ISA FITNESS TIPS
SCROLL DOWN FOR MORE
| CHEST EXERCISES FOR MASS AND
STRENGTH There are three exercises that you will do one right after another. All three make up one complete set. Pushups: Do these very strict with slow deliberate movements. But, spend one day finding out how many you can do, then rest a day or two and start the total exercises. When you find out just how may you can do (your Maximum number) then split that by three (3). For example, if your Max is 21, then you will do seven (7) wide grip, seven (7) narrow grip and seven (7) regular grip, all with out stopping. (The idea is to do the maximum number of pushups you can do.) Dumbbell Flyes: Lying flat on your back on the floor, have the dumbells on each side. Do the most that you can do without resting. Dumbbell Presses: Keep the dumbbells in your hands and start pressing them straight from the shoulder to arms length. Do as many as you can. Do all exercises with control and slow movement. Once you have done one set, then do another set. It is important to rest properly, usually two days total before doing again. |
| Ten Tips For Those Who Want To
Build Muscle 1. Eat Enough To gain weight and muscle mass is difficult because the body struggles to keep its weight. To gain mass you need to eat more than your body requires to maintain its normal functions. You must eat 500 to 1000 extra calories a day to persuade the body to gain more muscle mass. 2. Eat Every Third Hour You can wait longer between meals, but do you constantly want to be in an anabolic phase? Your blood sugar should not sink too low, but it will if you do not eat every 3 to 4 hours. It does not have to be a proper meal each time you eat. A quick meal or a protein-drink will be enough. 3. Accept a Certain Increase In Body Fat You have to choose between building muscle or burning fat. You cannot (or it is very hard to) do this at the same time. 4. Eat a Proper Breakfast At night, when you are asleep, the body is subversive because you have not been eating for several hours. This makes breakfast a very important meal because it stops the cataclysm. 5. Vary the Food The body can become accustomed to a certain diet. If you eat the same food for several years you can count on it that your development will stagnate. Do not let the body become accustomed to your diet. 6. Choose the Right Supplement There is an unbelievable amount of supplements on the market today. A lot of them are junk. Only use supplements that you know work. Highly recommended supplements are creatine and extra protein. There are a lot more supplements from which to choose, but these are the best from which to start. 7. Get Enough Rest It has been said that you grow during sleep, and sure it is true. Do not train more than three days in a row. Some who really want to gain muscle will only train two or even one day at a time. The results are often impressive. 8. Train Right If you are not sure of how to do an exercise, ask someone that is knowledgeable about the exercise. If you are training incorrectly you will not grow and your chances of hurting yourself are quite great. 9. Change the Routine Change your training program every two months. Do not let the muscles adapt to the same routine. 10. Make Goals and Achieve Them To train without a goal is meaningless. Make a goal, for example, to gain six pounds of muscle mass. Do not give up before you have gained those extra six pounds. Use all your knowledge about nutrition and training. It is not only more fun to train with a goal, your progress will also increase faster. You will be more motivated and you will train and attend to your diet perfectly. |
|
Aerobic Exercise
|
|
Abdominal Exercises Ab Crunches |
|
Tips on
Losing Fat Without Really Trying
Healthy eating is very important. Here are some tips on losing weight without
really trying. A
"Diet" is an on again off again thing, healthy eating is a life long
process.
DIET TIPS
1) The Do's and Don'ts for Effective Fat Loss
This seems to be the question on everyone's mind, and for good
reason, fat is so easy to acquire and so hard to get rid of. Most
bodies love to store fat, it's good security for when you run out
of food. This is unlikely, but your body doesn't know that. Unfortunately, the body loves storing fat so much that it will
burn anything else available (muscle tissue, stored
carbohydrate, etc.) before digging into the fat reserves. 10) The breakdown should be about: 40% protein, 30% complex carbohydrate, and 30% fat. This can be varied but keep the protein high and control your body-fat by manipulating the carbohydrate content. Most of the fat in your diet will come from the protein sources (meat and dairy). |
|
Honest Abdominal Training Ever read those fitness articles that allegedly tell guys how to develop their abs? I'm sure you've seen the images of a guy holding a broom handle or light barbell over his shoulders and twisting his torso from left to right as a means to lose his love handles. A waste of time! Or holding a dumbbell in each hand and bending from side to side. Forget it! It's just as important to know what doesn't work as it is to know what does work. If you spend weeks in the gym doing ineffective and inefficient exercises you'll get discouraged and give up. That's why most people by a year-long gym membership then stop going after a dozen or so visits. By contrast, there is nothing more motivating and encouraging than steady, measurable progress toward a specific goal! Why TV Abdominal Machines Are a Joke You've seen all those exercise gadgets on late night TV - lightweight gizmos that make it easier for you to rock back and forth while doing a crunch. Have you noticed that none of them allow you to add serious weight to increase intensity? Some have rubber bands or similar devices to add a bit of overload but it's a trivial amount. Really! So fiddling around with cheap exercise equipment or those electric belts that "stimulate" your ab muscles using the minuscule power of two flashlight batteries is beyond laughable. Let's see two AA batteries generate the power to lift a man's torso and 300 pounds 20 times in one minute. Please. Goals and Measurements The first thing you need to know is that 'love handles' are created by the deposition of extra fat around the midsection. (This is common in men, whereas women tend to have extra fat deposited in the hips and thighs.) So to target this specific area and create specific goals we need to know the measurement of your midsection. Wrap a tape measure around your abdomen at the widest area of your 'love handles' and record the measurement. Also, you really should measure your body fat percentage since one of our principal goals will be to reduce fat. Once we are armed with 'before' measurements of your abdomen and your body fat percentage we can create a program and monitor progress every step of the way. Remember, measurement prevents wasting time on things that don't work and it offers very motivating feedback regarding what is working. Step 1: Burn More Calories There is no real secret to losing fat; you need to burn more calories than you consume. A great way to do that is to engage in low intensity aerobics such as walking on a treadmill, using a stationary bike, or whatever. The real key is to make certain that the intensity is low enough so that you can do it every day of the week. That means you should be able to carry on a normal conversation or talk on the telephone while you're doing this exercise. Higher intensity than that requires time off between workouts and that means less activity and fat burning. Over the longer term, nothing beats adding more muscle to your body as it increases your 24/7 calorie burn and makes it easier to keep the fat off. (Easier to do lots of things, in fact.) Step 2: Tighten Abdominal Muscles The most intense exercise you can do to target your abdominal muscles is to perform weighted crunches. Adding weight to crunches increase the overload to the target muscles and allows you to employ progressive overload, which is an indispensable condition to muscular hypertrophy. Lie on your back with the handle of a low pulley behind your head. Grasp the handle and pull the slack out of the cable. Using your abdominal muscles, raise your shoulders and upper torso off the floor while lifting the weight stack. Use a weight you can only hold in a static contraction for five seconds. Each time you do this exercise try to increase the weight ten percent. Step 3: Widen Your Upper Body A wider midsection can be visually minimized by a having a wider upper body. While you are whittling down your midsection, it can only help to add a little more size to your upper body and create more of the vaunted 'V shape' that is so desirable. The single best exercise for this is the lat pull down. You can perform this exercise in the conventional way but if you really want to increase efficiency and intensity try doing it with a weight that is so heavy you can only hold it for five seconds in the first two inches of the downward range. You have to feel it to believe it! Step 4: Measure, Measure, Measure! Once per week you should measure the girth of your midsection and your body fat percentage. Even the slightest improvement in these measurements in one week is enormously motivating. When you have a goal it is very important to be able to measure progress toward that goal. Don't forget this important step. In a Nutshell Reducing 'love handles' is a simple matter of reducing overall body fat through daily low intensity aerobics and tightening the underlying muscles to improve shape. Perform the recommended aerobics every day and perform the recommended exercises twice per week in your first month and once per week for as long as your weights increase. If your weights do not increase add two extra days off until they do. Soon you'll have a tight, hard midsection, lower overall body fat and a great V-shaped taper to your torso. |
|
Fat - Healthy? Though you read everywhere that you need to cut out as much fat as possible, this is only partially true. There are good fats and bad fats. Fat is mainly present in a food in the form of triglycerides. Triglycerides consist of glycerol and three fatty acids. These fatty acids can be saturated, such as in butter, or unsaturated, such as in some margarines. There are also monounsaturated fatty acids, these are found in olive oil and peanut oil. Saturated fats are considered the "bad fats", unsaturated fats are considered the good fats. Saturated fats cause make up a waxy plaque that may trouble the arteries. Saturated fats may increase cholesterol levels. Most saturated fats tend to be solid at room temperature, with the exception of tropical oils. It is found mostly in meat and dairy products, as well as some vegetable oils, such as coconut and palm oils (tropical oils). Polyunsaturated Fat tends to lower blood cholesterol levels. It is found mostly in plant sources. Monounsaturated Fat tends to lower LDL cholesterol (the "bad" cholesterol). It is found in both plant and animal products. Though margarine sounds good, the way it is made is not. Because of the fact that the food industry needed to make the margarine easier to spread, they hydrogenated the fats. During this process they create Trans-fats, which are as bad as saturated fats. Trans-fats occur in many processed foods. Always check the label to see if any ingredients are listed as hydrogenated. If they are, try to find something else to eat, the main reason for this is that trans-fats are NOT listed in the little energy charts which they print on there, so you never know how much of these trans-fats you'll be taking in. Unfortunately there's no way around saturated fats. You could stop eating, but chances of survival are probably worse in that case then when you're just eating butter. Try to keep a proper balance, 20-30% of your daily energy intake should come from fats, of this, NO MORE than 10% should be saturated fats. Remember that fats contain 9 calories, whereas carbohydrates and protein only contain 4 calories. Read those labels! |
|
H.I.T. - High Intensity Training Basics H.I.T. training is based on the theory that you can exhaust and break down your target muscle area in one set when performed effectively. H.I.T. training is not for beginners. Before starting H.I.T., you need to know exactly when your muscles are warmed up. You also need perfect form in your exercises. If either one of these lack, the "high intensity" of this type of workout can cause injury. So please, if you haven't been working out seriously for at least 6 months, don't consider starting a H.I.T. program. A H.I.T. workout will target major muscle groups first. Depending on the trainee, you will target some or all of the muscle groups in one session. For most people a split will be required over 2 or 3 separate sessions. The goal is to build muscle so you need to give your muscles time to recuperate and grow. Some H.I.T. trainers will tell you to work your entire body in one session two to three times a week. However medical studies suggest that most muscle groups need a week to recover from a workout to failure. Before starting your session you need to warm up properly. Once the target muscle groups are warmed up, you still want to do a warm up set before each H.I.T. set. You'll do this set with anywhere from 25-50% of the weight you're going to use in the target set. The target set itself will be 8-12 repetitions with the maximum weight you can handle. If you find that you can go to 12 reps, you'll need to increase the weight next time. If you find you can only do 8 reps, you can either stick with that weight until you can do 10 or more, or go slightly lower. Always make sure that you have slow, controlled movements in perfect form. Your goal however, should be to slightly increase the weight each week, even if it's just by a pound. Over a year that does make a 50 pound increase if you can keep it steady. |
|
Why Water Is Important About 65% of your body is water: - 92% of your blood is water. - bones are 22% water - Muscles are 75% water - Brain is 75% water What water does in your body: - flush out waste - regulates the body temperature - carries nutrients and oxygen through your body - Moistens the air you breathe out - Protects and cushions vital organs - Helps you swallow and digest - Cushions joints What are signs of dehydration? - dizziness - headaches - thirst (you should never be thirsty) - dark pee - irregular peeing habits - dry throat/mouth - dry/itchy skin What are signs of good hydration? - energy-full - peeing about every 4 hours (when awake) - light yellow pee - never thirsty Ins and Outs of Water How do I lose water? - Urine (and stool), essential to remove waste from the body - Sweating, to maintain body temperature under extreme stress - Breathing You're always "sweating" to a certain level, maybe you won't have sweat beads or feel wet, but your skin is moist, and as you know, water evaporates. How do I take water in? Just as humans, animals and plants are made up largely of water. Which means aside from the fluids you take in, you also get significant amounts of water from foods. For example, meat on average contains 30%-40% water after cooking. Vegetables 85%-98% on average fruits 85-90% on average On top of that good sources of water are: - bottled water - Fresh squeezed juices - milk - caffeine free soft drinks - soups Bad (or poor) water sources are: - coffee - tea - caffeine containing soft drinks - alcoholic drinks Why are these bad? Because the caffeine and alcohol in the beverages are diuretic, causing the body to lose more water than it takes in from the beverage. |
Chin Ups Let's have a quick look at the muscles involved in a chinup: |