As I was teaching a weight training class the other, someone made a special request to get rid of “the under arm jiggle.” To you and I, it’s called the triceps. Of course we exercise our triceps as part of our weight training. Women especially worry about their triceps. So today, I give you a triceps exercise!
Tricep Extension a.k.a. Skull Crushers
- You can use a curl bar or dumbbells for this exercise. For our purpose for today we will use the curl bar.
- Load up the bar.
- Lay down on a bench holding the curl bar shoulder width apart.
- Keep the elbows in.
- Overhand grip hold the bar just above your chest and slowly lower the bar to your forehead and inhale.
- Exhale as push the bar away back to a starting position.
- Repeat.
The tricep extension is an excellent exercise. The more you do, there is a tendency to let the elbows flare out to the sides. Prevent that from happening, because you will no longer be weight training those triceps. You MUST keep the elbows in to see any results.
Personally, I like to super set my triceps with my biceps to get a good pump in my arms!
Fitness Beliefs and Benefits
Last week, I blogged about the latest fitness trends and today I feel the need to discuss fitness beliefs and benefits of a healthy lifestyle. It never hurts to review some of the industry’s fitness beliefs and benefits of a healthy lifestyle. Feel free to reflect on your own healthy lifestyle.
- Exercise with proper form and range of motion. In order to get the maximum amount of results, and reduce injuries, this is a basic truism! If you are working hard, and pushed yourself to the max, feel good about the workout and a sense of accomplishment.
- Allow yourself to take time off! Remember your muscles need a full 24 hours of rest for recovery and growth.
- Include weight training in your weekly schedule, to help build muscle and increase your resting metabolic rate. This happens when you have a higher muscle to fat ratio.
- Vary your workouts and try something you haven’t done before. Allow yourself to try a new program, like P90X. Perhaps you always wanted to try water skiing. So what’s holding you back? Go for it!
- Here’s one you’ll like…drink wine and eat dark chocolate. These two treats actually provide good antioxidants and can be healthy in small quantities.
- Listen to your body and not the scale. So many think that they should be losing weight when they exercise. That does not always happen. What you will lose is inches. Your clothes may fit better and you’ll have more energy.
- Exercise and fitness is good for your health. Thirty minutes most days of the week will give you the benefits you seek.
- Diets Don’t Work! Just eat a healthy diet with fruits and vegetables, whole grains, lean protein and good fats. Combine with exercise and your on your way to a healthy lifestyle.
I hope we have similar viewpoints on our fitness beliefs and benefits. There are so many ways to have a healthy lifestyle. So choose to work toward the ultimate benefit of a long, happy and healthy life!
How long have we been hearing that abdominal fat is not healthy. In fact, the “pear” body type is much healthier with the weight distributed in the hips and thigh area than the “apple” body type. The “apple” body type retains most of your weight right around the middle of your body, abdominal fat.
According to the Mayo Clinic, holding abdominal fat surrounds the organs internally and can “significantly increase internal health problems caused by belly fat.” This increases heart disease, Type II Diabetes, Stroke and Sleep Apnea. The Mayo Clinic also says that men’s waists greater than 40 inches are at a greater risk. Women should keep their waists less than 35 inches.
Doing at least 30 minutes of aerobic/cardiovascular exercise can help reduce abdominal fat. Eating more fruits and vegetables, whole grains and less saturated fats can assist you with less abdominal fat along with a limited alcohol intake.
It’s not always about having 6 pack abs, it’s about reducing abdominal fat for a healthier you!
When you ask yourself how much should I exercise, think about your fitness goals before you decide on an answer. A certain amount of exercise for one person may not be same or offer the same benefits for someone else. Exercise is very personal depending on your goals.
There are some additional thoughts in regard to exercising:
- Keep it simple! Don’t make your exercise sessions long and complicated. Get in, Get out, Get fit.
- Stay encouraged. You may not see results as quick as you’d like, but they will come.
- You’ll start to feel good about your self. There’s nothing like having positive self esteem.
- You’ll be getting healthier. Muscles will be toning up, you’ll sleep better at night and some health issues may begin to diminish.
- You will be improving the quality of your life with exercise and fitness.
So the question of how much should I exercise is a decision only you can make with information and knowledge. Start out slow with modifications and gradually increase your own personal exercise program.
Now flip the coin, can you exercise too much? Yes you can. Your body will let you know when you are over exercising and over training. Keep it on the healthy side and you’ll be fine.
Let’s talk about pull ups/chin ups and the proper lifting techniques when doing them. I haven’t discussed this before because, I do not like doing them. These are a very hard exercise but extremely worthwhile if you want to get stronger while working your back and arms. The more you do them, the stronger you will get and implementing the proper lifting techniques are imperative to avoid any injuries.
For beginners, get a chair and place it underneath the bar. Keep in mind the closer the chair is to the bar, the easier the exercise will be. Place one foot on the back of the chair and use the chair to assist you when doing your pull ups/chin ups. As you get stronger you can push the chair further forward of the bar, and you’ll be using it for less help.
You can also get big elastic bands that you drape over the bar. Place your knee at the bottom of the band for assistance with your exercise. There are different resistance levels with the bands as well for more or less assistance with the exercise.
When you have progressed to the next level without a chair or band, do your pull ups/chin ups with a smaller range of motion until you get stronger. The next progression would be “kipping” swinging your hips while lifting. Finally, do the full range of motion, with legs hanging straight down, and a greater range of motion. Of course, you can add weight for increased resistance and gain more strength.
Check out my website http://www.fitnessfromthepro.com for more in depth information on proper lifting techniques for pull ups and chin ups!
A push up workout can be as simple or as difficult as you want to make it. The difficulty of the push up depends on your own individual strength. They can always be modified and changed as your strength increases. For instance, starting a regular push up on your knees and graduating to your toes. Once on your toes, you may not be able to go down as deep, or have the full range of motion. However, with time your range of motion will increase.
“Dive Bombers” is an advanced, total body exercise to work in to your push up workout. You’ll work your shoulders, chest, arms, core, legs, butt, your entire body!
- It starts out in a Downward Dog position, hips are pushed back and up in the air.
- Lower your upper body down as if you were “diving under a fence” bending your elbows. The rest of the body sinks almost to the floor as you push your chest up straightening the arms.
- Then slowly push your hips back to Downward dog.
- Repeat.
To keep this a very, very advanced push up, reverse the move and push back “under the fence” bending your arms and sliding the hips back into Downward Dog. Yes this is a yoga move.
Gradually build up your push up workout to include a variety of push ups to increase strength and range of motion.
Circuit and interval training are not only great fat burning workouts but also afford you excellent resistance and endurance training. Not only that, but they can reduce the amount of time you spend in the gym.
There is a difference between the 2 types of training. Circuit training does more with resistance, because you use the apparatus in the gym. Set a weight for yourself , set the number of reps, and do 3-4 sets without rest between sets. When you work the circuit, you’ll address the major muscle groups and without rest, your heart rate will increase and should maintain its rate. This makes it a fat burning workout. Large opposing muscle groups are worked first, followed by the smaller body parts.
Interval training offers a bit more fat burning workouts because you are exercising on cardio machines or walking. After your warm up, you’d increase your exertion for a finite period of time, 30 second-1 minute (to start off with) and then recover for the same amount of time. The basis for interval training is to get your heart rate up within your target range, and lowering the rate of exertion.
Both fat burning workouts accomplish a fitness goal. If fat loss is your goal, circuit and interval training could be right for you!
Money is getting tighter and tighter for all of us and that’s why one of the hottest fitness trends is to do your workout at home. It may be more cost effective to pay a one time fee for DVDs that offer you in-home workouts with variety that include cardio, strength and endurance training. It’s also beneficial when the DVDs come with a money back guarantee and you can see your results.
There are new fitness applications for your itouch, Droid, or Blackberry phone. This is one of the newest fitness trends that can assist you with your in-home workout. These applications use scheduling tools, tracks your fitness progress, offers muscle specific exercises and can even help with meal planning.
The lack of time and getting the most out of a workout with strength and cardio training is a fitness trend that we see more and more. Get in/Get out/Get moving! Dancing seems to be more
and more popular too, giving a variety to your fitness routine.
Stay with an exercise program that’s right for you. If you are looking for some fabulous DVD sets for an in-home workout, check out P90X and it’s companion One on One with Tony Horton. The One on One delivers a new workout routine once a month. Which is cool, because just when it’s time to change your routine…BAM…a new DVD is at your door.
Another crazy, all-inclusive, workout DVD is “Insanity” from BeachBody. There are always modifications offered for different fitness levels in all of the DVDs mentioned. If you want results, check out these DVDs, as they are a part of the current fitness trends!
Kettlebell Exercises and training is a great way to workout. As you know, I boast about using kettlebells for cardio training and abdominal training. Today I’m going to combine kettlebell exercises with abdominal exercises known as reactive abdominal training. This is a method of training your abdominals to stabilize your torso during athletic movement.
For this particular kettlebell exercise find a partner. They will stand in front of you as you swing the kettlebell forward. As you lift the kettlebell to shoulder height, your partner will try and push the kettlebell away from you during the swing. The whole idea is to keep the kettlebell at your midline or above your belly button. As you do this exercise , you will have to engage the abdominals for stabilization. Don’t forget to have your partner stand on both sides. You can do this exercise as a number of reps or amount of time, 30 seconds on one side, 30 seconds on the other.
Kettlebell exercises constantly prove unique ways to train and certainly add to muscle confusion. This is just one of the many reactive type abdominal training that can be done.
Hey guys, if you are looking for a great fat burning workout, you have to check out BeachBody’s, Turbo Fire. Some of you may already recognize Chalene Johnson from Turbo Kick. She has designed this fat burning workout. It’s all about High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)!
High Intensity Interval Training consists of short bursts of energy followed by quick recovery periods. HIIT gets your body in an anaerobic state, using reserves of stored ATP, Creatine Phosphate, and Lactic Acid. After this short burst of energy, you get an equal amount of time for recovery. HIIT uses all the major muscle groups which gives you better benefits. This type of interval training helps eliminate plateaus, by creating cardio confusion.
HIIT is a perfect fat burning workout to help you lose weight! It promises to produce rapid and dramatic changes to your body and improved cardiovascular fitness. Turbo Fire promotes that you can burn up to 9 times more fat. It also includes a nutrition guide that’s fast and easy. Turbo Fire also has a “5 Day Inferno” eating plan for quicker weight loss. Try Turbo Fire, a fat burning workout and eat a healthy diet and you will see results!
