Workout Tips – Page 2

What Time of Day Do You Exercise?

One thing I’ve been realizing lately is that sometimes it can be hard to find a convenient time to exercise. We’ve been extremely busy at our house lately, and it always seems like one thing or another comes up to get in the way of my plans to exercise. I plan on exercising at night around 7 or 8pm, but we’re shopping for a new car and end up spending hours researching the best possible purchase.

Another night we were volunteering and I just didn’t have the time to exercise.

Another night we were hosting a get together at our house.

Life happens, and now I’ve missed 3 out of the last 5 days of exercise.

Finding the time to exercise, and sticking to it can be tough. I’ve been thinking more and more about trying to get up earlier in the morning, and exercise before going to work. It seems like it would be more convenient, and plans wouldn’t be as likely to get in the way. But change is hard, and I like my routine.

Have you had a hard time trying to schedule your workouts? What time of day do you find works best for you? Do you just go with the flow and workout whenever the opportunity presents itself?

My Upper Body Weight Workout Routine

By Peter 5 Comments

Tonight I’ll be doing my upper body weight workout. I recently signed up for a site that allows me to post video of different exercises on my blog, so I thought I’d use some of those exercise videos here to show you my routine that I’ll be doing tonight.

How do I do the routine

When workout out with weights I have a pretty simple routine that I follow. I lift weights 2 to 3 times a week, alternating every other day with upper body and lower body workouts. For each body muscle group that I’m working out I’ll do 6 sets, with varying weights and with reps of 12, 10, 8, 6 and two sets of 12 (but different exercises). For example, for my shoulders tonight I might do something like this:

Dumbell Shoulder Press
Set 1: 12 reps with 15 pounds
1 minute rest
Set 2: 10 reps with 20 pounds
1 minute rest
Set 3: 8 reps with 20 pounds
1 minute rest
Set 4: 6 reps with 25 pounds
1 minute rest
Set 5: 12 reps with 20 pounds
no reset
Set 6: 12 reps with 20 pounds, but a new exercise.

Upper Body Weight Workout

So here are the exercises I’ll be doing tonight.

Chest:

Shoulders:

Back/Shoulders:

Triceps:

Biceps:

What are you doing for a weight routine? How often do you lift?

Is Exercise Sometimes Not Worth the Time You Put In?

By Peter 4 Comments

I’ll sometimes talk with people I know about their weight loss plans, and how they expect to lose weight. When I ask them what they’re doing they’ll give me a report of drastically reduced calories, and a workout plan that involves a few situps and walking once or twice a week. In most cases I don’t think that type of a plan is going to be successful, just for the small amount of exercise they’re doing, and because their diet will cause their metabolism to shut down, and harm their prospects for weight loss.

In an article I was reading today people were having a different issue. They were exercising for too long, using a exercise that wasn’t as beneficial as they thought. One reader of the MSNBC site emailed in:

I exercise every weekday morning in my hot tub, doing 2,000 forward bicycles, 2,000 reverse bicycles, 2,000 frog kicks and 2,000 reverse frog kicks. It takes me almost three hours. Am I doing too much exercise? I’m trying to lose weight this way because I have leg problems that keep me from doing any other type of exercise.

doing leg kicks in a hot tub for 3 hours? Are you kidding me? Who does that? I know some people do have some physical limitations that preclude them from performing some normal exercises, but there has got to be something better out there for this person to do. I seriously doubt they are getting much actual impact from their bicycle and frog kicks!

photo credit: Tigerzeye

The fitness expert answers the question:

There’s a lingering misperception in fitness that if 20 repetitions of an exercise are good, then 200 — or 2,000 — must be better. But sometimes — such as when doing 4,000 frog kicks and another 4,000 bicycles consumes your entire morning — exercise may just not be worth that much time and effort. In fact, you may be pleasantly surprised to know you can restructure your program so that you actually work out for less time and get more bang for your buck.

The person writing in probably needs to look at some other options for their workout plan. Some low impact whole body workouts like swimming in a pool, riding a stationary bike, or something along those lines. Even though they’re exercising quite a bit currently, the exercise that they’re getting really isn’t that helpful – especially since it takes so long to complete.

Sometimes we all need to take a look at our workout plans, and decide for ourselves if the work we’re putting in is worth it. Is our plan well thought out? Will it actually have the result we’re looking for? If not, it may be time to sit down and come up with a new plan of action with someone who knows what they’re doing like a personal trainer at a local gym, or a friend who is a fitness guru.

Set goals, make a plan of attack, and carry out the plan in such a way as to attain positive results.

Have you ever had a workout plan that didn’t work? What was the reason for the plan’s failure?

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Wii Fit – Good fitness tool, or just a fad?

By Peter 4 Comments

photo credit: austinANOMIC

I was over at a friend’s house the other night, and noticed that they had purchased the Wii Fit exercise program.

I’m naturally a bit of a skeptic, so I tend to think that the exercise benefits you would get from working out with a video game would be minimal, but I was willing to look into it further.

I asked my friends for their opinion, and asked how much they liked it. They said that Wii Fit was a lot of fun, and that certain parts of the game did give you a decent workout. But they said that Wii Fit probably would only have a great effect when used in combination with other external exercise programs.

An article on MSNBC.com described the Wii Fit this way:

Wii Fit offers up more than 40 different exercises and activities that are supposed to help those who play it not only get into shape but actually have fun while getting into shape. Fat chance, you say? Well, to spice things up a bit, Nintendo has packaged “Wii Fit” with the Wii Balance Board, which is essentially what you’d get if a bathroom scale and a video game controller shacked up and had a baby together.

The Fit comes with a balance board which helps you to interact with the game. It takes your weight, is involved in the “40 different exercises” and probably helps justify charging an arm and a leg for the game.

The game will walk you through various exercises in Wii Fit program – anything from yoga led by an instructor to running around a track and strength exercises like pushups and squats. Probably one of the more popular ones you’ve seen is the hula hoop exercise game.

While acknowledging that the game does seem to give you some good benefits in the way of getting you up off the couch, and getting you moving, the reviewer on MSNBC wasn’t convinced that the Wii Fit was in and of itself the answer:

I’m not convinced that much of the experience was compelling enough to make me more inclined to work out than I was before. After all, if I thought real-world gyms were skull-crushingly boring environments, they seem downright titillating when compared to the sterile digital gym you’ll find yourself working out in during a round of “Wii Fit” yoga. Meanwhile, the jogging mini-game — which had me jogging in place in my living room as I watched my Mii run through tranquil animated scenery – was so tedious I nearly jammed my fist in the garbage disposal just to liven things up a bit.

Don’t get me wrong, the way I figure it, anything that gets people (and by “people,” I mean “me”) up off their couches and moving is probably a good thing. And “Wii Fit” does a really nice job making both a bit of exercise and a bit of gaming accessible to even those folks who’ve never executed a half-moon pose or laid hands on a gaming controller in their life.

I’d be willing to give the Wii Fit a try, but I have a problem. I don’t have a Wii, or a Fit! So if you’d be willing to give me your copy, drop me a line!

Do you have the fit? If so, what is your opinion?

Lazy Man and Health talks about his Wii!

My preferred indoor workout routine – “The Biggest Loser Workout”

By Peter 3 Comments

Indoor workout routines

During the winter, and when the weather is nasty outside I have to find a way to exercise indoors. Usually for me that means one of a couple of choices. My first choice is usually running on our new fuel treadmill. It has a high intensity interval training (HIIT) setting where I can get a great cardio workout – without thinking too much. My preferred choice for many days, however, is a workout video.

I know, I know. Workout videos are silly – guys don’t use workout videos, etc. Personally, I’ve had that kind of thinking in the past, and have shunned workout videos. Now, after using this video I’m rethinking that whole paradigm.

Using the video

The first time I used this video (I only have the first one – the one on the left), I was thinking that it was going to be easy and that I wouldn’t get much out of it. Boy was I wrong. By the time I was done I was huffing and puffing, and I had sweat dripping down my forehead.

The workout I enjoy doing the most is the high intensity cardio workout. Basically it takes you through a regimen of high impact cardio exercises. You do everything from tire run, football quick steps and boxing to kicks and leg lifts. It was a lot of fun, and only after doing it for a few weeks last fall was I able to complete it without almost killing myself.

The Biggest Loser the Workout Volume 1 & 2 DVD Video 2 Disk Set

The DVD also has several other great workouts you can do including low impact cardio, boot camp (pretty hard too) and several stretching exercises.

So, check out the The Biggest Loser Workout – it’s a workout that both men and women can enjoy! I give it 4 out of 5 stars!

Download the 100 pushups challenge for your Ipod!

By Peter 10 Comments

When I started the 100 pushups workout I found that I wasn’t always near a computer on the days I needed to do my workout. It was a small issue, but a pain nonetheless. It would have been nice to have the entire workout in my hands so that I could just reference it when I needed it. I also didn’t really want to print out each and every page of the challenge. Who wants to waste that much paper?

Instead, I came up with my own solution that I thought some of you might be able to use as well. It is the handy dandy Ipod formatted 100 pushup challenge worksheet.

100 Pushups Workout for Ipod

The 100 pushups challenge one-sheet that I put together gives you all 6 weeks of the challenge in one handy file so that you can reference it wherever you are.

Here’s how it works:

Download the 100_pushup.zip file to your computer using the download link below.

Place the 100 Pushup folder within the zip in the “notes” folder on your Ipod.

Power up the Ipod and navigate to “Extras/Notes/100 Pushups”, and select the file named “100pushups.txt”.

View your workout on your Ipod!

100 Pushups Workout is now portable!

Hopefully some of you will find this as helpful as I have. If you use it, please leave a comment below!

Enjoy, and start pushin!

To download the 100 pushups challenge for Ipod, please subscribe to our RSS feed. The download link will appear in the RSS feed. If you have trouble finding it, please email me through our contact page, and I’ll be happy to help. Thanks!

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Soreness after a workout: Burn and recover

By Peter 5 Comments

Last night I did my pushups for week 2, day 1 of the hundred pushups challenge. Afterwards I went running for about 1.5-2 miles. It feels good to get back into the swing of things, and once you get going you can feel that your body enjoys getting the exercise (mine does at least). Your body starts to crave it.

photo credit: eyeliam

Since I only restarted the workouts this week I’ve found that my body is adjusting slowly to the routine, but that I am extremely sore the next morning. I’ve found that the first week or so of working out is usually the hardest for me in terms of soreness, muscle fatigue and exhaustion. After that first week I still get tired and sore, but not to the extreme that I do during that first week. So what causes the soreness? Soreness is discussed on DrMirkin.com:

On one day, you go out and exercise hard enough to make your muscles burn during exercise. The burning is a sign that you are damaging your muscles. On the next day, your muscles feel sore because they are damaged and need time to recover. Scientist call this DOMS, delayed onset muscle soreness.

It takes at least eight hours to feel this type of soreness. You finish a workout and feel great; then you get up the next morning and your exercised muscles feel sore. We used to think that next-day muscle soreness is caused by a buildup of lactic acid in muscles, but now we know that lactic acid has nothing to do it. Next-day muscle soreness is caused by damage to the muscle fibers themselves. Muscle biopsies taken on the day after hard exercise show bleeding and disruption of the z-band filaments that hold muscle fibers together as they slide over each other during a contraction.

So I’m damaging my muscles, that doesn’t sound good? But is it necessary? He continues:

Next-day muscle soreness should be used as a guide to training, whatever your sport. On one day, go out and exercise right up to the burn, back off when your muscles really start to burn, then pick up the pace again and exercise to the burn. Do this exercise-to-the-burn and recover until your muscles start to feel stiff, and then stop the workout. Depending on how sore your muscles feel, take the next day off or go at a very slow pace. Do not attempt to train for muscle burning again until the soreness has gone away completely. Most athletes take a very hard workout on one day, go easy for one to seven days afterward, and then take a hard workout again. World-class marathon runners run very fast only twice a week. The best weightlifters lift very heavy only once every two weeks. High jumpers jump for height only once a week. Shot putters throw for distance only once a week. Exercise training is done by stressing and recovering.

Stressing and recovering is the key to success when you’re working out. This sounds a lot like what I’m doing with my Body For Life exercise regime. On cardio days they have you do interval training where you start out slow, and then work your way up to sprinting 5 minutes later, and then back to slow to repeat the process 3-4 times. Burn and recover, burn and recover.

The weight workouts are the same way. Start out with high reps/low weight, working your way towards high weight low reps, and then one set to exhaustion. Burn and recover.

So there you have it, while the soreness may not feel that great, it is to some degree a necessary part of exercising. Embrace, it, use it to your advantage, and you’ll be on your way to being fit.