Archive for June, 2008

Do you know that breathing plays a vital role in your routine body exercises?

If you really want to reach your fitness goals in your life, then it is very essential for you to realize that breathing fully and deeply helps you a lot in reaching your goals effectively.

Breathing can greatly affect on your routine exercises and how you feel after exercising.

If you fail to concentrate properly on your breathing technique, then you can feel much difficulty in exercising and at times, it can also mislead you in a wrong way of exercising.

Improper breathing can greatly interfere in the burning of excess calories and it might not encourage your body in burning excess fat.

So, it is very essential for you to practice exact breathing techniques to get better out of your regular routines. Here are certain essential things, which you need to know about breathing while exercising.

Oxygen helps you in burning fat! Is it true?

Your body needs water and increased levels of oxygen, the major sources to burn excess fat. When you are practicing various exercises to burn more fat from your body, you have to considerably increase your regular intake of water.

Most of you want to learn how to dance as there are various reasons behind it. Among those, the great thing regarding learning to dance is, you will find a revitalizing exercise workout.

Learning dance greatly help to pump your heart and also you will get in definite shape.

If the main cause behind dance learning is to get in shape, then practicing dance for a week will not do any trick. You need to attend the dance classes for at least 3 months.

If you want to get into shape, then you need to consider dancing seriously and try to do each step with precision. You have to push yourself to get maximum benefits with your dance workout. Before going to begin dancing, make sure that you stretch the muscles.

There is no need to bother about which style of dance you select to learn because any dance style will give you a great workout, despite of whether it is ballet, swing, hip hop, modern, contemporary, ballroom, etc.

Dance is such a popular exercise that most of the exercise dance classes and exercise videos include various dance movements in their workout routine. Dancing and exercise are closely related to each other.

Nothing makes you to look sexy than a well built figure with a six pack of piercingly clear abdominal muscles in front of it. Don’t forget that the abdominal definition is entirely reliant upon a remarkable bodybuilding diet.

You can easily perform them in the comfort of your living room. Also, you can observe that there is no direct oblique work, because the direct oblique works can cause to build a wider waistline.

Here is the abdominal exercise routine that concentrates both on the upper and lower abdominals. Do 10-15 repetitions of each exercise [Abdominal exercise equipment].

When you are a beginner to start this training routine, you can only able to do 6-8 repetitions of each exercise. Don’t worry about it. Just stick to the routine, within a few weeks; you can able to perform 10 repetitions.

Lying crunches: Lie on your back and slightly bend your legs, keep them crossed and elevated. Then get the upper half of the body towards your knees. Usually, this is a sharp and short movement. Put your hands close to your head but not at the back of the head.

Are you anxious about your regular body fitness? It might be your busy day schedule or a business trip, which interrupts your regular workout time.

But, don’t bother about it! Here is a simple 15 minute workout plan, which you can practice at your home conveniently and achieve enhanced body fitness [Health and exercise for busy folks].

However, you can face dozens of daily life circumstances that often get into your way of perfect exercise routine. But, you should be able to defend yourself with all those situations and spend some time for your body fitness.

Even though it is not possible to avoid all those obvious situations, you need to make out some time for your regular body routine.

So, enter into a 15 minute body workout plan. This can become a perfect way for you to attain better health and fitness, in spite of your hectic daily busy schedule in life. A 15 minute workout plan mainly includes:

Yoga!

Apart from building strength and improving your body flexibility, yoga greatly helps to relax your mind and also improves your concentration level. There are many ways to practice yoga workouts, try to know more about all those yoga work outs and daily perform them every day for at least 5 minutes [Power yoga for strength and flexibility].

Regular visit to the fitness gym is one way of getting a fit body. But, giving a break to your gym [Total gym fitness] routine is not good for your health and fitness. If you give break to your gym routine, here are some things which might happen!

1. Sleep suits:

Lifting the weights burns many calories. The stress associated with lifting weights makes your body to take rest and recover to restore itself.

You will have deeper and high quality sleep after completing your first session. Also, the time it takes for you to fall asleep will be halved.

2. Troubled breathing:

Your lungs are like your biceps. When you exercise, lungs become stronger and bigger, particularly during cardiovascular workout.

But, giving a break makes the lungs and their supporting muscles weaker. As a result, you cannot breath enough amount of oxygen thus resulting in breathlessness.

3. Upbeat News:

Your ticker can not drive as much blood around with each contraction, but your muscles still need the same amount of blood to get them work. This problem will be solved by your heart. It increases the number of contractions per each minute to move the blood around to the right places.

Three months of aerobic exercise decreased body fat and calorie intake in overweight and obese people, according to a new study, and the researchers believe that changes to a central nervous system factor are responsible.

A research team at the University of Chile Clinical Hospital in Santiago, led by A. Veronica Araya, MD, assistant professor, showed that decreased food intake and reduced body mass index (BMI), a measure of body fat, were linked to increased levels of a protein called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF. Its main role is promoting the growth and survival of nerve cells, according to Araya.

However, recent evidence shows that BDNF also is related to obesity and metabolism. The authors speculated that it could suppress appetite.

The team evaluated blood levels of BDNF before and after a three-month program of aerobic exercise in 15 overweight or obese men and women.

Over the three months, BDNF levels greatly increased. This higher the concentration of BDNF, the less the subject’s intake of calories and the greater the weight loss, Araya said. Thus, it is possible that increases in BDNF suppress appetite, she said.

Source: News Medical

Running is an aerobic exercise that affects lungs, heart, bones and muscles. Running makes your body to make over all the improvements.

You can gain many benefits from running on regular basis. A good pair of running shoes is important for you to start running.

Make sure that you select correct size before buying your running shoes. Running shoes also come in different shapes. Visit your local store and make sure that the sales person is having correct knowledge of shoes types and helps in selecting right shoes.

Using wrong shoes can cause problems to your feet like blisters and bunions to hip, knee and back pain. Running shoes are intended in order to give cushioning, breathability, stability, flexibility and tread. If you wear right shoes, it can help in preventing pains and injuries.

Features to look for in running shoes

Cushioning: You need running shoes with lot of cushioning. Each time your foot hits the ground while running, the shoes should absorb the shock of your body weight. The force coming down on your foot while running is 3 to 4 times of your body weight. Therefore, ensure that you select the running shoe with enough cushioning in the heel as well as in the forefoot.

Triangle stretch consists of three steps, hold each position for 15 seconds, alternate between legs and repeat the procedure.

Step 1:

Lunge out:

Move the left leg forward so that you will be in lunge position. Keep your right leg straight and completely extended. Keep your left shin vertical to the top of your foot and your back foot at 90 degrees to your front foot.

Spin around your torso to the left and forward by placing your left elbow on your bent left knee and your right hand on your right hip. This will open up your torso and you should feel the stretch in your inner thighs [Inner thigh exercises], abdominals [Abdominal exercises] and obliques.

Step 2:

Reach up:

Moving into the similar pose as step 1, place a yoga block straight and aligned with the back of your left heel. Move your left hand on the block by locking your elbow to provide a stable platform on which to rest your weight.

Fully stretch your right arm overhead by keeping it as close to your face as possible. Try to keep the top arm, pelvis and back leg assembled in a single plane. You should experience the stretch all up your right-hand side through your lats and obliques.

Hot stone massage therapy involves applying water heated basalt stones of different sizes to important points of your body. These stones give deep massage and create sensations of warmness and comfort.

Your skin becomes warm with the heat of the massage stones and allows for absorbing moisture and therapeutic oils. The heat of the stones also prepares simultaneously the body musculature so that the massage therapist can work into the deep muscle layers.

The therapist will keep the stones along the energy centers of your body for healing to take place. These stones help in uniting with energy flow for rebalancing the physical body, spirit and emotional mind as one.

Hot stone massage technique:

Once you have decided to take hot stone massage, you have to take appointment with a practitioner. Before arriving, the therapist cleans the stones and heats the stones 120° to 150° in water.

While holding the heated stone, the massage therapist uses traditional strokes of Swedish massage. Once the stone becomes cool, he replaces with another stone. The therapist can also leave these heated stones along the spine or palms or between your toes at specific points for improving energy flow in your body.

Chest and Back Exercises for Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced Lifters!

Practice chest [Chest developing exercises] and back exercises before you work on any other muscle groups. Try to raise the amount of weight you lift in each exercise by about 5-10 percent every week. Do the remaining lifts in your workout in any order you wish.

Here are some suggestions for beginner, intermediate and advanced lifters:

Beginners: Practice total-body workouts 2-3 times in a week. Once you complete the chest and back exercises, attempt to do any one set of 8-12 repetitions which are given below:

• Leg curls
• Dumbbell biceps curl
• Squat or leg presses
• Seated alternating dumbbell press
• Crunches (15-20 repetitions)
• Cable triceps extension

Intermediate lifters: If you are an intermediate lifter, then divide your program into two workouts, one for your upper body and the other for lower body. Alternate between the two programs and take one day break after each workout program.

Upper body workouts: After the completion of chest and back workouts, select one workout each for your biceps, triceps and shoulders. Practice 2-3 sets of shoulder exercises and 1-2 sets of the arm exercises.