight squats, repeat for 3 sets
3 pm – plank holds (hold as long as possible in 3 minutes)
4 pm – max pushups/max bodyweight squats in one set (no repeat)
Tues/Thurs
9 am – 6 fwd lunges each leg/6 rev lunges, repeat 1X for 2 sets
10 am – one legged bw Romanian deadlifts (RDL) 6 each leg/floor abs for 20 sec, repeat 1X for 2 sets
11 am – 3 fwd lunges each leg/3 rev lunges, repeat for 4 sets
1 pm – one legged bw RDL 3 each leg/floor abs for 20 sec, repeat for 4 sets
2 pm – 5 fwd lunges each leg/5 rev lunges, repeat for 3 sets
3 pm – one legged bw RDL 10 each leg/floor abs for 30 sec (no repeat)
4 pm – max fwd lunges each leg/max rev lunges in one set (no repeat)
In order to progress on these workouts, you could either add 1 or 2 reps to each set per week, or you could progress to more difficult versions of each exercise each week (for example, close grip pushups, one leg raised pushups, squats with arms raised straight over head, etc. ).
The above routines are just a couple examples of how you can use this very unique style of training. Use your creativity and come up with your own. Think about what you’ve accomplished with these “mini” workouts completed throughout each day. . . You’ve increased your heart rate and pumped up your muscles 6-8 different times throughout each day, burning a lot of extra calories and stimulating your metabolism. Even though each “mini” workout was a very short duration, you’ve accumulated lots of repetitions for almost every muscle throughout your entire body, and you didn’t even have to break a sweat during any of the “mini” workouts. And there’s hardly any excuse for not being able to take a 2-minute break once per hour and do a couple of exercises. Another benefit of this style of training is that now you don’t have to devote any time before or after work to going to the gym because you already got your workout done little by little throughout the day. You’ve now got some extra free time on your hands!
Try this type of routine out for 3-4 weeks and then go back to your normal gym routines. I think you’ll find that it was a great way to break out of a plateau and stimulate new results in your body. You can try mixing in a cycle of these “mini” workouts every couple of months to keep things fresh.
Keep in mind that this is only one method of training and doesn’t mean that you should only stick to this method for eternity. You will hit a plateau on any given training method, so I’d recommend just rotating it into your arsenal of various training methods. And by all means, don’t worry about what other people think so much. . . have the courage to try something a little different. In the end, you’ll be the one laughing back at all of the “blubber-bellies” that are giving you funny looks while they eat their donuts!
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Lauren Brooks from http://www.OnTheEdgeFitness.com, teaches you step by step the Front Squat with a kettlebell. Squats will strengthen and tone your legs, butt, thighs, and core muscles. This clip is taken from the Kettlebell DVD “The Ultimate Body Sculpt and Conditioning with Kettlebells.”
Duration : 0:1:35