How often should you workout?

One of the age old questions, that has been asked throughout gyms for as long as anyone can remember has been, how many days a week should I workout? Too complicate things further comes the follow up question, how should I split my workouts? In either case, what essentially is coming into question is an individual’s training frequency. As it pertains to exercise, frequency is the rate at which workout sessions are occurring.

In my opinion this is the most overrated and over exaggerated fundamental principle of exercise. By that I mean this is the variable that people most heavily focus their attention on. It’s amazing how many individuals are caught up in having to be at the gym on a daily basis. As if missing a workout or even two or three is going to result in losing everything they have gained. This mind set often has negative consequences and can severely hinder your development. There are of course those at the other end of the spectrum who do not exercise nearly enough which as we know also has negative consequences. However much of our discussion here will focus on those individuals we first mentioned–the exercise addicts.

The reason why we go to the gym is to help us get in shape and look better, right? Wrong! The real reason for going to the gym or, working out in general, is to start a chain of events that will eventually result in us improving our level of health and fitness as well as looking better. Take a moment to read that statement again or as many times as is needed for it to completely sink in. The reason why it is so important to see exercise this way is because many people have a distorted view of exercise and how it works to make us more fit.

Many trainees believe that if they simply show up at the gym and perform the workouts, they will accomplish all they’ve set out to achieve. More often than not any results that are achieved through this mechanism are usually very small and/or short lived and the individual never fully realizes his/her potential. Very often people fail to change the way their bodies look even though they frequent the gym 5, 6 sometimes 7 times a week! Despite not achieving the physical changes they desire or further improving their level of fitness they not only continue to train frequently but may also increase the amount of exercise they perform in those workouts, ala the more is better mentality. Predictably this does not work either and their level of frustration grows with each passing week. But do not assume that based on these statements that anyone who has the same or similar profile to the one I described, can in no way see results. Some people achieve fitness success despite a ‘less than ideal’ training regimen. This however is usually because the person possesses superior genetic ability which will always be the ultimate determinant of one’s success.

For some trainees this amount of exercise may not be much of a detriment because their lack of activity outside of the gym (i.e. sedentary job) or because the demands of their daily workouts are so insignificant (in which case they will not see results no matter how many days a week they workout). But for the majority-the genetically average-an excessive amount of exercise can and will have negative consequences.

There exists a special relationship among all the components of exercise, but the success of your training program depends primarily on the relationship between 3 components in particular. They are intensity, volume, and of course frequency. When these three components are applied and balanced properly though training, performance and physical development will improve dramatically. When frequency is not properly balanced in conjunction with intensity and volume the demands of the training program will exceed what you can tolerate, resulting in a decrease in exercise performance, muscle loss, slowing of fat loss, decreased strength and endurance, and overall physical regression.

Ideally you should strive to exercise frequently enough to ensure that you are not overtraining (or undertraining), the consequences of which are mentioned above.

The overall goal of any exercise program should be to perform the least amount of exercise necessary to produce an optimum response.

Exercise should be intense, brief and infrequent. As stated in The Nautilus Book, by Ellington Darden, “You can perform brief and infrequent high intensity exercise or long and frequent low intensity workouts. But you cannot perform long and frequent exercise involving a high intensity of work. That will result only in total exhaustion.” (p. 76) As we’ve already covered, anything above what is necessary is superfluous and will ultimately result in diminishing returns. In layman’s terms this would translate to working out harder, working out longer, working out more, and having little or nothing to show for it. Training frequency should be reflective of what is an ideal period of rest following a bout of exercise, as per your individual needs.

For some this may be training 3 times a week, every other day, for others it may be training once every 46 days, for others it might mean keeping to their current schedule but lowering the overall demands. The options and combinations are infinite, but it is up to you to discover the appropriate training frequency based upon your training intensity and volume, goals, needs, rate of recovery, and preferences. Never forget, exercise is a means of starting a chain of events that will eventually result in you improving your health and fitness as well as looking better, so make smart choices about what you do and how often you do it.

Fat Loss: Time Efficient Workouts lead to lasting success

If you are fitness minded, you probably read the magazines or watch the latest infomercials and follow the trends. Well, some trends are good and others are just a waste of time and money. Yet maximum results with minimal time and expenditure is what most of us are looking for.

If you are new to weight training or fitness enhancement, getting a personal trainer is always a good place to start. They will show you the ropes, give you a program for success, and make sure you know how and why you are doing things.

But be cautious and do some research on the qualifications and philosophy of the trainer you may hire. While there are certainly great benefits to using personal trainers, having one is no guarantee for success. Some are not up on the latest studies and methods, relying on the same old stuff. But a good trainer will use circuit training and cross training for maximum results. Here’s how.

How to Maximize

Many trainers and fitness buffs will lift heavy weights then take long rests between sets. The theory is that the heavier the weight, the more muscle bulk will develop. And the longer the rest, the more repair has occurred to muscle tissue, which allows you to lift more in the next few sets. These extra reps and sets are thought to help burn more calories. Sounds good.

The problem is that this old-school method of weight training does not help cardiovascular health. There is very little benefit to lung and heart power. So now you will have to run the treadmill for those results. And this wastes time. And time is money, especially when paying a trainer!

Quality personal trainers will put into practice cutting edge methods of combining cardio, strength and flexibility training into single sessions while keeping the heart rate at optimal levels. I recommend wearing a heart rate monitor during the entire session, even when lifting weights. Why?

Because the best way to maximize time, energy and results is to work muscles, heart rate and lung capacity at the same time. In this way, you are not just resting for a few minutes to be able to do an additional rep of a weight set. On the contrary, it is your personal heart rate that dictates when to rest and when to begin again. And that time changes as your fitness level changes.

The goal of the workout is to give individual muscles a chance to rest while maintaining a consistently high heart rate. You will rest when your heart rate reaches 160 and then start up again when your heart rate drops to 130. (This varies per individual but is a good rule of thumb). This way your heart pumps more blood, you burn more calories through intensity, develop more endurance and leaner muscles.

A Streamlined Approach

When training a client, I will warm them up for 10 minutes on the elliptical cross trainer or stair master. To maximize time (to save them money and get the most out of each minute), I will review their personal nutritional journal with them during this period. We discuss diet, food combining, and ways to streamline their food habits for better results.

Next, I work them out for 45 minutes. To maximize results by controlling time, I pair up a machine and a manual exercise, like leg presses and dumbbell bicep curls. This method allows them to remain close to the machine and not “lose it” when the gym is crowded. I usually will have clients do three sets of each exercise and then move on to something else, like crunches and shoulder presses or leg curls and triceps extensions. In this way, one muscle rests while the other works. More importantly, the one thing that stays consistent during the exercise “switch” is the client’s heart rate!

The workout is 55 minutes long. With a heart rate elevated for that period of time through resistance training, you receive cardiovascular benefit, strength, muscular endurance, toning and sculpting. It’s also the biggest bang for your buck for anyone paying $65 or more per hour for a trainer.

The last 15 minutes of the session focuses on cooling down while stretching. Keeping muscles lean and limber is a huge part of health and wellness that is often neglected. It shouldn’t be.

Equipment Matters

Personal training often happens at the gym or in the home. And as a general rule, free weights offer better results than using weight machines. Really, the weight machines are for beginners or those too weak to use anything else. They are like training wheels and hold and guide proper position, without fear of the weights falling on you. But free weights not only increase the strength of the muscle being “worked,” they also train other muscles that are used to stabilize the weights while also increasing overall balance and whole-body coordination. Free weights maximize time, effort and results.

For home fitness, the now popular fitness balls and bands can be used. The balls are perfect for strengthening the core muscles, which include the abdominals, obliques, lower back and hips. The bands are good for chest, back and arms. While these strength bands are great for women, they don’t generally provide enough resistance for men. Free weights are the best options for men. For women, a small investment in Balls and Bands for home training can reap huge benefits.

Cross Training Is Key

Aside from circuit training, cross training is essential for overall fitness. I generally advise clients not to do the same type of exercise two days in a row, and to always mix things up.

I suggest things like weights and body-weight resistance training one day, biking or running the next day, and Bikram hot yoga or Pilates on another day. The idea is to keep the body guessing by putting the primary strain on different muscles in different ways each training day. These different strains place different emphasis and requirements on the heart, lungs and muscle fibers, as isometric yoga training is different than range of motion weight lifting or martial art training.

In the end, the objective of any fitness program is to maximize effort and results while keeping a lid on time and money. The way to do this is by using a heart rate monitor, not resting between sets, using circuit training and mixing things up with cross training. Good luck

Dennys Passeto has been a certified Personal Trainer and owner of Achieve Fitness since 1998. Achieve Fitness services clients in Maryland, DC and Virginia in their home, work, gym and outdoors. They are the only company who guarantee results. Visit them at http://www.achieve-fitness.com for a FREE personal training session.

Two week update:
Lost 6 pounds
Lost 1 inch off my chest
Lost 1/2 inch off belly
Lost 1/4 inch off waist

Getting up and going to the gym is getting easier, I look forward to it more, because I can already see results.

My clothes are fitting better and my energy is increasing daily. I am in a “healthy” routine and am enjoying the progress day by day. The great thing about a routine is, after it is established, it is automatic! You don’t have to think about it.

I know it is important to keep track of what I am eating and what kind of workouts I am doing, so this week I started a Twitter account to track all of my meals and workouts. This has increased the accountability (again) and at the same time has created a network of supportive people. So, not only am I using it to track my progress, but I am also getting support. Support is an important vehicle as you continue on your mission for fat-loss.

In 2 short weeks I have improved my body and created a network of like minded individuals. I am ready for the weeks to come!

Weight Loss

One of the hardest things someone on a fat loss diet has to face is a weight loss plateau. Nothing is more frustrating then when you’ve been following your fat loss diet and then progress comes to a screeching halt.

You think you are doing everything right, but alas, that scale is just not moving - at all.

What do you do then?

Learning what you need to do in order to bust through a weight loss plateau will be vital to your success.

Here are plateau busting tips.

Change Your Weight Loss Workouts

Your body loves its comfort zone. The only problem is that when you’re in your comfort zone for too long, you stop getting weight loss results.

Therefore, in order to spike change again, you should switch up your fat loss workout program. Either add a different exercise, switch the order of the current exercises, do a different number of reps, or use a different weight setting.

All will get that body responding again.

Evaluate Your Weight Loss Diet

One important thing that many people don’t realize is that as they go about the weight loss process, their daily calorie needs are going to change. No longer are they going to require quite the same amount of calories they initially did, so it’s critical to continually monitor your intake.

You might have reached a point now where your intake is too much for your current body weight, therefore reducing them back would be to your great benefit.

Have a Diet Cheat Day

Believe it or not, one of the biggest reasons people experience a weight loss plateau is because their metabolism is stalled. It’s stuck on super slow speed and makes further fat loss next to impossible.

The solution to this is to actually have a meal or two where you consume far more calories, thus signaling to your body that it can speed up its metabolism.

That is then what sparks fat loss moving again.

So, keep these three points in mind. If you’re struggling on your weight loss diet, it might just be time you did something different. After all, who wants to spend time not getting results?

For more information on how to use a cheat day, please refer to the Cheat Weight Loss Program. Dieting never tasted so good.

If you’re tired of feeling deprived on a diet that doesn’t even get you results, it’s time to change that. Cheat Weight Loss lets you control the decisions when it comes to choosing what food you want to eat.

The first thing you need to do is script your day. Simply set aside 5 minutes today to plan out tomorrow. Write down what time you need to get up, what you’ll eat for breakfast, when you’ll do your workout, what foods you’ll have for snacks, lunches, and dinners.

It’s also important to write down when you might want to cheat on your diet and come up with two solutions to this problem. For example, if you know that on Wednesday you have meetings all afternoon Wednesday, but then you have to go right from your meeting at work into a family event, then you know you have an obstacle to healthy eating.

So you simply need to plan at least two solutions around that, whether it’s eating before the meeting and then having something ready to go in the car or on the bus on the way to their activity.

By planning ahead, you’ll know exactly what you should be doing for fat loss at every minute of the day. That way you won’t have to make any snap decisions on the spot, and you won’t give into temptation. Make a plan and stick to it and you will lose fat fast!

The second tip to help you avoid cheating on your diet is to simply “believe in yourself”. Basically if you have the self-belief in yourself that you aren’t a cheater, then you’re not going to cheat, but you have to have what they call honest self-belief in yourself.

So you can’t just say, “Oh, I’m not going to cheat,” but then not really believe it deep in your heart. You must truly believe in yourself. This is a mindset you must develop.

The third tip is preparing your food in advance and ties in with the planning tip I gave you at the start. You need to set aside time on the weekend or during the week to plan your meals, do your shopping, and prepare as much of the food as possible (cut up vegetables, batch cook chicken breasts, etc.).

Most people would be best off to do Sunday morning rather than Sunday evening or Saturday instead of Sunday depending on their day. You might also need to do a mini-session during the week.

Planning and preparing and doing the shopping and then scripting out the meals are essential to stop cheating on your diet. It’s a very serious thing. If you want to have great results, if you want to have advanced results, then you have to go beyond normal and do advanced things. So that’s a mind set that people have to understand.

The fourth tip is to get social support. I can’t recommend social support enough for people. You can’t do this on your own. You need help from others to stick to your fat loss diet. If you work in an office, then you need to get a nutrition buddy who will support your decisions but also hold you accountable.

Obviously the office can be an area of support, but it is also going to be the area of most temptations because you’re going to have those people who are just trying to be a good person by bringing in the donuts and shoving them in your face.

Then you’re going to have those people who really should know better than to be a jerk and tease you about your diet and fat loss goals. There’s always going to be those people and you just have to plan for those people.

You need to go back to the scripting idea I talked about earlier and come up with two solutions to these people that are just being a headache to you. You also need to seek out the social support nutrition buddies at work and find someone who you see is doing the same thing as you and has the same goals. Eat lunch with them!

You also need social support at the gym to avoid cheating on your diet. Find a workout buddy or just ask people that you know stuff because people that know stuff are very happy to help you stick to your diets and workouts.

Finally, at home, try and get your family behind you. That is a really big problem in some families where one - maybe for example the guy or the girl doesn’t have a hard time with weight and can eat whatever they want and it’s very hard for the other person. So, communication is big in the social support network there.

The fifth tip to help you avoid cheating on your diet is simple. I want you to brush your teeth after every meal when you think you might cheat. For example, most people are good all day till about 4pm, so make sure you brush your teeth after eating a healthy afternoon snack.

Eating after you brush your teeth just isn’t that much fun, so it should help you control your cravings. Chewing gum is another great option. So is having a Green Tea. You can also use these tips after dinner, because that is when the 2nd danger zone of diet cheating comes into play.

Those are all just routines that you need to develop in order to build the power over food, rather than allowing food to control you. Day by day, take baby steps to improve your power over food and you’ll stop cheating on your diet.

So believe in yourself, stay busy, keep your mind off food, and plan ahead for all the obstacles in your life and you’ll lose fat fast by sticking to your fat loss diet. This doesn’t happen overnight. This might be a two-year plan where you go from binging twice a week to taking it down to once every three months but you will be better off for life.

It might take you two years to do that, but you know what? If you’re 30, 40 or 50 now you’ve still got another 50 or 60 years left. You may as well start now and get that habit into place. So think long-term there. Even enjoy the small victories and you can pull it off. There are small victories every day.

You must try and make tomorrow better than today and don’t beat yourself down mentally about it because you’ve got a lot of meals over the course of your lifetime. Just try and make the rest and the next ones better. That is how you stop cheating on your diet and how you lose fat for life.

Grab your free workout at http://www.TurbulenceTraining.com

Craig’s fat loss workouts blog will help you lose fat fast with daily tips

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So what is the answer to losing the weight you want and looking your best? The truth is that is takes hard work and discipline to burn fat. You can use this two-part program to help you lose weight. And while it is not a magic pill, it is a scientific and proven approach that is the fastest way to lose fat quickly.

Before we reveal the formula, you need to understand how your body works. Your body stores excess calories as fat. So, in essence if you want to burn fat you have to limit your daily caloric intake to a level low enough that your body begins to use the stored calories for energy. Most people eat way too many calories on a daily basis and live a pretty sedentary lifestyle. Additionally, your metabolism or the rate at which your body burns calories for energy slows down with age.

Many young couples say that they gained weight when they got married and they never had a weight problem before. This is true for a couple of reasons. First, 20 is the threshold for your metabolism to begin to slow down. Second, when people get married eating becomes a way to connect and a social event. Instead of going for a romantic walk in the park, the newlyweds head for the freezer to get a bowl of ice cream and then to the couch to watch their favorite show. In order to turn the weight train around and burn fat, this couple will have to change their diet and exercise habits.

Here is the two-part formula for helping you lose weight quickly:

1. Diet: Decrease Calories to Burn Fat

To burn fat you need to know how many calories you body needs for daily functioning. This is called the Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). You can probably find a calculator online to help you do the math here. But you can follow these simple steps to figure out your own BMR.

Use your goal weight (for example, 125 lbs.)
Multiply by 11 (women) or 12 (men): (125 X 11 = 1375)
Subtract 2% for every ten years after 20 years of age: 1375 - 1(1375 X .02) = 1210
Add 10% to account for the calories you burn during regular daily activities: 1210 + 121 = 1331 (This is the minimum daily calorie intake for a female between 30 and 39 years of age.)

Of course if you lead a very active lifestyle then you will need to add in additional values for the amount of calories that your burn during such activities as house cleaning for one hour (180) or running for one hour (800). But keep in mind that the idea here is to limit caloric intake so that you can burn fat.

With that said, you need to make healthy eating choices so that you will consume enough food to satisfy your appetite and get the vitamins and nutrients necessary. On the other hand, you also need to incorporate an exercise routine to help you burn fat from calories.

2. Interval Training: The Best Routine to Burn Fat

While it sounds like something that only professional athletes and body builders might do, this is the most effective cardio exercise that you can do to burn fat. Interval training is simply alternating high intensity periods of movement with rest or low intensity periods of movement.

To make this even easier, most elliptical and treadmill machines have an interval program that you can choose, built right in. Sadly though, people who are trying to burn fat choose the fat burning program because it sounds like the obvious choice. While you will burn fat with this program, the amount of fat burned for your efforts will be significantly less than it would with interval training.

Follow a basic interval routine of 85% maximum heart rate for high intensity and 65% maximum heart rate for low intensity. You will be sweating hard and breathing heavy, but you will burn fat fast.

For more information, click here: Burn Fat Quickly

Chris Jamison writes about life balance in the areas of Health & Fitness, Personal Growth, Financial Freedom, Relationship Advice, and Spirituality and Purpose. Visit Chris’ site at http://RoadmapsToSUCCESS.com. Roadmaps To SUCCESS, Your step-by-step guide to life balance

Many researches have been done to analyze the effects of having breakfast. The researches prove skipping breakfast has a direct effect on your mood and on cognitive performance. when you skip breakfast, you get easily exhausted and the performance of your brain and body is severely affected.

Your breakfast should contain fiber and proteins. While you can get proteins from eggs, meats, and dairy products, you can get fiber from whole vegetables, grains, and fruits. For example, you can include an orange for fiber, a hard boiled egg for protein, and a bowl of whole grain cereal with low fat milk.

Avoid having sugary cereals, pastries, and white breads in your breakfast as they get easily digested and you may feel hungry in a short while. Your hunger will be satisfied with proteins and fiber until you have your lunch.

Start your day by eating a healthy breakfast and you will remain active all through the day.
Jenny R. Smith is a