The Basics To Obtaining A Ripped Midsection

As most know a ripped midsection can do a lot for your sex appeal and is pretty good indicator of your overall conditioning. A select few people are lucky enough to have genetically lean midsections due to their body type and metabolism. Unfortunately for most of us it will require some hard work to obtain a defined muscular midsection.

Factors to obtaining a Ripped Midsection

1. Genetics determine your body Type?

Ectomorphic- characterized by tall, long and thin muscles/limbs and low body fat storage, usually referred to as slim or narrow body type.

Mesomorpic- characterized by medium bones, solid torso, low fat levels, wide shoulders with a narrow waist; usually referred to as muscular or angular body type.

Endomorphic-characterized by increased fat storage, a thick waist and a large bone structure, usually referred to as fat or round body type.

People can also be combinations such as ecto-mesomorph which may be ideal for acheving low body fat and ripped midsections. Endomorphs will have a harder time achieving the ultimate shredded look but with proper focus and determination dramatic results can be achieved. Body types do not determine results they only provide a guide to the level of commitment that may be required.

2. Diet

In order to have a lean ripped abdominal wall you will need to review your diet, remember calories in calories out is king, some people are naturally leans and can eat anything and stay lean while others must go to extreme measures and others fall in between.

Here are some a simple steps:

1. Write down your meals for a week determine what you’re eating and the calories and nutritional values for the day including fat, carbohydrates and protein. Most people will find that they are taking in not enough calories and meals are too infrequent to boost metabolism. A healthy diet consisting of adequate proteins and balanced fat and carbohydrates is best rather than some extreme diet of no carbohydrates or no fat. Fat and Carbs are energy you need energy but only enough for your daily activities.

2. Curtail energy food later in the day and replace with quality protein sources and vegetables or salads as this will promote fat loss and metabolism.

3. Additionally increasing your meal frequency is very effective for this as well Try to increase meal frequency from 2-3 meals to 4-5 smaller meals some have been known to go to 6-8 meals as well. In order to determine the amount of calories and nutrients’ needed each day for specifically your activity levels would need to be known and this is different for everyone and another article in itself.

3. Training

Training your whole body is vital to boosting the metabolism, whether you are a hardcore trainer or just a 3 days a week trainer it’s vital to developing a tone total body and ab section. Training should consist of resistance training and cardiovascular training. For fat loss it is imperative to add a cardiovascular routine to your workout the best time to burn fat with cardio is when you glycogen levels are at their lowest which is first thing in the morning before consuming any food or beverages other than water or right after resistance training after your body burned up its glycogen (energy) stores. The idea is you will tap into fat stores for energy and burn more fat not to mention the morning cardio boost your metabolism for several hours afterwards. Abdominal training specifically should be 2-3 workouts per week to tone the muscles of the abdominal wall.

You need to try to work them from all angles and increase the intensity each workout over several weeks by adding new exercises and or repetitions and or fewer rest breaks between exercises. Below is an example do this for 6 weeks then return to a normal abdominal workout. How many reps you do is not as important as the intensity and deep burn you get from focus and concentration try placing your hand on your abs so you can feel them working and connect your mind to the action you are trying to accomplish.

Week 1-3

Lower abs knee raise

Upper Abs Ab Ball Crunch

Obliques weighted ball twist

Entire abs Crunch to side (each)

Core and Intercostals machine crunch , cable crunch

Week 4 add

Lower abs hanging leg raise

Hip thrust

4. Stay determined

Everyone will get different results, don’t get discouraged if it’s not overnight or you’re not shredded as someone else. The key is consistency and learning your body and how it responds to diet and training.

Chris Beard is the web master for Athletic Concepts, Inc., which provides sales, service and installation of high-end quality commercial fitness equipment. Additionally we sell used and refurbished fitness equipment in excellent condition. To see our inventory visit us at: www.Athletic-Concepts.com www.ReconditionedFitness.com www.Athletic-Concepts.net

Workouts to Lose Weight

So summer time is finally here, unfortunately you just looked in the mirror and you’re not happy with the way you look. Well, don’t waist anymore time! You still have time to lose some pounds before the summer is over. There are many workouts for you to choose from that will help you lose that extra weight. First things first, you need to change your eating habit, you can lose five pounds easy by just changing the way you eat. After you start eating healthy, it will greatly benefit you if you create a workout plan.

So what type of workout plan should you start? You should definitely involve three main things. Resistance training, Cardio, and Interval training.

If you do not have any dumbbells or weights, then you are still okay! You can do body resistance training instead. Body resistance training is excellent for your body, and the main benefit of body resistance training is that you will not bulk up. You will not have to worry about looking like The Hulk. Body resistance training includes any sort of push ups, pull ups, chin ups, lounges, squats, calf raises, burpees, and anything else you can find to do that does not involve weights. If you have some weights, then you can do full body workouts with your weights, just make sure you do less weight and more repetitions so you do not bulk up.

I know you hate it, but you need it! Cardiovascular workouts are very essential to your weight loss success. Cardio will improve your lungs and help you burn calories. When doing cardio you can walk, run, hike, or bicycle. These cardio workouts are usually long distance, so make sure you pace yourself. If you have a treadmill handy then use it, because it will be easier on your knees, if you have an elliptical around that is even easier on your knees.

Interval training, is something most people do not do, but they highly need too. If you are not sure what interval training is, then let me explain. Interval training is short burst of energy and rest periods. So lets say you are going on a jog, you then decide to sprint for 30 seconds and then return to a jog, and do that over and over again around 12 times or until you are to your destination, that is interval training. This is what athletes do, and it is a big reason why they are in great shape. Interval training will help you not only burn calories during your workout, but also after you are finished. You body continues to benefit from interval training after you are done…how cool is that!

If you do not have time, or you need some guidance with your workout routines, then you can always get an in-home workout routine. There are plenty to choose from that will help you lose weight. If you are interested in interval training, then you can do Turbo Fire Workout, or Insanity Workout. If you are looking for some more resistance training then check out P90x, ChaLean Extreme, and Slim in 6. All of these workouts have a pretty good balance of everything, so you really cannot go wrong.

Steven has been helping people get into shape for over three years now, and absolutely loves to see people achieve their workout goals. Steve loves workouts like TurboFire and the Slim in 6 workout routine.

Is Jumping on a Rebounder the Perfect Cardio Workout?

You’ve tried everything out there: you’ve ‘invested’ in large, over-sized exercise equipment that doesn’t exactly flow with your living room design, you’ve bought your gym membership, your video library contains almost every aerobics video ever made, and the word ‘diet’ haunts your vocabulary. You’ve tried every form of weight loss known to man. But the pounds still remain. How can you keep your self worth and loose the weight?

Trampoline jumping, although it may sound like a real ‘stretch’, is your long awaited, quick and healthy way to weight loss. Sure, it sounds easy, but is it really that effective?

Trampoline jumping does more for your body than melt away unwanted fat. It’s what happens on the interior of your body that is equally astounding as what happens on your exterior. Did you know that jumping on the trampoline stimulates your internal organs, making your cerebral-spinal fluid move around and work out your intestines? Also, trampoline jumping circulates more oxygen to your tissues, also increasing your capacity for breathing. It normalizes your blood pressure and tones your glandular system. It stimulates your metabolism too, so you can steadily loose weight, getting the results you’ve always wanted.

Did you also know that jumping on the trampoline strengthens your immune system? Rhythmic bouncing has a powerful effect on the lymphatic system, which is responsible for ridding the body of toxins that haven’t been absorbed into the blood. This process relies on gravity and body movement to operate.

So if you’re not properly exercising your cells, they’re left to stew in their own waste as they starve for nutrients. This unhealthy condition can seriously doom your health in the future, as it can lead to dangerous diseases like cancer and arthritis. Jumping on the trampoline rescues your body by increasing your lymph flow by 15 to 30 times with each exercise. Your body can then be rid of those hazardous toxins and you can burn fat fast.

It’s easy to start an effective trampoline routine. Buy a mini-trampoline and begin with 5-minute repetitions of jumping. As your fitness level improves, increase your time along with your number of reps. For older jumpers, it’s important to give time for your connective tissue holding your internal organs in place to strengthen. So start with jumping for 2 minutes several times per day, resting your body for at least 30 minutes between jumping sessions.

You can add to your cardio exercise by jumping to a trampoline workout video. Move your mini-trampoline into your living room and jump while watching TV or your favorite movie.

Remember to bounce on your trampoline with bare feet so you don’t slip. Begin with gentle bounces, keeping your feet in contact with the mat the entire time while you softly bounce up and down. Once you get the hang of this, try jumping with small steps and bounces, letting your feet leave the mat and up into the air. Once you master this, jumping higher and higher will become easier and more natural.

Another great alternative is to buy a large trampoline for the backyard. Then you and your entire family can improve body coordination while loosing weight and practicing healthy exercise habits.

Jumping on the trampoline is wonderful for your body. It’s a great stress reducer, it’s easy on the joints, and it’s relaxing.

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How To Prevent Overtraining To Build Maximum Muscle Mass

Overtraining is one of the most common mistakes committed generally by avid exercisers and particularly by bodybuilders. Not only does overtraining result in serious injuries or extreme fatigue, but it could actually be counterproductive and reduce muscle mass instead of building it.

Effort is no doubt needed to make the most of muscle building programs. But training hard is not necessarily the same as training smart. You need to employ progressive overload techniques to achieve the target quickly and safely without the danger of regressing.

The trick to optimizing any workout for maximizing muscle mass is to increase intensity progressively and get sufficient rest between workouts to allow muscle to recover and grow, because muscle grows during rest and not during workouts.

Consequences of Overtraining on Bodybuilders

Overtraining has serious consequences on various systems of the body:

Consequences of Overtraining on Nervous System:

-Increase in base heart rate

-Increase in blood pressure

-Loss of appetite

-Insomnia

-Fatigue

-Restlessness

Consequences of Overtraining on Hormone Levels:

-Decrease in anabolic hormones like testosterone and thyroxine

-Increase in the catabolic hormone cortisol

Consequences of Overtraining on Metabolic System:

-Micro-tears in muscles

-Extremely low levels of glycogen

-Loss of contraction ability in muscles

-Low levels of creatine phosphate

-High accrual of lactic acid

-High DOMS – delayed onset muscle soreness

-Harm to tendons and connective tissues

Overtraining with Cardio versus Overtraining with Bodybuilding – Which is Worse?

Although overtraining is bad in any form of exercise, overtraining with bodybuilding has much more serious consequences for the following reasons:

-Ample rest is required after every workout that damages muscle tissue. If you work out before the muscle tissue has been repaired, further damage occurs and it becomes impossible to recover.

-Bodybuilding greatly burdens the nervous system and overtraining can result in severe health risks.

-Lack of quick results in bodybuilding can force many to turn to unnecessary supplements or even steroids.

How to know if you are Overtraining?

If you suffer from two or more of the above listed symptoms, you could be overtraining. Secondly, check whether your performance has decreased during workouts. If you are unable to match your last workout, there is a strong chance that you have been overtraining.

How to Prevent Overtraining?

Correct volume and intensity of training, adequate rest and recovery, and proper nutrition is the three pronged approach to avoid overtraining.

1.Correct Volume and Intensity of Training

Start with volume and intensity that you are comfortable with. Once you are regular with your workout regimen, increase the volume and intensity by 5 percent every few workouts. This is the progressive overload technique which is the safest and most efficient technique to work out and build maximum muscle mass.

Your intention should be to improve with every workout and raising your core strength every time. Training with maximum intensity and volume from the beginning almost always proves hazardous to your muscle building goals.

2.Rest and Recovery

Use your judgment to decide how much rest you need to recover before the next workout. Never train on consecutive days. You can work different muscle groups on different days of the week to avoid overtraining. Get a good 8 hour sleep every night.

3.Nutrition

Proper nutrition helps your body recover faster from workouts as it restores depleted levels of various chemicals. Here are some nutrition tips to avoid chances of overtraining:

-Eat your breakfast early to reverse the catabolic process that sets in at night as you sleep.

-Eat every 3 hours to keep your body in an anabolic state.

-Drink protein and carb shakes before and after your workout.

-Take healthy supplements like creatine.

Train hard concept alone is already outdated. It is now to train hard and smart to optimize your fat loss or muscle building effort. There are more smart tips not just on training and diet that you can get at http://LoseFatBeMuscular.com – written by Azad, creator of http://LoseFatBeMuscular.com

Insanit VS P90X: Plyometric Workouts

Plyometrics. The word makes people in the know shudder. It also forms the basis of many different workouts, including most of the Insanity Workout and ‘the mother of all P90X Workouts’, as its creator states. Which of these two has the tougher plyometrics workout? Are they both effective? What are the differences? Read on to learn about plyometrics in both P90X and the Insanity Workout!

First off, what exactly is plyometrics? Most people just say that they’re ‘jumping workouts’, but that ain’t it, brother. Plyometrics can be any form of exercise whose goal is to produce fast, powerful movements by improving the functions of the nervous system. This can be anything from explosive jumping power to running faster, throwing farther, or punching harder. It is basically a means to improve how quickly and powerfully you can move. So jumping, yes. But so much more.

So let’s look at the P90X Plyometric workout first. Tony Horton claims that this is the workout that puts the ‘X’ in P90X, and coming in at 60 minutes, there’s a lot of truth to this statement. It consists of four or five main sets that are repeated twice, each set composed of about four exercises. They range from variations on the horizontal leap, to variations on squat jumps, to hopping on one foot to sports drills like shooting hoops. What’s excellent about them is that they last for an hour, yet never floor you (except for a couple of particularly tough exercises in the middle). You’re able to keep a consist level of intensity throughout, so that while you’re absolutely dead by the time you reach the 60 minute mark, you’re definitely able to hang in there throughout.

The Insanity Workout Plyometric Cardio Circuit is another story. Coming in at only 45 minutes, and with the main Plyo workout itself only about 20 of those, you would think it would be easier. You would be wrong. The workout starts with a brutal, 10 minute warm up (I regularly advise people to warm up before the ‘warm up’), goes through a long stretch, and then kicks off with the main workout, which is divided into four sets, reach repeated 3 times with no breaks. It kicks off with Suicide Drills, gets tougher with Football Drills, and then explode into a world of pain with the Basketball Drills (the words ‘In! Out!’ will haunt your darkest nightmares forevermore). The last set, Attacks, is only a series of punches and cross jacks, but the previous 17 minutes will have destroyed you, and made these incredibly tough.

So which is the tougher of the two? The award goes to the Insanity Plyometric Cardio Circuit. Shorter in duration, it almost qualifies as a High Intensity Interval Training program, coming just short of that killer intensity so that you’re able to keep going for all 20 minutes. As such it qualifies as Threshold training, and trust me, that’s punishing enough. The P90X is done at a lower intensity, but for a much longer time, so that those 60 minutes end up chewing you up even as you work your way through them. I would say that the P90X is more beginner friendly as a result, but is still an incredibly tough workout. And the Insanity Plyometric Cardio Circuit workout? It’s absolutely an insane workout.

Learn more about the Turbo Fire workout by visiting our blog, where we go into greater depth with more reviews, product info and advice, all for free. Also, be sure to check out free info on the P90X workout, designed by Tony Horton to be the most infamous and intense workout there is! Extreme!

Why Aerobics Are More Effective in the Water

No matter what type of aerobics exercises you’re used to doing, when you first started doing them they were likely very difficult. You were winded, you felt thirsty and your entire body cried out for mercy. Soon, however, your body got used to the aerobics exercises and it’s that this point that most people plateau. So they try ankle weights and wrist weights to add resistance to their aerobics exercises. The problem with these types of weight is that they’re hard on your joints and you can get injured very easily. There is a way, however, that you can add resistance without using weights. You can do your aerobics exercises in the water and when you do you’ll see just how effective water aerobics can be.

To demonstrate how water aerobics works, imagine standing in the middle of the shallow end of a swimming pool. Stretch both hands out to your sides so that your body forms a sort of cross. With your thumbs points upwards and your fingers together so that no water gets through, push your hands together underwater. The resistance really works your muscles and if you do this exercise enough times, you’ll soon break into a sweat and that’s when you know it’s working.

Now try the same exercise out of water. Stretch your arms to your sides and bring them together in front of you like a wide clapping motion. See how easy that is? That’s not even half the effort it takes to do the same motion underwater. That’s why aerobics are more effective in water.

You don’t need to own a swimming pool to do underwater aerobics. You can do underwater aerobics at your local Y or your local fitness club. Many fitness clubs hold water aerobics classes as part of their curriculum. These classes not only use the hands and feet to create resistance, but they also use Styrofoam boards and other objects to create even more resistance for an even greater workout.

There are so many exercises you can do underwater. As long as you use the resistance of the water, and continue to move, you’ll feel yourself working in a matter of seconds. Working out underwater is so much better than a regular aerobics exercise because you are essentially getting a weight and an aerobics workout in one session. That means you’re going to get stronger and leaner at the same time, which is what most people are going for when they work out.

Water aerobics can also be done by the elderly who may have trouble with regular aerobics exercises. The resistance allows them to get a nice workout, while the water helps to balance them. This means anyone of any age can do water aerobics.

So if you’ve been doing aerobics and you just can’t seem to get past that plateau, try underwater aerobics. Don’t try ankle weights or any other type of weights that can make you prone to injury. Once you see how sore you are the next day, and how there’s always resistance, no matter how much you do it, you’ll then see how aerobics are more effective in the water.

This article is brought to you by irebounder.com. We carry the top brand rebounders by Bellicon, needak rebounders and ReboundAir. To learn more about fitness visit our site or call 1-800-644-0453.

Tips For Performing Cardio Without Running

There are many different reasons why you may be interested in performing cardio workouts that do not include running, with joint pain and a general hate for cardio topping the list for most people. Whether you physically can’t withstand the pressure that running places on your body or have a real dislike for running in general, you have tons of options for burning calories that don’t include lacing up the sneakers and pounding pavement.

Low-Tension Machinery

Your first option would be to purchase or otherwise gain access to some variety of workout machinery. Many people who can’t stand running can get into a walk on the treadmill or a ride on a spin bike, especially when it is done in their own home with the distraction of some good music or a television.

If your biggest concern with running is the stress on your joints, then consider low-tension machinery such as an elliptical or recumbent bike. If your pain is more severe, you would likely be better off with a recumbent bike, but you can do arm lifts with dumbbells to make the workout more intense. You may also be able to do adjust the tension on the bike to create a more demanding yet completely joint safe workout.

Dancing

This has to be at the top of the list for cardio alternatives whether you love to run or not. You can dance anywhere, anytime and can make it as intense or gentle as you want it to be. Your movements can be wild and intense so you burn hundreds of calories per session or you can dance around in a calmer manner that delivers a more conservative calorie burn.

Dancing will also help relieve stress and leave you in a much happier mood!

Swimming

Many people who hate exercise in general can deal with swimming laps or taking a water aerobics class. If you have severe lower body pain or problems with bending your leg joints you can swim with your legs out behind you, pulling your lower body through the pool with your upper body.

If you have limitations of movement with your upper body, you can prop your chest and upper body on the side wall and kick your legs out behind you to get in some form of a workout.

For those with more severe pain or physical limitations, just getting in the pool and keeping your body moving can be a form of cardio that helps keep you healthy and helps control weight.

Interval Training

If your problem is just that you hate running or have a general distaste for cardio workouts, consider doing a variety of strength movements mixed with some non-running cardio bursts. You will virtually be performing strength building movements with 30-60 seconds of cardio movement thrown in to elevate your heart rate and burn more calories.

Some non-running cardio movements that can be added include:

* Step-ups on a small platform or exercise step.

* Knee lifts.

* Jumping jacks (if necessary, step legs out and in rather than jumping)

* Fast punches (squat down, punch out in front of you with control)

Whatever your reasons are for not wanting to run, it is no excuse to become sedentary or continue to live a sedentary lifestyle! Just find a way to get your body moving, even if it’s just strapping on a $5 pedometer and vowing to walk 5,000 steps a day.

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