Plan your summer fitness program to beat the effects of extremely hot weather.

To build a healthy body, mind and spirit, you need a regular exercise routine to reap all of its benefits, which are literally endless.

Although the hot weather in summer can make following a fitness exercise routine difficult, try not to use it as an excuse.

Try to fit in at least 30 to 60 minutes of physical activities or fitness exercises every day in the summer to maintain or increase an existing fitness level.

Fitness workouts to maintain fitness in the summer:

To beat the heat and humid weather and maintain summer fitness, you need to follow a fitness exercise routine with appropriate actions. Here are a few fitness exercises that keep you fit and build your arms in the summertime.

Reverse curls: Start the exercise by standing with your feet shoulder-width apart. Then, hold dumbbells in both hands (one for each), drop the arms before you and palms towards in. Now, slowly lift the dumbbells up with elbows near to the rib cage. Hold for a few seconds, lower the dumbbells, and return to your original position.

Regular aerobic exercise can not only stave off the decline in brain function that often comes with age, it can also help turn back the clock on brain aging, two experts in the field report, based on a critical review of published studies.

Age-related deterioration in the all-important white and gray matter in the brain makes a number of high-level “executive function” tasks — such as planning, scheduling, working memory and multi-tasking — much more difficult, Drs. Arthur F. Kramer and Kirk I. Erickson explain in the latest issue of the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Yet a substantial body of research shows that these are the very processes that are most responsive to physical exercise, note the authors from the University of Illinois Beckman Institute, Urbana.

In people with or those without signs of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, regular moderate physical activity, enough to make a person breathless, has been shown to boost not only the speed and sharpness of thought but also the actual volume of brain tissue and the way in which the brain functions, Kramer and Erickson note.

Women often find it difficult to follow an exercise routine with their busy schedule; looking after kids, managing regular household activities and other responsibilities.

As a busy mom, it is essential that you take some time out of your busy schedule for a fitness exercise routine, whether the goal is long-term weight loss or optimal fitness.

Fitness exercises for busy moms

Here are a few simple and effective exercises especially for busy moms.

Butterfly Ab Curls

Start the workout by lying on the floor, keeping the heels of the feet in concert with the knees bent to the sides, attaining a frog-like posture. Keep the arms straight above your head, form a circle, and raise the head, neck and shoulders up from the floor by breathing out and pulling the abs in.

Hold the position for about five seconds and get back to the original starting position. While doing the workout, exhale firmly and lift the head, neck and shoulder off the floor through pulling the abdominals in, up and back to the spine.

Tricep Push-up Extension

Obesity and lack of fitness raise the risk of illness by impacting negatively on the body’s internal chemistry, research suggests.

A US team found levels of white blood cells were highest in men who were unfit and overweight.

White blood cells are key to fighting infection, but high levels can be a sign of inflammation, which is linked to coronary heart disease.

A team from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center carried out tests on 452 healthy men who were taking part in a long-term study of fitness. Blood tests were taken, and analysed for their content of various types of white blood cell.

After taking account of age, the researchers found that all groups of white blood cell were lowest in the men who were most physically fit.

The greater proportion of body fat a man had, the higher his white blood cell count was.

Total white cell count was highest in men who had a combination of higher body fat and lower levels of physical fitness.

Levels were also high among men with lower body weight but lower levels of fitness. However, a high degree of physical fitness negated the effect of extra body fat.

As stress levels and workloads increase, yoga is becoming a popular means of stress management and physical relaxation. The main aim of yoga is to manage stress and anxiety by bringing your body and mind to a peaceful state.

Everyone, regardless of age and gender, can practice yoga, because of its wonderful combination of body movements and meditation.

Besides controlling breathing, proper balance, flexibility and strength, it also helps you maintain a good physical condition to help reduce stress.

Poses and breathing in yoga

There are nearly 10-30 positions in hatha yoga, which range from easy to corpse.

These yoga positions range from lying on the floor with a completely relaxed body to more difficult poses that take a minimum of five years of practice to master. No matter what type of yoga you practice, focus on the poses that feel comfortable and offer better relaxation for you.

When practicing yoga, controlling your breath is important to zone in on the essence of yoga. Yogic breath helps you to gain control of your body and mind. Follow this technique to control breathing and pay attention to it while practicing different poses.

The common symptoms of aging are loss of strength, energy and fitness. When you get older, you might have difficulty walking long distances, climbing stairs, or carrying groceries.

But those problems are due largely to a lack of physical activity.

If you want to maintain (or improve) your physical and mental health and quality of life as you get older, become more physically active. It is one of the most important things you can do.

Physical fitness plays an important role in how we age and feel. No one is too old to enjoy the benefits of regular physical activity.

The benefits from physical activities:
1. Slow down arterial aging: arterial aging is associated with heart disease, stroke, memory loss, impotence, decay in orgasm quality, even wrinkling of the skin.
2. Boost immune system: that’s associated with infections and cancer, even autoimmune disease such as many forms of arthritis.
3. Reduce accidents and disability from accidents.

Lack of activity can cause obesity. Obesity can increase the risk of health complications. It’s the side effects of obesity that are so great a risk. Blood pressure elevations, sleep apnea, arthritis and diabetes.

Read more at Associated Content

Winter is a great time to burn more calories with fitness workouts. Exercising in winter needs more hard work to keep the body warm and in this process, the body loses more and more calories.

On the other hand, many use winter as a good excuse to sit inside by the fire instead of practicing fitness exercise routine. It is a bad habit as it transforms you into couch potato during the winter.

Contrary to what it seems, winter offers several opportunities for you to continue with your fitness exercise routine to stay fit and healthy.

Give up your enjoyment of sitting near the fire and prepare to enjoy all the opportunities the winter has offered you.

All that is really required for practicing winter workouts is proper planning and following safety precautions. Choose a wide range of winter workouts based on your location and preference.

Indoor winter workouts to stay fit and healthy:

• Walk indoors: Walking is a good way to stay fit and healthy. However, to breathe cold weather of winter, you can simply replace your outdoor sessions with indoors: in the house or other indoor locations. Start your walk by setting a time to reach your indoor walking goal. Walking indoors make you feel safe and provides a dry, warm temperature in which to do it.

Are you looking for a core exercise that helps build strength, flexibility, and stability in muscles of the entire body? Turkish Get up is highly recommended, as it is a full body strength exercise which moulds the body into desired contours.

Turkish Get Up (TGU), also known as the Get Up, is an excellent way of building up multi-functional core strength throughout several muscles in the body.

A traditional exercise used by weight-lifters at the beginning of a workout, TGU benefits you in several ways if you do it regularly:

• Strengthens all major muscle groups, ligaments, and tendons;
• Develops flexibility and physical stoutness all over the entire body, especially the waist, hips, and shoulders;
• Burns a lot of calories and gives an enhanced body structure;
• Increases muscular-cardiovascular stamina.

Turkish Get Up exercise needs stability and flexibility and is generally performed using a kettlebell. The shape and weight distribution of the kettle bell requires the body to struggle and work hard to gain all the benefits of the exercise. The exercise can also be performed with variations, such as a dumbbell, barbell, or club, to increase the level of difficulty.

Researchers from the Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth, UK, have carried out research that suggests one hour of moderate exercise a day recommended to children from health experts may not be enough to tackle the rising problem of childhood obesity.

Researchers found that when these children were aged between five and eight, 42 per cent of boys and only 11 per cent of girls met the government recommended daily exercise level of one hour of moderate exercise.

The study also found that exercise alone had no positive effect on weight control over time, although the research team were keen to stress that this does not mean that exercise has no health benefits for children.

Indeed, when compared with peers who took less exercise, children who met the recommended activity levels fared better for blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides and insulin resistance, which is a recognised precursor to type 2 diabetes later in life.

However the researchers did believe that improving children’s diets, which they claim to have “changed markedly” over the last two decades, would be likely to have a greater impact on their overall health and weight.

Read more at ScienceDaily

The most crucial part in making your fitness plan more successful is to determine what you want to get out of it.

The reason is quite simple: if your intention is to improve your appearance, then your fitness plan will take on a different to building muscle power and strength.

Deciding on why you want to get fit is essential in helping you set fitness goals and also in finding the ways to reach it.

The most critical aspect of designing a fitness plan is setting goals and implementing them. Here are a few helpful ways to set and make your fitness goals come true:

List your fitness goals: No matter what you are looking out of your fitness plan - whether it’s to lose weight, improve appearance, physical fitness, or to build body muscles - write out your goals as well as basic ways to accomplish them.

It is a good idea to refer to your fitness goals regularly so that it acts as a constant reminder and motivates you to achieve your goals.

Once you achieve your goal, try to reward yourself as an encouragement to do better in accomplishing your next goal. Remember that the more you reward yourself, the more motivation you have to accomplish your final goal.