Posts Tagged ‘exercise’
Thursday, April 11th, 2013
We all have someone that we envy. You know what I mean — the lifter with the toned abs and softball-sized biceps you can’t help but covet.
If you’re a beginner, getting from point A to point Bodybuilding Pro is just as hard as learning to ride a bike blindfolded. Fortunately, there are many successful weightlifters willing to share the tricks of the trade.
Here are a few tips from the pros to get you started on creating your own envy-worthy body.
If You Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail
“Lack of planning” is among the top 10 reasons beginner bodybuilders fail to achieve their goals. Planning daily workouts takes time, dedication, and some exercise research. It’s definitely not the most exciting part of training. But you won’t build bulging biceps and washboard abs by sporadically visiting the gym and dinking around on random equipment.
A good plan — like those experienced builders follow — doesn’t have to be elaborate.
Here are 4 basic elements to get you started:
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Tags: balance, beginner, Conditioning, exercise, experience, fitness, Fitness Tips, strength, tips, workout
Posted in Bodybuilding, Diet, Fitness Tips, Weight Training | No Comments »
Monday, April 8th, 2013
Staying Healthy on the Road
Although for some people a week or two’s vacation in the sun represents an opportunity to sit back and relax, if you’re someone who places importance on maintaining your fitness and physique through exercise and training, this won’t be you. Instead you’ll see it as another chance to work out.
While you might try your hand at some new activities when you’re abroad, if you have access to a gym where you’re staying, you may well want to keep up with your current training regime. However, while you may think that you can just pick up from where you left off at home, there are a few issues to be aware of. This will ensure that you can work out safely to avoid injury and ill health, allowing you to enjoy the rest of your vacation and not put your fitness back. Follow the tips below and seek out further advice on staying well before you travel.
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Tags: Business, Diet, exercise, fitness, health, healthy, nutrition, travel, traveling, vacation, work
Posted in Business, Healthy Lifestyle | 1 Comment »
Sunday, April 7th, 2013
Strength and Balance Conditioning
When it comes to exercise, people often find one type of workout they like and focus on it almost exclusively. For some people this means jogging until they can run a marathon. Others engage in weight training in order to build muscles, bulk up, or bench press their own body weight. Still others rely on yoga and Pilates to help them increase flexibility and muscle tone while restoring a mind-body connection or adding a spiritual element to their workout routine.
The point is that it’s easy to get stuck in a rut with one type of exercise. Sometimes we’re seeking specific results, but more often than not we simply end up doing what we like. But this may not be the best way to increase your overall fitness since the practice tends to focus on only one benefit of exercise at the expense of others.
So if you’re looking to improve both your strength and balance, here are a few tips that can help you to reach your fitness goals.
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Tags: balance, Conditioning, exercise, fitness, Fitness Tips, strength, tips, workout
Posted in Conditioning, Fitness Tips | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013
Weight loss surgery is becoming increasingly popular all over the world, and for a very good reason. It offers a solution to a problem that plagues millions of people worldwide. However, determining whether weight loss surgery is right for you can be difficult. There are many benefits to these surgical procedures, but there are downsides as well. It’s important to understand this issue from both sides to decide what’s right for you.
Pro: Guaranteed Weight Loss
If you’re like many people in the world today, you’ve had a hard time trying to lose your excess weight. Some people try everything under the sun in an effort to shed pounds, yet they still find themselves unable to achieve their weight loss goals. Surgical procedures like gastric bypass and gastric banding offer guaranteed results. Liposuction can get rid of excess fat instantly. Those who seek a guaranteed solution to their weight loss problems can find that solution with weight loss surgery.
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Tags: Diet, diet plans, diets, event, exercise, fat loss, fitness, food, lifestyle, lose fat, lose weight, Medical, nutrition, surgery, weight loss, workout
Posted in Medical, Research | No Comments »
Monday, March 25th, 2013
Shoulder Rehab
Chronic Shoulder Instability and Impingement Syndrome are the most common types of shoulder injury. Chronic Shoulder Instability occurs when the ‘head’ of the upper arm bone moves out of the shoulder socket. This results in a shoulder joint dislocation and causes great pain. On the other hand, impingement syndrome is prompted by friction occurring between the shoulder blade and rotator cuff. The friction from the rotator cuff and the shoulder blade may be caused by inflammation in a tendon or muscle.
Preparations to Rehab an Injured Shoulder
It’s important to remember that any injury needs to be checked and treated by an accredited physician. They may recommend medication and several rehabilitation techniques to encourage the shoulder to heal and function as soon as possible. The Physician will also be able to see the specifics of your injury that may alter they way you would treat it. Here are some tips to consider when preparing an injured shoulder for rehabilitation.
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Tags: back, exercise, fitness, injuries, injury, injury prevention, Medical, powerlifting, prevent, prevention, rotator cuff, shoulder, shoulders, Weight Training, weightlifting
Posted in Fitness Tips, Injuries, Medical | No Comments »
Saturday, March 23rd, 2013
Here is another excellent fitness article for pregnant women. At Project Swole we care about everyone.
Exercising During Pregnancy
Many women are concerned about exercising during pregnancy, but the fact is that the right kind of workouts during the natal period can be tremendously beneficial. The rewards of exercising while pregnant include fewer childbirth complications, reduced incidence of aches and discomfort, higher energy levels, and better blood circulation.
Benefits like these make both the pregnancy period and the birthing process much easier and promote an overall sense of well-being. Weight training is especially good for pregnant women, as pregnancy tends to bring on extra body weight while muscles shrink due to inactivity.
Be Considerate of Exercise Technique
Of course, the body of a pregnant mom-to-be is in a delicate state, and this should be a cause for concern when exercise is being considered. Any exercise that involves a face-down posture should be avoided to reduce pressure on the abdomen, and the muscle groups focused upon should be those that need extra strength during pregnancy.
Lighter weights are highly recommended.
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Tags: babies, baby, Diet, exercise, fitness, nutrition, preggers, preggo, pregnancy, pregnant, workout
Posted in Fitness Tips, Medical, Women's Health | No Comments »
Thursday, March 21st, 2013
Why CrossFit Could be Good for Everyone
CrossFit is one the fastest growing fitness programs in the United States, but why has it been so successful?
High intensity interval training, weight lifting, Olympic weight lifting, gymnastics, and rowing have all been around for a long time. However, CrossFit utilizes all of these movements and creates a complete program that takes the best of all the different disciplines.
This might seem overwhelming at first, but many CrossFit gyms allow scaling down to what you’re comfortable with, a trainer always watching you, and usually a two to three week starter program. This allows anyone of any age or fitness level to take advantage of CrossFit.
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Tags: Conditioning, Crossfit, exercise, fitness, health, Weight Training, weightliftig, working out, workouts
Posted in Conditioning, Fitness Tips, Weight Training | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, March 20th, 2013
If there’s one part of a bodybuilder’s lifestyle that’s more important than the workouts, it’s got to be nutrition. If you’re not giving your body the fuel it needs to build muscle, all your efforts are going to go to waste as you burn out and lose both your energy and your muscle mass.
Traveling makes it even more difficult to stay on top of your nutrition, especially when you’re mostly limited to the offerings of airlines, terminal food courts, and restaurants. To keep your fitness routine up while you travel, it’s important to keep training and eating clean all the while.
Get acquainted with sludge.
It may not sound like the most appetizing food in the world, and it might be a bit tough to stomach at first, but it’s the traveling bodybuilder’s best friend. Most builders make their sludge by mixing whey protein and peanut butter or almond butter with with water until it reaches a pudding-like consistency.
Since you can’t bring liquids through airport security, pack enough pre-measured bags of whey and almonds to last through your flight, and a Tupperware container for mixing. Either buy bottled water in the airport, or take advantage of courtesy cups on the plane. Use a little less liquid than you would normally, and you can make your own protein-rich sludge anywhere.
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Tags: Business, Diet, exercise, fitness, nutrition, travel, work
Posted in Diet, Fitness Tips, Nutrition Tip | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 19th, 2013
If you are expecting a child, it is important to know that doctors and specialists don’t discourage physical fitness and weight training like they used to do in the old days – they actually encourage it.
Physicians used to believe that any kind of rigorous exercise for a mother to be could potentially cause harm to the fetus, either due to miscarriage or a premature birth, but now it is widely believed that a routine fitness regiment during pregnancy can have a number of benefits, like lowering stress levels and increasing general well being.
Moreover, regular weight training is both risk-free and can have many benefits for a woman during her pregnancy, in all trimesters.
Here are 5 benefits of weight training during pregnancy.
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Tags: babies, baby, Diet, exercise, fertitity, fitness, nutrition, preggers, pregnancy, workout
Posted in Fitness Tips, Medical, Women's Health | No Comments »
Sunday, March 10th, 2013
Heading off to the mountains for some winter sports fun is a great way to give your entire body a workout and get out of the gym and into the great outdoors. Winter sports are a great way to exercise and will strengthen your leg muscles as well as your core muscles, as long as you can avoid injuries skiing and snowboarding.
We know we are already past the holidays, but you can use these tips in-season as well, to try to build up your lower body and core strength and healthy throughout the season.
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Tags: exercise, fitness, health, healthy, injuries, injury, ski, skiing, Sports, workout
Posted in Injuries, Sports | No Comments »
Friday, March 1st, 2013
I get plenty of questions in various comments throughout the website, but I also get comments and questions via the Project Swole Contact Form.
Generally I address those questions through e-mail, but often I do not have the time to reply to each and every question personally.
From now on I want to take a more proactive approach to answering Your Health Questions by posting them separately in the blog. This way we can be sure that everyone benefits from the Q & A.
Gillian Finnick wrote:
“Hi Steve. I know you don’t normally answer questions like this, but I’ve seen you address some female topics before, sometimes with female guest bloggers. Do you have any recommendations for taking care of my hair during a workout? I’m sick of getting my hair done then turning into a ball of frizz after just one workout. Please help!”
Response:
You are right Gillian, I don’t normally answer these types of questions, and in fact I can’t answer it right now. However, I have consulted with my fitness friend Heather who also happens to also be a hair dresser, and asked her to whip up a guest post with some tips. That being said, here you go!
How to Care for Fitness Hair
Whether or not you put a lot of time and effort into your daily beauty routine, the last thing you want to do is add to your regimen needlessly. And the truth is that intense exercise can leave your hair oily, frizzy, or worse, both. For women who spend a lot of money at the salon for a particular coif, this can be a deal-breaker. But what good is perfect hair if the body it rests on is less than ideal?
Looking and feeling your best and attending to your overall health is more important than your hair, but it’s funny sometimes how our priorities get jumbled up. In any case, you don’t have to pick one or the other. You can find ways to keep your locks looking sleek even when you exercise. Here are just a few tips and tricks that will help you to stave off the frizzies and avoid the oily mess that might otherwise be the result of intense activity.
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Tags: chicks, exercise, fitness, frizzy, girls, hair, women, workout
Posted in Your Questions | 1 Comment »
Thursday, February 28th, 2013
Everything You Need to Know Barbell Complexes
Hitting a plateau can drive you insane. Some people take months just to bump their bench press up by five pounds. A plateau is a good indicator that there’s something about your routine that just isn’t working for you anymore, and it means that it’s time for a change. Adding barbell complexes to your routine is a great technique for breaking plateaus. Barbell complexes are difficult, requiring you to perform several barbell exercises in a row as one set with no rest in between sets.
Benefits of Barbell Complexes
As a form of cardio, barbell complexes have several benefits over traditional cardio workouts. Barbell complexes burn a ton of calories but do not release cortisol the same way traditional cardio does. Cortisol is a stress hormone partly responsible for inducing fat storage in the body. However, barbell complexes release anabolic hormones that help you cut fat, making barbell complexes a great tool for cutting fat while you get out of your plateau.
The time required for traditional cardio can also be a bit of a drag, clocking in at thirty minutes or more. Barbell complexes are very fast-paced, and depending on how many sets you do, you may finish in ten to fifteen minutes – half the time of traditional cardio.
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Tags: barbell complex, cleans, Conditioning, exercise, fitness, Olympic complex, overhead press, snatch, Weight Training, weightlifting
Posted in Conditioning, HIIT Routines, HIRT Routines, Weight Training | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 27th, 2013
One of the first places the average adult body stores spare fat is around the belly, and this can be a real nightmare for anyone trying to trim down their midsection.
You might think that you’re doing everything right when it comes to your diet and exercise regimen, and yet, for some reason you just can seem to shed the unsightly padding around your abdominals.
If this is the case, you could find that doing everything right is actually all wrong. Your lifestyle might be sabotaging everything.
Here are just a few tips and tricks that could help you to finally melt away the belly fat that’s been plaguing you for years. Sure, they say diet is responsible for 75% of your progress, but if you are doing everything else wrong, your lifestyle could derail 90% of your progress.
Here are 5 more tips to help you lose belly fat:
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Tags: cardio, Diet, diet plans, diets, event, exercise, fat loss, fitness, food, lifestyle, lose fat, lose weight, nutrition, relaxation, rest, sleep, weight loss, workout, Yoga
Posted in Fitness Tips, Healthy Lifestyle | Comments Off on 5 MORE Ways to Burn MORE Belly Fat During Exercise
Tuesday, February 26th, 2013
There’s something you might not know about type 2 diabetes: anyone can get it. The onset of this form of the disease need not be related to heredity, although instances in your family may raise your risk for developing diabetes. However, you should also know that the condition is not unavoidable, even if you do have a family medical history to contend with.
What is Diabetes?
Type 2 diabetes develops when there is too much sugar in your blood, a condition known as hyperglycemia. Normally, your body creates insulin that breaks down sugar so that it can be stored in cells and burned off as energy. But over time, excess fat in the body can reduce levels of insulin being produced and create an insulin resistance in cells.
While the main cause of type 2 diabetes onset is thought to be obesity, the truth is that you can have a slim physique with a high percentage of body fat. The point is that even people who don’t necessarily look like they’ll develop diabetes may be prone to the disorder. And lifting weights can definitely help to lower your risk.
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Tags: diabetes, exercise, fitness, health, Medical, medicine, nutrition, resistance training, weight lifting, Weight Training, weightlifting
Posted in Medical, Research | No Comments »
Monday, February 25th, 2013
How to Prevent Injuries that Will Derail Your Progress
Adding weight lifting to your workout routine on a weekly basis can offer the average fitness buff a world of benefits.
For one thing, it can make you stronger, as expected, helping you to overcome obstacles in other types of exercise (running faster, throwing farther, jumping higher, etc.). But it can also help you to create the physique you’ve been trying for (whether it’s bulking you crave or simply a frame that features better muscle tone) and even lose weight if that’s what you want (muscle burns more calories than fat). And that’s just the beginning.
Weight lifting, when done improperly, can also result in a slew of injuries, most of which can be easily avoided by warming up and cooling down, building up to greater weights or more reps over time, using proper form, listening to your body, and asking for help from a spotter.
Here are just a few common weight lifting injuries that are best avoided:
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Tags: back, exercise, fitness, injuries, injury, injury prevention, Medical, powerlifting, prevent, prevention, rotator cuff, shoulder, Weight Training, weightlifting
Posted in Fitness Tips, Injuries | 1 Comment »
Thursday, February 21st, 2013
You may have heard about the many benefits of adding weight training to your current workout routine, or perhaps you’ve done your homework and debunked some of myths that were holding you back. Either way, you are about to embark on a new mission – to get PUMPED UP! Or ripped. Or shredded.
In any case, you are probably keen to start trying out weight machines at your gym and pumping iron with free weights and barbells. But before you begin your sojourn into the wide world of weight training it’s not a bad idea to cover the basics so that you don’t end up injuring yourself or others.
Here are just a few common mistakes that you’ll definitely want to avoid:
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Tags: exercise, fitness, mistakes, myths, newbies, noobs, safety, tips, training, workout
Posted in Fitness Tips, Injuries, Weight Training | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, February 20th, 2013
To optimize fat loss rather than weight loss, use the Project Shred diet plan for only 3 weeks, then scale back to a less restrictive meal plan. Be sure to use a workout routine like Fat Loss for Men or Fat Loss for Women, in order to maintain muscle mass during your weight loss phase.
Tags: Diet, diet plans, diets, event, exercise, fat loss, fitness, food, lifestyle, lose fat, lose weight, nutrition, weight loss, workout
Posted in Diet, Nutrition Tip | No Comments »
Saturday, February 16th, 2013
Many people like the energy boost that they get from exercising early since it stays with them throughout the day and leaves them pleasantly sleepy at night. But if you’re not an early riser, you might find that you prefer working out during your lunch break or in the evening, despite the fact that it can leave you pumped up and unable to snooze when your head hits the pillow.
Of course, you may find that exercising later in the day presents you with myriad problems. Perhaps you’re too tired or demands on your time inevitably pop up, preventing you from getting in your workout.
In any case, you might end up deciding that starting your day with a workout is the best way to go. However, it can definitely be difficult to roll out of bed an hour earlier than usual, even if you’re committed to making it work.
So here are a few strategies that should help you find the motivation you need to exercise first thing in the morning.
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Tags: cardio, exercise, fitness, lifestyle, morning, sprints, tips, Weight Training, weightlifting, workout, workouts
Posted in Fitness Tips, Healthy Lifestyle, Motivation | 1 Comment »
Friday, February 15th, 2013
Exercise is Recommended at Any Age
For some reason, people seem to harbor the misconception that turning fifty means you’re old. In truth, it wasn’t really so long ago that the average life expectancy was about fifty-five, but thanks to modern medicine and advancing technology, many people now live to be far older than that. A growing awareness about the role diet and exercise play in human longevity hasn’t hurt, either.
What’s truly astonishing is how many people still believe that there is ever a time in life when it’s too late to start paying attention to your relative state of health and making changes that can benefit you for the rest of your life.
While you might not be surprised to see those in the 50+ category changing their diets to lower blood pressure or cholesterol, it’s likely that you’ll register wonder that your contemporaries are starting a workout routine.
The honest truth is that exercise at any age has the power to transform you if you go about it in the proper way. So here are a few tips to help you get the physique you seek, even if you’re starting to get letters from AARP.
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Tags: Diet, diet plans, diets, event, exercise, fat loss, fitness, food, lifestyle, lose fat, lose weight, nutrition, older, weight loss, workout
Posted in Fitness Tips, Healthy Lifestyle, Medical | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 5th, 2013
Weight lifting is a great way to exercise, build toned muscle, burn calories, and promote overall health–but it can be dangerous as well. Our bodies aren’t used to the stress of heavy lifting, and our backs are particularly vulnerable to strain and injury.
An injured back can keep you out of the gym for weeks, or even months at a time, depending on the severity of the injury and your ability to recover. If you want to stay healthy, strong, and transform your body into a work of art, always remember to protect your back.
Step 1: Warm Up
Never start a workout without warming up first. Your body just isn’t ready for the stress of heavy lifting when you walk through the gym doors. You need to get primed before you start hitting the weights.
- A short cardio warm up on the treadmill or elliptical is a great way to warm up your muscles and get the blood moving in your body. It is not necessary to use high intensity during your warm up. This is just a 5 minute effort to get the muscles moving.
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Tags: back, deadlifts, exercise, fitness, injuries, injury, Medical, powerlifting, Weight Training, weightlifting
Posted in Fitness Tips, Injuries | 1 Comment »
We all have someone that we envy. You know what I mean — the lifter with the toned abs and softball-sized biceps you can’t help but covet.
