Archive for the ‘Conditioning’ Category

Trampoline Exercises and Workouts: Bouncing Your Way to Fitness

Thursday, August 17th, 2023
woman performing Trampoline Exercises

Are you looking for a fun and effective way to stay in shape? Look no further than trampoline exercises and workouts! Not just for kids, trampolining can provide a low-impact, high-intensity workout that engages your entire body.

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5 Benefits of Power Boxing Workouts – Unleash the Power!

Friday, May 12th, 2023
Power boxing workouts man hitting heavy bag

Power Boxing Workouts are a great way to build strength and develop quality striking and self-defense techniques. They’re also a great way to improve cardio, strengthen core muscles, and burn fat.

A power boxing workout will make you feel stronger and more confident when done correctly. Getting stronger, lifting heavier weights, and being able to throw harder can be hugely beneficial for your mental health. Let’s investigate all of the benefits of boxing.

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What is HIIT – High-Intensity Interval Training – And How Should You Use It?

Wednesday, July 20th, 2022

What is High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)?

female sprinter uses high-intensity interval training

High-Intensity Interval Training, often represented by the acronym HIIT, is really a big deal. HIIT training is the ideal and most effective replacement for underachieving endurance cardio. High-intensity interval training has been regarded for years now as one of the best ways to burn calories and maintain muscle mass while encouraging a long-lasting metabolic effect post-workout.

As a matter of fact, in studies, HIIT is 9x more effective at burning fat than endurance cardio.

More often than not, I have talked about HIIT workouts made up only of interval sprints. Today I would like to discuss HIIT training with resistance machines, but not to be confused with High-Intensity Resistance Training, or HIRT, which I will write about shortly.

HIIT Provides the Following Benefits

  • Burn more calories than endurance cardio
  • Burn more fat than endurance cardio
  • Increase power
  • Increase speed
  • Increase muscle density
  • Improve anaerobic endurance
  • Improve aerobic endurance
  • Speed up metabolism for more than a day and a half
  • Shorten cardio training sessions by at least 33%

Navigating This Article

Beginners TrainingIntermediate TrainingAdvanced Training
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How to Improve Your Body Composition With Diet and Exercise

Wednesday, January 12th, 2022
improve your body composition like this fit man

Carrying extra weight around has many negative side effects. It can lead to everything from serious health conditions to unnecessary pain. If you’re considering trying to shed some extra weight this year, dieting and exercise are crucial for long-lasting change. The effort should not necessarily be about “losing weight” thought, right? You want to focus on how to improve your body composition by losing fat and gaining muscle in order to keep your metabolism as high as possible.

Let’s think about a few of the most important lifestyle habits we’ll need to change in order to get our body composition moving in the right direction.

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A Generic Full-Body Workout Routine

Tuesday, December 14th, 2021
Full Body Workout

There are about 8,675,309 workout routines that you can try. One of the most effective types of routines I have found in the first 14 years of my training career is total body training. A full-body workout will stimulate all of your muscle chains sufficiently to elicit a powerful physiological response.

The Principles of Total Body Training

  • Train every muscle group 3 times per week.
  • Select one exercise per muscle group, per day.
  • Hit each muscle group from a different angle or intensity in each workout.
  • Never go to absolute failure on any exercise; leave one rep in the bank, except sometimes on the last set.
  • Keep workouts under one hour, not counting warm-ups and stretching.
  • Change everything up after two months.

Why Might This Be the Most Effective Form of Training?

  • High frequency (how often you train any given muscle) means more chances to recover and grow stronger/bigger.
  • Low daily stimulus (# of exercises and sets per day for any given muscle) lowers your chances of overtraining.
  • Avoiding training to failure also lowers the chances of overtraining.
  • Hitting muscles from all angles each week strengthens stabilizers and is proactive injury prevention.
  • Avoid muscle adaptation by changing up the whole routine after 2 months.

Let’s take a few minutes to example one of the better full-body workout routines I’ve written. The next time you want to change up your routine, try this for a month or two.

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A Fat Burning Workout to Strengthen Your Core

Thursday, November 11th, 2021
Strengthen Your Core

Everyone wants a flat stomach but we don’t always get what we want, such is life: we have to hustle for the muscle. To get rid of excess body fat and lose unsightly belly fat, it is important to do both conditioning as well as weight training exercises. Stubborn belly fat cannot be targeted by spending extra time on ab exercises. Instead, you need to focus on how to strengthen your core and build up the supporting foundational blocks to influence the aesthetics of your v-shaped, chiseled midsection.

Of course, nutrition is responsible for 75% of your fat loss results, but you still need to strengthen your core by performing the exercises below. Perform all the exercises in a single day by pairing larger muscle groups (chest, back, legs) with smaller muscle groups (shoulders, triceps, biceps, abs), or spread them out across the week, adding additional exercises to further target a specific muscle group pairing each day, for example:

  • back, bis, abs
  • chest, tris, abs
  • quads, hamstrings, calves, abs

Now, let’s take a look at our 7 awesome exercises and variations for strengthening your core, and how to use them together in a circuit to bring out those six-pack abs.

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6 Ways You Can Boost Athletic Endurance

Wednesday, November 10th, 2021
Boost Athletic Endurance group training

Endurance is the ability to last through something that pushes you to your limits. Do you know what it’s going to take personally, to boost athletic endurance? Does your body have the strength to do more? Can you give anything else to the effort? Or are you ready to call it quits and rest?

Athletic endurance refers to several aspects of your physiology:

  • your mental state
  • muscle strength & stamina
  • cardiovascular health & conditioning

To go further and last longer, work on building all three areas. The following are six ways to develop your endurance levels through whole-body and spiritual strategies.

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Can High-Intensity Rebounding Workouts Transform Your Body?

Friday, August 6th, 2021
rebounding workouts

Rebounding is an aerobic exercise that entails jumping on a trampoline. It is an ideal option for all ages, especially as you can go for gentle rebounding or up it to high intensity following your needs and situations. From kids to older adults, rebounding workouts can transform the body, making it easier to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Much like any workout, the more you put into it, the better results you’ll realize. The best part is that rebounding is fun. You can hardly mask that smile as you jump on the trampoline, making it an ideal option even for those who don’t enjoy working out. High-intensity rebounding workout’s popularity continues to grow by the day. Let’s look at how it can transform your body, making high-intensity rebounding workouts a favorite among many.

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The Top 5 Most Efficient Forms of Cardio

Tuesday, July 20th, 2021

The Most Efficient Cardio You Can Perform

Bodybuilder dips

This is an excerpt from Nick Nilsson’s book Muscle Explosion: 28 Days to Maximum Mass

Interval Training is simply THE most efficient form of cardio you can perform. You can get pretty much ALL the benefits of longer-duration cardio but without the long duration. Moreover, you don’t get the boredom, you don’t spend all your time doing it, and you don’t have nearly the risk of overuse injuries.

In a Nutshell:

Low-intensity exercise is defined as working at a heart rate of about 60 percent to 65 percent of your maximum heart rate (equal to 220 minus your age; thus, if you are 20 years old, 220 minus 20 is 200 maximum heart rate).

High-intensity exercise is defined as working at about 75 percent to 85 percent or more of your maximum heart rate. Using the example of 200 as your maximum heart rate, working at 60 percent of it would be 120 beats per minute. Eighty percent would be 160 beats per minute.

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Why You Need to Condition and How to Do It Effectively

Monday, April 26th, 2021
why you need to condition

Every athlete has to be well conditioned to perform well. I don’t care what sport it is or how often you play, but you need to be well-conditioned and in shape either way. In this article, I’m going to go over why you need to condition and how to condition. 

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Faster And Longer – Professional Runners, Here’s How You Can Level Up Your Stamina

Wednesday, April 14th, 2021
level up your stamina

Professional runners always aspire to get better, with new goals for distance, speed, and time. But running faster and longer requires more than just sprinting. It is as much about building your endurance base and maintaining your motivation levels. If you can manage both fronts, it will be easy to push your limits and level up your stamina. Here are some strategies that professional trainers recommend for runners who want to go faster and longer.  

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21 Tips on How to Sprint Faster

Sunday, February 28th, 2021

How to Sprint Faster

Sprinting is the foundation of High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), and will make your legs big, strong, fast, and powerful. Sprints are great for developing endurance, but also for developing lean muscle mass and speed strength. If you want to develop your writing skills you can visit services like thesishelpers.com, but for sprinting these tips will teach you how to sprint faster.

Female Sprinter

Ever seen a skinny sprinter? I didn’t think so.

Sure, squats are the almighty kings of the Gym Exercise Kingdom; but sprints are like the kings of the Functional Exercise Kingdom whose jacked-up, super-lean army of massive wheels is constantly trying to overthrow the squat as the #1 top leg exercise.

You think you know how to sprint right, but do you?

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The Top 4 Best Close Combat Self-Defense Martial Arts

Monday, January 27th, 2020

The idea of paying money so you can go get beaten up someplace might sound insane. This is what martial arts are but the pain and exertion can be extremely beneficial. The benefits of martial arts go beyond just physical fitness. In everyday life, you would have to defend yourself and even your loved ones. But you cannot do that well enough if you are just fit. No matter how much you ignore or deny it, the only self-defense tool you will have with you all the time is your body. Plus, most of the real-life situations are close combat.  

close combat self defense

Some forms are better for self-defense while others are not, this is just how it is. It is time to turn your body into a weapon with the help of martial arts. Here is a list of the best self-defense close-combat martial arts from the best to our least favorite. But there are not the only options available, but the best ones to protect yourself in my belief. Keep in mind that even the last listed option is the last of the best, so you can’t go wrong no matter which discipline you choose.

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The Top 10 Best Abdominal Exercises Part 1

Friday, January 17th, 2020
Best Abdominal Exercises

Quick Links:
10 Best Ab Exercises Part 1
10 Best Abdominal Exercises Part 2
10 Best Abs Exercises Part 3

With the prevalence of six-pack abs in the media by everyone from Hugh Jackman and Matthew McConaughey, to Janet Jackson and Beyonce Knowles, society as of late treasures that elusive flat defined stomach look. We can thank high resolution for our cultural transition from portly praise to abdominal admiration.

After all, before Hollywood got huge in the 1900s, as a culture we appreciated a little meat on our bones because it represented comfort, success, and good health. Now that we get to feast our eyes daily on tough-guy actors, beautiful actresses, rock stars, and supermodels, we’ve come full circle into the Washboard Era.

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What is Circuit Training?

Tuesday, October 1st, 2019

Today I would like to examine the physiological benefits of circuit training. There are many forms of circuit training, from machine-based static circuits, to boot camp style workouts and even kickboxing workouts. But what is circuit training and how can we put it to the best possible use?

Many gyms offer standard cookie-cutter circuit training programs, which are sometimes prescribed by the in-house personal trainer and recommended by other lazy staff members. The circuit is set up in some back room with a timer alarm to tell you when to move to the next station. Should you use this system or put together your own free weight circuit or join a boot camp?

What does circuit training actually offer you?

What are the physiological benefits and who is best suited to participate in circuit training?

What is Circuit Training?

There are several theoretical benefits of circuit training that are disseminated online.

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How To Stay Fit This Summer With An Assault Air Bike

Thursday, February 28th, 2019
air assault bike

Summer in Australia is known to be filled with tons of fun activities and beautiful sights to see. Famous for the Bondi Beach and the Gold Coast, there is no shortage of beautiful places to visit in the summer warmth of Australia. Appreciating the summer festivities in Australia is not just limited to vacationers and tourists. Even health-conscious individuals can continue working on staying fit while immersing themselves in the Australian summer heat.

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Debunking 4 Persistent Cardio Myths

Sunday, April 22nd, 2018

When it comes to cardio, there’s one thing no one can deny: cardio is the ideal stress relief after a hard day of work and stress. Whether you prefer riding the stationary bike or running on the treadmill, cardio can make all your worries go away, at least for some time.

Cardio workout

Cardio is also great for your heart, which is how it got its name in the first place. But the reason people most frequently turn to cardio is to burn those pesky calories and excess weight. And while most of the benefits of cardio exercise cannot be denied, there are a lot of myths and false truths that if you believe too blindly might lead to disappointment in the end.

The thing is, there are a variety of different classes and exercises you can enroll in at your local gym, and the best one is usually the one that makes you feel most comfortable. That said, even if you enjoy doing cardio the most, you need to know the truth about these 5 persistent myths if nothing just to adjust your expectations accordingly. (more…)

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Why Mobility Matters for Strength Training

Thursday, March 1st, 2018

It takes a lot of commitment to strength training to see consistent muscle growth. To be able to fit training into their schedule, people often cut corners. While some neglect to properly warm up before slamming the weight plates on a barbell, most decide to skip their post-workout mobility session when pressed for time.

mobility training

While mobility training can be time-consuming, tedious, and uncomfortable, it is also extremely important to incorporate into your strength training routine. When it comes to hitting the weights, here are a few reasons why mobility matters.

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Leveraging Cross-Training to Avoid Overuse Injuries

Thursday, September 21st, 2017

Overuse injuriesEvery athlete worth their salt has hit a plateau. You all know the feeling — suddenly gym sessions feel less productive, gains slow to a crawl, and you start to feel stuck.

 

Often, the natural response is to train harder and longer, assuming that plateaus can just be powered through, but pushing your body harder when it might actually need to slow down is asking for injury. Injuries aren’t fun for anyone, but if you’re preparing for a competition, race, or big game, it can be a death knell for your training.

Why Am I Hitting a Plateau?

While some plateaus are part of the natural training cycle, others are due to improper training. It’s all too easy to get wrapped up in your own drive and push too hard for too long. The result is a burned-out athlete whose body is breaking down instead of building up.

 

Avoiding bad training habits seems like it should be common sense, but it’s easier said than done. Everyone wants to be the best, and you get there by training, right? So what’s the difference between pushing and pushing too hard? And how do you toe the line without long-jumping over it?

 

Unfortunately, there’s no perfect formula for everyone, but with an updated training strategy, it’s a little easier to navigate the minefield of training fatigue. As with most athletic advice, this comes with a strong dose of “listen to your body.”

 

Plateaus and training fatigue generally stem from overdoing it every time you’re in the gym or under-recovering after you go home. (more…)

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5 Things I Wish Everyone Knew about Women’s Pre Workout Supplements

Monday, August 28th, 2017

I started taking pre workout supplements for women after a job change.  The only time I could make it to the gym was 5:30am.  I’m not a morning person! It was hard to find energy to work out to my full capacity.

Woman pre workout

For real gains, you’ve got to train hard!  Pre workouts helped me do that.

Despite how popular they are, not every woman should take pre supplements. And if you do decide to give yourself that extra boost, you need to make sure you are taking it correctly. To get the best results, make sure you know these 5 facts about pre workouts for women first.

1. Start with Basics First

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