Fitness | Wellness Connection

The Power of Walking

: Image by jwinfred via Flickr

There is a key to great wellness and weight loss that has been lost for many years. It’s the power of walking. The television and the Internet are cluttered with ways to get the most out of one’s body. There are fast weight loss secrets and the most advanced training equipment to help build the body. While these products sell well and often feature very trusted pitchmen, the art of walking has become a lost practice in the world.

The benefits to walking are important and they are simple to execute. The question is why it’s not a bigger part of an active lifestyle. There is a stigma that walking is something that is reserved for the elderly or the physically disabled. It’s the idea that it is a beginners way to working out.

While it’s true that walking is a first step in the fitness regimen, it doesn’t have to be a program that is abandoned. As a matter of fact there are a lot of benefits to walking that other exercise programs can’t do.

One of the first, and most obvious benefits is the fact that it can be done from anywhere. Many times a gym is needed to do intense cardio. Time has to be blocked out, but with walking the benefits can be accomplished even in a pinch. The office worker and take their lunch on the go and do a 30 minute walk for it’s benefits. A walk after dinner in the same day for 30 minutes would be equal to the hour of activity required by most health and fitness experts.

Many people can find a way to get extra walking into their daily routine. They can just take the stairs as opposed to the elevators. They can park in the back of the parking lot. There are a lot of things that can be done to increase walking. This makes it a must for the fitness beginner or expert.

Starting A New Fitness Lifestyle

Many people vow to become a better version of their former selves. They believe that today, or tomorrow is the start of a new and better person. They set themselves up for change, only to fail and see it go back to the same old self destructive ways. When it comes to fitness this is often the case. So why does the routine that people set out for themselves, that is always in their best interest, fail?

The truth is that the reasons for these failures aren’t limited to one thing. They are often made up of several reasons. There is no way to pinpoint exactly what the problem is. There is only a general variety of reasons. Here are a few of them.

Too Much Too Soon

People who vow to get to the gym more tend to start with a vary driven attitude. It’s the idea that change is going to happen and it’s going to happen now. But there is nothing that happens that doesn’t take a considerable amount of time. So people tend to go to the gym for hours and hours the first week only to find that they aren’t seeing the immediate payoff that they want. Accompany this with the overworking of muscles in the first week and what you end up with is a very tired body that feels discouraged by the results. This does not add up to a fitness transformation.

Unreasonable Goals

People make changes for the wrong reasons. It’s not easy. People often set out to look like something as opposed to setting out to make positive changes for a healthy lifestyle. In a few short weeks they realize that they are not getting the six pack abs they want and so thy abandon an otherwise very important change. It can’t be about superficial results. Working out has to be about make changes to improve the quality of life. That will really make a difference.

Adding Speed To Your Running

Running is one of the better exercises that you can do, but occasionally even the best exercise can have a person lacking the motivation to complete it. There are a large number of people out there that can get bored with the same old run. It’s part of the process of doing anything for a long period of time. For those people they are in need of a switch in the way they run if they want to have a successful running schedule. It’s ok for a runner to change the way they run or the pace at which they run. It will provide a nice break to the same old.

The first thing to do is to try doing sprints. Sprints are a great way to not only increase speed, but to increase distance as well. Once the heart and lungs are able to work at harder and higher speeds, it will make working at lower and more constant speeds much easier. This is a good technique for distance runners.

Doing speed running workouts are a great way to go outdoors and have a good time with the runs. Even in the winter time you can find a lot of enjoyment out of doing these things outdoors. Try going to the closest high school football field. It should be marked off in 5 yard increments. The first thing you want to do is sprint the full 100 yards. Then from there you should try sprinting at 90, 80, 70 and so on. This will give you quite the workout. You might find that you don’t have the stamina to finish the full field. If that is the case, then don’t worry. You can job the remaining time, but just that workout alone should give you a great sweat. Once you conquer that you can add a second cycle to increase the fat burning. Speeding up your running can be a fun new workout.

Building Muscle In The Gym

There are a lot of ways to make your workout really more enjoyable. Part of the problem with going to the gym is that people have no direction when they get there. They have no idea what they are looking for or how to get it. It will cause them to revert back to the same thing they have been doing. This will cause them to get bored of their workout and skip the gym altogether. This is not an idea way to behave. There are a number of ways to make a workout better no matter what your goal is. Here are some great ways to be different in and around the gym to get the body you want.

If you are going to the gym for fat burning then you should know that they best way to burn fat isn’t at all by sweating. It’s by building muscle. Getting into the gym and hitting the weights can bring more to weight loss than just a five mile run everyday.

So get into the gym and start working out with the free weights or the machines a couple of days a week. You don’t have to worry about focusing on specific body parts each day if your goal isn’t to be well defined at this point. You can try out doing a full body circuit twice a week to give your body the extra muscle building it needs.

A full body circuits is to work out all the major areas of your body at the same time. You do 1 set of 10 reps on one area of the body, then move to an exercise that benefits another area. You can do this two to three times in a workout session. If you follow it up with a little light cardio you should see results in no time. Building muscle will keep you focused and looking great. Don’t exclude it from your workout.

The Principles of Burning Fat

If you have been eyeing the gym from afar, thinking about getting in their and making some positive personal changes then you are already thinking in the right way. Now it’s time to take that idea a bit further and get into the gym. You might be a little hesitant because you know you wanna get better, but you just don’t know how. If you scour the Internet or thumb through health magazines you will be hit with hundreds of ideas as to how to make the best you. All the information can be a little confusing and overwhelming. Don’t let it get you down. Your job is to make the most of your body and your health situation. Here are some basics to help you get started at the gym.

You are there to burn fat. Whether you are seriously overweight, or you are just looking to tone up, the fact remains that you are there to burn fat. The best way to burn fat is through building muscle. Many people have the misconception that burning fat is through rigorous cardio training. While this is an effective way to burn fat as well, in a rest position nothing burns more fat than muscle.

With the goal of building muscle in mind you don’t want to ignore cardio, but rather make it a more combined part of your schedule. If you are going to the gym five days a week(which is what you should be aiming for) then you want to do lifting three days a week and do cardio the other two days out of the week.

If you so desire you can choose to do some form of cardio on every workout day and it could pay dividends for you and your fitness, but the more important goal is to focus on building strength and muscle. Getting your body healthy is about hitting the gym. Building muscle, burn fat and feel good.

When A Workout Goes Stagnant

Many who workout get a great start from just being back in the gym. The progress they make early on is impressive. They start to feel good about the way they look. Their clothes fit them better. They have new energy and they are starting to see the pounds melting away. But then something happens. They stop seeing the gains they were seeing for so long. It’s not that they are doing anything different. They are doing the same thing they always do, but it stops being quite as effective.

It’s during this time that people start giving up the gym altogether. It’s when they feel the most discouraged. But just because they aren’t getting the results they had hoped for doesn’t mean it’s the time to panic. As a matter of fact it’s a time to get things cooking and change up what they had been doing.

The body is like any other person in any walk of life. The first time they learn how to do something, like working out, it takes a lot out of them. As they continue to learn they are still taking more time and energy but they are getting the hang of it. Then what happens is they begin to learn what they are doing so well that they start doing it by expending the least amount of energy humanly possible.

Once the body has been doing the same workout for months, it starts to learn how to do it more efficiently and burn the least amount of calories. When this happens it’s time to take the workout in another direction. It’s time to switch up the lifting techniques or the exercises itself. It’s time to do different cardio. The key is always to be one step ahead of the body without over-doing it. Training the body to always be on it’s toes will keep the body in check. It’s an important way to keep the body burning fat.

Changing Up Your Lifting

There comes a time in every body’s life where what they are doing at the gym is no longer translating into positive results. It’s not as if they have the intention of their workout going stagnant, but there are just times when it does and there is nothing they can do about it. All they can really do is change things up. The body won’t miraculously be caught off guard by the same old routine. The body needs a challenge and that challenge has to be from making good changes in the body.

If you have been going to the gym these days and not getting the results you had hoped for then it’s time to commit yourself to positive changes. These changes are going to make you feel better and to continue looking your best. Here are a few ways you can change up your workout to help it benefit you.

If you have been lifting with the use of machines, this would be a good time to quit that and make the switch to free weights. Your body might not even need the new exercises. The free weights will make a positive change that might not require different exercises. Free weights will be harder to stabilize because they don’t have the added support that the machines do. This will help you and be really good for your core. Stabilizing these machines will force you to work the muscles in your core.

If you have been working out for a while on the same lifting exercises you might to try some other ones. Most people lift for the basic muscle groups. They do the hammer locks for the tri’s or a straight bench press for the chest. Try using different muscles. Do an incline bench press, or try dips for the triceps. You have to keep your body guessing if you want it to respond to you with positive results.

Get In The Pool

Many times people get into the routines when they go to the gym. They like to do what feels comfortable and natural to them. You probably go into the gym with the same mindset to do the same routine of lifting and the same type of cardio each and every time. It’s not a bad way to live but there are other ways to burn fat and build muscle than a circuit training and three miles on the treadmill. There are more than enough ways to get the most out of your workout and a lot of it starts in places you might not expect. That’s why the next time you are at the gym, take your workout into the water.

A pool workout is one of the best all around workouts you can get. The problem with other forms of strength training and cardio is that they are good for one, but not so good for the other. The great part about swimming is that it is great for both strength and cardio. There is nothing that can quite compare to it and just doing it two to three days a week will be a great way to get the most out of your workouts at the gym.

Getting in the pool doesn’t have to mean that you swim aimlessly back and forth. If you know how to swim and can handle going back and forth than you can set a lap goal or a time goal and get into the pool. You’ll find that you are very tired afterward but feel very good.

If you can’t just swim a set number of laps than you might want to try swimming in shorter bursts followed by certain exercises and drills. You can try drills like the Superman drill or the catch up drills. This will be wonderful for you and your body and you’ll see yourself getting into the best shape of your life.

The Basics of The Gym

Getting into the gym is a must if you haven’t been going before. You don’t want to be the kind of person that makes going to the gym a dreaded task. It is the best thing you can do for yourself and for your long term health.

But maybe there is a part of you that has been thinking that you don’t want to go because you aren’t sure what to do when you get there. Everyone else in the gym seems to know what they are doing except for you. You don’t know what to do with all the different weights and cardio machines. It’s ok to feel this way and there are a lot of people out there who feel the same way. Working out should be a fun time for you and your body and so you should follow the following rules and ideals in order to make your workout the time of your life.

The first thing you should do before each and every workout is warm up with 5 to 10 minutes of cardio. You can choose to jump rope, run on the treadmill or hit up the stairmaster. The goal is to get your body warm and ready for whatever the workout brings. It should be noted that if you are doing cardio on that day then you only need to stretch. There is no need to warmup for cardio with more cardio.

When you are ready to lift you might want to try using the machines first. They usually have pictures that illustrate just how you are supposed to use the machine. They are also a little easier to control and that should make you feel more confident. If you are looking to bulk up then high weight, low reps and lots of rest in between. If you are not looking for that the lower weights, lower reps and little rest. This should make your gym experience easier.