Thursday, December 4, 2008

Success With Weights

Weight training is for everybody, not just athletes, body builder or competitive lifters. Using weights regularly helps to develop strong bones and build lean muscle mass. Increased lean muscle mass raises the metabolism and helps you burn fat and lose weight more efficiently. However, as with every exercise, you need to know what you're doing. This is especially true when you lift weights for body building. Here's some top tips for success with lifting weights. Be realistic

If you've drunk a six-pack too many and ended up with a beer gut, you're not going to turn it into a six-pack overnight or even in a few weeks. If, sisters, your abs have been turned to jelly by three pregnancies, you're not going to get a perfectly flat stomach in a few months. Remember the old saying about eating an elephant a bite at a time? Remember that every small gain is a success that you should take pride in.

Use good scales

The old-fashioned bathroom scales just won't do, as this can't distinguish fat from muscle. You need something that can measure body fat, as this is what you want to eliminate while increasing your muscle mass.

Diet

Get the right balance of carbs, vitamins, minerals and proteins. Especially the proteins. You will need the proteins to build muscle bulk ' they aren't made from nothing! However, don't exclusively eat the proteins (you'll have problems with your kidneys and constipation if you do). Carbs, fibre and good fats are necessary too. You may also need a multivitamin nutritional supplement.

Push yourself

Your muscles will not get any bigger if they always have the same load to lift every time. You will need to increase in some way to stimulate your muscles into growing bigger. Increase reps, increase sets, increase the weights or slow down your movements to make them harder.

Eat and drink at the right time

You will need to consume some protein before and after your workout, along with a fast acting carbohydrate for instant energy. Drink plenty of water (or a sports drink) because you will lose a lot of body fluid via sweat during a workout. Protein shakes are great for post-workout meals (snacks?) and are easy to prepare and carry with you to the gym, as are protein bars. Have a look at the A-Z Nutrition range of protein supplements, all at low, low prices.

Rest

Your body will need time to actually build your new muscles. To avoid injury and overtraining, take a step back every four to six weeks, doing only a half workout for a week. Also, taking one day off in seven works well to prevent strains and injuries. Avoid stress ' the stress hormones prevent muscle building.

Aerobic exercise

This boosts bloodflow and stamina, so you will be able to lift more and for longer. Change. Don't do the same workout for months and months. Give yourself a bit of variety to work your muscles in new ways. Having said that, it's also important not to change too often. Change if you're not seeing any results for weeks on end.

Body clocks

Morning people will work out best first thing in the morning. Night owls will do better working out at the end of the day. Work with your body, not against it. Sleep. When you sleep, your body rebuilds itself ' this is the whole biological purpose of sleep. Lack of sleep lowers your metabolism.


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Understand Your Metabolism and Unlock Your Weight Loss Results

Have you ever seen an ad for the next latest and greatest weight loss program or diet pill, only to see in fine print that this person also ate a balanced diet and did regular exercise? The other common complaint all the time is "I workout hard everyday and I don't lose a pound." Does this sound like you? The key to achieving health weight loss and keeping it off for a lifetime is understanding your metabolism.

When you think about weight loss you want to think in terms of a diet fitness program. The problem many people do is they only focus on one aspect which leaves them always falling short of their goals.

What is metabolism any way?

Your metabolism doesn't have to be confusing. Let's break your metabolism down in to two aspects. First, is your body's ability to break down food that you eat and convert it into energy or store it. You can store fat in your fat cells though you do store carbohydrates in your muscle cells to be used as energy later. The second is the rate at which your body produces energy, or do you have a fast or slow metabolism? The other key part to your metabolism is what you are burning for energy.

Your metabolism wants small amounts of food at regular intervals throughout the day. Typically every 2-3 hours is a good time to eat. This isn't eating the average American meal 5 times a day, more cutting your meal in half and eating that amount throughout the day. When we go longer than 3 hours between meals are body starts to store the food we do eat as fat, and can burn away muscle tissue for energy instead of using your food. When you eat 5 small meals a day you train your body to use fat as your main fuel source. A proper metabolism burns 70% fat as its main source of energy all day long. Just think while you are working sitting at your chair you are burning fat.

It is through exercise that we raise our metabolism up. The amount of calories we burn is not as important as the rate at which we burn calories. If burning 3500 calories worked than all the walkers at the gym would be the thinnest people. You typically see runners much thinner than walkers and that is because running burns calories at a greater rate and raises up your metabolism. You burn more calories by raising up your metabolism the entire day than you can in any workout.

Cardio interval training is considered one of the best ways of raising up your metabolism. Interval training is short burst of high intensity follow by short durations of low intensity and then repeated. People after doing an interval workout burn more fat as a source of energy for the entire day after than any other form of cardio. You only want to do one interval workout per week as over doing it creates over training and a drop in results.

Combining exercise and eating 5 small meals and you will unlock your weight loss potential. This not only the fastest ways to lose weight these habits work for the rest of your life to have more energy and keep the fat off your body.


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