Stay fit, Improve your body with core strength training

One of the most important parts of your workout routine is core strength training. What you are going to find is that these exercises help to improve the muscles that are essential for the transfer of energy in your body. These core muscles in turn are the ones that are most used when you are participating in sporting events and running.

Your muscles in this core region include the abdominal muscles, the muscles in your hip are and the muscles along your spine. This means that no single exercise is going to give you the core strength training that you need and that you will need to incorporate a series of exercises if you want to end up with the best results possible.

The following is a list of 15 exercises that you can do to help boost the strength of these muscles. It is recommended you have a medicine ball, stability ball and a desire for a shredded midsection on hand to ensure that you can successfully do all these exercises.

Improving Your Body With Core Strength Training Exercises

• Prone Bridge
• Lateral Bridge
• Supine Bridge
• Pelvic Thrusts
• Russian Twists
• Lunges
• Lateral Pull Downs
• Deadlifts
• Crunches
• Bear Crawls
• Jump Squats
• Cleans
• Box Jumps
• Squatted Dumbell Press
• Leg Raises

When you have gone through these core strength training exercises, you are going to find that you have quite a few benefits that will come from it. These benefits will include everything from improved balance and control, to moving in a more efficient manner. You'll even find that when you utilize these exercises regularly, you are going to have better athletic performance with fewer injuries experienced.

While you're doing your core strength training, it will be important that you do focus on improving on each workout you do. As you increase the amount of weight you lift and the number of reps you do, you slowly build up your body strength. You might even consider setting a day aside during your lifting routine strictly for core work. Try performing each of the above mentioned exercises for 2 sets a piece and see how you feel.

Above all, you need to ensure that you're including a healthy diet with your exercise routines. By doing that, you can be confident that you are getting the essential nutrients like complex carbohydrates and lean proteins that your body is going to need to remain energized and to ensure that your muscles can continue to rebuild and grow.

Alright insider's, that's it for this one. Your core strength training can consist of any exercises you choose. Just make sure that you don't overwork any area for more than a couple of days in a row and give the different sections of your body a few days of rest to ensure that you don't overwork your muscles as the growth and strength you end up having will occur during your recovery time.

To your fitness success!

David McCready is the founder of Game Strength Insider found at http://www.GameStrengthInsider.com He specializes in helping athletes and average Joes alike, gain long term lean muscle mass, strength and cardiovascular conditioning without gimmicks, supplements or fad dieting. © 2012 Game Strength Insider. All rights in all media reserved

Things to Know about Water Aerobics Classes

In this busy life where we eat fast food and spend most of our day time sitting in the office, the role of excising is becoming more and more significant. People often choose one type of sport to help them keep fit and also relax their mind.

Aerobics is one type of sport which can surely help them to exercise and burn fat which accumulates on their body overtime. Unlike many people think, burning fat is not a very challenging task. What you need is hard work, a your devotion to the task at hand. But, it's real that people who are excessively fat will find it hard to take part in any sport activities. They even have difficulties using the exercising machines - like a treadmill properly. Self-exercising at home can easily make these highly obese people feel discouraged. Therefore, they need to get involved in proper training initially to reduce some of their weight before they can do normal exercises.

A great way to reduce weight without much hard work is to do water aerobics. Aerobics, when performed under water, can definitely reduce a significant amount of weight for these people.

Aerobics is becoming more and more popular these days as people realise how useful it is in helping them to lose weight. This is the reason why there are more and more people signing up for water aerobics class on a daily basis. If you are new to this type of sport, let me tell you some interesting things about it. It is an aerobics class which is taken in the water under the help of an aqua jogger. This jogger helps the participants to stay suspended in the water and easily move about.

Because this type of sport is popular, you can find it being taught at almost every health clubs and also at big swimming pools. If this is the first time you do this sport, remember to choose health clubs with a good reputation and experienced training experts. Do not worry while doing it because you will be instructed by professional experts.

The benefits water aerobics classes bring you are clear and undeniable. You participate in the sport with other people who have the same desire to lose weight like you, so you will not lose your enthusiasm easily. The good thing is that this sport does not require hard work. You can enjoy the fun for an extended period of time without feeling exhausted. Before joining any water aerobics classes, make sure you keep in mind the things listed below. In summary, if you have tried other conventional methods to lose weight but failed, why don't you give water aerobics a chance?

MichelleJGoss Michelle G. Ross is a water aerobics instructor. She loves reading, travelling, sharing her water aerobics routines for those who are interested in this type of sport.

Work out at work, top 10 exercises to do in your office

Beating the struggle to get fit and stay healthy doesn’t mean you always need to visit the gym, run around the park or get on your bike and complete a cross country tour.

You can get fit and stay healthy while you are at work whether in an office, factory or workshop. Here are 10 ideas to get yourself fit and stay healthy while at work:

Exercise in the office, use the stairs

1. Use the stairs rather than the elevator (lift in the UK). I've seen people take the elevator just to go up one floor, you probably have too. Be different, take the stairs.

2. If you’re in the elevator alone and it has railings, view them as parallel bars and lift your self several times (do several repetitions) to strengthen your arm muscles.

3. Get up from your chair, walk over and speak to that colleague you were just about to email.

4. Rather than have lunch at your desk, when the weather is agreeable, take a walk outside and find a bench where you can sit and eat. You’ll also find this can give you a fresh perspective on a problem you might have had trouble with tackling.

5. Make it your goal to never stay chained to your desk for more than two hours.

6. Perform straight leg lifts from the chair, or knee lifts. Sit in the chair, extend your legs and lift them up to a 45 degree angle (or a little lower.) For knee lifts, bring your butt to the edge of the chair, squeeze your knees together and try to touch them to your chest. This last exercise is probably best done while your colleagues aren't around

7. How about stretch exercises? You can do these, without fear of embarrassment. Stretch the arms in an attempt to touch the ceiling. Stretch your leg out in front while sitting so they are at right angles to your body. While doing this exercise try to stretch your feet too so they are nearly parallel with the floor.

Exercise in the office, take in gym equipment

8. If you have a liberal work environment, why not bring into your office a Floor Pedal Exerciser. These are inexpensive machines you can buy for under US $50. The more sophisticated machines come with a digital display to monitor your progress.

If your bosses don’t mind, you could put the exerciser on the desk and use it to exercise your arm muscles. Who knows, you could be the one that starts an office craze with these machines.

9. One unobtrusive exercise you can do is glutial squeezes or butt muscle squeezes while sitting in your chair. The benefit is that no one will notice. Squeeze your gluteals, otherwise known as the muscles that make up your butt, as tight as you can and hold for 10 seconds.

Release your contraction and rest for five seconds before repeating the sequence for 10 repetitions. The benefits from this exercise can help you with another exercise, climbing stairs. Without strong butt muscles, you may find your body tires easily after climbing a few flights of stairs.

10. If you have your own office, or you are one of the first to arrive or last to leave why not use the isolation to do a few pushups. You can also use your office chair if it has arm rests to push yourself up from the seat. Choose to do it in full view of your colleagues or, discreetly.

Working in a non manual job still gives you plenty of opportunities to beat the struggle to get fit and stay healthy.

How to measure your body fat

The Olympics rightly put the focus on health and fitness, the Paralympics even more. As well as the competitive elements and the excitement generated watching participants excel and their chosen sports, the Olympics made me conscious of my own state of fitness.

I remember the first time I went to see my doctor for a complete checkup. Out came his callipers and the measurement taken of the single scroll of fat surrounding my mid-section. This meant putting an end to consumption of apple pies and pastries. This of course worked for a while, slowly the bad eating habits crept back and I found myself eating the pies and pastries again.

Over a decade later, the scrolls of fat have multiplied. The solution is of course diet and exercise. I find that exercise or getting into a routine of exercise much easier than keeping to a diet. What is a little demoralising is that despite exercising there appears to be little change to my weight, one of the success measures for exercise and diet.

I try to take comfort from the accepted wisdom that fat is heavier than muscle. But, the key is knowing the difference between fat and muscle and identify if the lack of change is due to fat getting replaced with muscle.

Measuring your body fat

Using callipers to measure fat is now a dated technique as you can easily find the proportion of fat or muscle with specialised domestic scales. One of which is the Withings Wi-fi Body Scales.

These scales display your weight and fat content. Using the scales means you can target your exercise to reduce fat.

The first impression you get with these scales is it’s high tech looks. The whole family can use the scales as it can track up to eight users. It has automatic user recognition, online dashboards and 40 e-health & fitness services such as Runkeeper. In the age of privacy, you can keep your measurement details on a secure website.

Measuring your body fat and skeletal muscle

The Omron BF511 Blue Family Body Composition Monitor goes several steps further, using its sensor technology, the BF511 Body Composition Monitor gives you a painless and accurate total body reading--body weight (in kilograms), body fat percentage, visceral fat, resting metabolism and skeletal muscle percentage. You become as knowledgeable as your doctor, probably more so. The visceral fat, is the fat around your waist. Use the technology in these scales to measure your body fat without a visit to the doctor with his callipers.

The Olympians, when the limelight fades

This posting is a slight deviation from the regular postings on beating the struggle to get fit and stay healthy. But, I couldn’t resist the temptation to offer my reflections on the Olympics held in London, the place I’ve worked in for the last 20 plus years.

The Olympics held in London was no doubt a massive success for the athletes, volunteers and organisers. Anyone who worked on the Olympics should be congratulated on working on mammoth task demanding great organisation and presentation skills. I offer my congratulations too.

One question that’s always played on my mind whenever the Olympics are held, is whether the sacrifice from the athletes, coaches and families involved is really worth it?

The question probably assuages any guilty feelings I have from not really pushing hard to beat the struggle to get fit.

But, other than the gold and silver medal winners who may get lucrative sponsorship deals during or immediately after the games, what happens to them after when the spotlight of the media goes dim? And, their pictures no longer grab the front pages of newspapers worldwide or beamed into millions of homes. Do they remain household names for the months and years after their spectacular achievements?

I decided to do a little research on what became of a couple of gold medal winners from the Beijing Olympics.

Ryu Seung-Min (born August 5, 1982 in Seoul, South Korea) a Korean table tennis player, won the gold medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics in the men's singles competition.

There are few references to Ryu on the web. Ryu’s fame appears limited to table tennis circles. Earnings for professional table tennis players rarely get to six figures and they don’t become house hold names.

How about weightlifting? The gold medal winner in 2004 for lifting 105 kg was Hossein Rezazadeh from Iran, and nick named¸ The Iranian Hercules". Rezazadeh tried to capitalise on his Olympian achievement by appearing in advertisements to promote real estate in Dubai.

His participation surprised many of his fans and was seen as demeaning to both himself and his country, given the promotion of buying estates in a land deemed as a rival.

Again, Rezazadeh is another example of an athlete who has achieved the ultimate athletic prize, a gold medal, and then quietly slips into anonymity. This begs the question from me why do they do it?

Answers on a post card please or preferably in the comment box below.

Finding the Right Gym, with the Right People

Like a soap opera most gyms have their archetype characters as if specially cast in a role just for the gym. Unfortunately, the roles they play are set to annoy even the most tolerant of us.

At most gyms you get several role types - grunter, smelly, know it all, flirter, talker and care-less

Right Gym, Right People

In this post I'll look at the hogger. The type who are either in love with a piece of gym equipment or they believe they own it.

Despite notices saying something like no more than x minutes on gym equipment, the hogger can't read or, believe they are so special the rules are written for other people to follow.

You have your eye on a piece of gym equipment, say a new running machine with all the latest add-ons. The hogger has been on it since you arrived at the gym.

After an hour you leave the gym, the hogger is still using it. You bite your lip, say nothing and quietly leave the gym - frustrated.

A few days pass you return to the gym, that hogger is still on the same machine. Are they welded to it? You desperately want to use that machine.

What do you do? Shouting expletives won't make them willingly hand it over for you to use. No, the chances are they're so absorbed with what they're doing and haven’t seen you.

Politely ask, at a convenient time such as a pause when they’re changing settings on the gym equipment, how long they'll be or if there's any chance you can use it for a few minutes before you go home. Chances they'll say not long the offer ask again in 10mins. This time they'll either offer to let you use the equipment or stall again with the response not long.

Dealing with Gym Hoggers

If they say not long, ask if you can use it for 15 minutes and if they'll give you some tips on how to get the most from that piece of gym equipment. This way you get to use it, they get to watch over their beloved equipment which they probably view as theirs. Hopefully, you may have begun to build some kind of rapport with them.

If this still fails to work speak to the gym manager to get them to enforce their policy on using gym equipment.

If this also fails to work, ask yourself do you really want to continue as a paying member of this gym that favours certain clients over others?

Your only option is to vote with your feet and wallet. Do your research and join a better gym.

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A GPS Sports Tracker Can Make Fitness Fun

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How do you turn a dull routine, which at a push you can call exercise, into something mildly interesting and evenexciting?
I found that using Endomondo, a little free gps sports tracker application for your Blackberry, iphone or smart phone, it is possible.

Endomondo, GPS Sports Tracker

I started using Endomondo nearly 2 years ago to make my cycle rides more interesting. Endomondo was and is much cheaper than buying a cycle computer to get average speeds, duration, distance travelled and calories burned. Since I first started using Endomondo the user interface has been updated so it’s really easy to use, I guess you could work out all the settings in less than a minute.
Endomondo can track over 30 different exercise activities from Aerobics to Yoga. Included in the activity list are Beach Volley, Martial Arts and Polo. How Endomondo tracks calories burned for Beach Volley or Martial Arts remains a mystery to me. You also risk damaging your phone if it’s in your pocket while playing Beach Volley or Martial Arts.
The main screen settings asks you to enter your name, weight and countdown intervals. You then select your exercise activity, in my case it's cycling. Press start, a couple of seconds later the GPS tracker picks up your location. Press stop when you’ve completed your activity.

GPS Sports Tracker on Your PC

A number of features that make Endomondo worth trying out are:- functionality to share your fitness progress with friends and find out how they’re progressing too in their struggle to become or keep fit. Endomondo uses the contacts on your mobile phone or Facebook account.
- The app keeps a history of all your workouts. Logging into Endomondo via your PC gives you access to detailed graphs of your performance so you can actually measure how well you’re progressing.
For example, if it takes me 45 mins to cycle from the train station to home on day 1, and on day 30 it take 37 minutes I know I’m making progress.
This gives me the boost to persevere so I know my struggles are not in vain.