The body is amazing. It is capable of phenomenal strength and recovery, but there are times when a person can experience problems and not know the cause of them. When this happens, a doctor might conduct a variety of tests to discover the root cause of weight gain, fatigue, and other issues.
But wouldn’t it be great if you could diagnose yourself? I don’t mean ask Google or query WebMD, I mean wouldn’t it be great if you could recognize your fitness or nutrition bottlenecks and change your lifestyle to fix the issue?
Let’s explore some common types of problems the body can experience by lacking something it needs.
A major concern for all of us big-shot men is how we can bench press when we are training alone. Chest day has always been an important day in the weekly training regimen. It might fall on a Monday, a humpday, or even a Friday, but it is and has always been one of the most exalted workout days of the week for those training with a partner, buddies, or teams.
This is a day when we can walk in the gym with our chests puffed out.
This is a day when we can train those all-important show muscles… the pecs.
This is a day when we can perform the “manliest of exercises”… the bench press!
Let us examine some alternatives to bench pressing flat with a spotter.
(Of course for those of us who already know how to bench press, the bench press is really no big deal. There are about 7 other exercises I’d rather do than bench and at least 5 other goals that are more important to me than having a big chest or a big bench… but I digress… this article is about bench pressing after all.)
Starting a workout plan can be a bit complicated since you may be uncertain of what you need to do in order to reach your goals. Whenever you are looking to begin an exercise routine or improve your workout plans, it will be important to set specific goals as well as devise a workout plan that allows you to make steady progress towards reaching these goals. In most cases, you will need to combine resistance training, cardiovascular exercise, and a healthy diet in order to reach your fitness goals. A combination of these things will enable you to devise an effective plan to improve your workout and achieve your fitness goals.
If you are among the billions who watch sports, then you’ve probably wondered what it takes to maintain a fit body. Top-performing athletes have different tools that help enhance their skills and keep them healthy and strong. While every athlete may have a different fitness routine, the basic principles of health and fitness remain the same.
If you are new to the gym, there is no doubt that is can be a really intimidating place. In addition to the machines and overall sweating, there is a “gym language” that you might want to have a fairly good understanding of. Let’s take a look at some common phrases that you might encounter at the gym or even more accurately, might describe some people you run into as you work out.
Power couple
This couple has been never at the gym without each other. Their routine is the same, from warmups to exercise selection, cooldowns, and stretching. They will usually never leave each other’s side at the gym, doing synchronized movements and then leaving together later when they’ve finished, without speaking to a single soul.
Strength training has so many benefits, from giving you the physique you’ve always dreamed of to reducing your risk of many health problems. A lot of people who are serious about weight training will often opt for either free weights or machines, believing that one is better than the other. However, incorporating both into your workout routine offers the most benefits, and that includes the often dreaded cardio machines.
As a busy entrepreneur, your focus is going to be primarily on your business. With so many things to get done, meetings to run, employees to check on, and business lunches to eat, your health and well-being are often last on the list of priorities. This often leads to weight gain and health issues that go with the excess of kilograms. Being the most important person in your field of work is only worth something if you’re also the most important person in your own life.
That being said, it’s imperative to change your exercise routine as soon as possible. No more can your evenings be spent in front of the TV, and no more can there be room for excuses. As an entrepreneur, you know very well that there’s no such thing as no time. It’s only a matter of organization, will power, and determination. You’re a go-getter by nature, so use this trait to your advantage.
Just because you need to exercise doesn’t mean you need to be miserable about it. This is a chance to think outside the box and fix your health all in one.
We all know that exercise makes us healthier, stronger, less stressed, more energetic and also helps us live longer. Yet we neglect to work out as often as we should. There is the difficulty of getting on with it, of complying with the exercise on a daily basis since we all have a busy life. As such, getting a membership to the gym isn’t an ideal choice for all of us.
For others of us, we may be suffering from a temporary injury. If you suffer an injury and are scared to perform any physical exercise or go to the gym, visit a physiotherapist. A qualified physiotherapist can design a workout plan for you minimizing the risk of injuries. Healthcare centers like Pillars of Wellness provide client-centered physiotherapy to restore flexibility and movement and maximize strength.
Some people see the gym as a second home. Whether for music, atmosphere or equipment, fitness enthusiasts like to meet to train hard. But what if you are not comfortable in a gym or just do not want to put money every month to train? Don’t worry, we have good news for you.
People often associate arthritis with older folks, but in reality, people of all ages can get arthritis. Even athletes!
In fact, as an athlete, you may participate in high-impact sports that aren’t the greatest for your joints. But this doesn’t mean you have to give up the gym!
Read on to learn more about exercising safely with arthritis.
Warming up and cooling down are important steps to anybody’s exercise regimen, but it may be especially important to people with arthritis. Warming up and cooling down can help prevent injuries that may prevent you from exercising at all.
Also, don’t forget to stretch, especially your hamstrings! A tight, un-stretched hamstring can be harmful to your pelvis and knees.
“Should I try CrossFit or cardio?”, “should I be doing 5 reps or 4?”, “should I be doing Insanity to get my muscles in shape before summer?” these are all valid questions that every gym goer and fitness enthusiast ask even after months of working out. Picking the right routine can be incredibly confusing for anyone. Even the celebrity fitness trainers have a tough time selecting fitness regimes for their clients after dedicating the better part of their day to their fitness and health.
Asking these questions shows that you are serious about your health and fitness. It also shows that you are finally ready to take the next step and take matters into your own hands. For most fitness enthusiasts the next step involves taking their fitness regime back home with them. In fact, today, gyms go wherever the fitness enthusiast goes. You don’t have to pay a fortune to buy the membership of a fitness boutique and drive there four times a week to exercise. Health and fitness mean a lot more than sweating it out on the stationary cycle or power rower with crowds of strangers.
Working out and having a consistent plan can be a job in itself when you’re trying to reach your fitness goals. However, there are many things you can do to help improve and enhance your workouts so that you get the best possible results. It’s all about making small changes to help you get stronger, get more gains, and accomplish more results. Just a few simple changes can enhance your workout almost immediately.
It’s never really easy to push yourself out of the comfort zone and start something new in your life. There’s always this ‘’starting from tomorrow’’ attitude and a plethora of other excuses we so masterfully come up with that stop us from exercising. It’s understandable. People are simply intimidated by all the different types of exercise they can choose from. Should it be yoga, regular gym or running around the block every day?
Metabolism is a word that describes any and all chemical reactions that occur within the body. The rate at which metabolism occurs in your body may vary depending on a lot of things. The rate at which our body metabolizes is also shown in how many calories we burn and how much energy we have. A higher metabolic rate means we burn calories much easier and it is easier to both lose weight and then keep it off. Here are seven easy ways to boost your metabolism for weight loss.
Incorporating more muscle training into your life can be beneficial, and there are numerous reasons you might want to build up your body mass. While it may be a great goal to have, it can sometimes be hard to know where to start. Learning how to balance your diet and exercise plans with the correct supplement intake is crucial for safe and successful mass building. Here are five steps you can take to begin building your body mass in the most effective way.
1. Set Goals
Building up your muscular strength and size is a process. While it can be good to jump right in and get started, it is also vital that you take some time to set goals. Not only can goals give you a way to track your progress, but they can also help you to keep things in perspective. You shouldn’t expect instant results, but you should also be able to enjoy the progress you’re making along the way. Goals help you to keep centered on the end results you want while still being able to identify improvement as it happens.
2. Plan Your Diet
Building up your body mass can require some changes in your eating habits. Incorporating a healthy amount of protein can be one of the most important things you can do. While it’s important not to overdo it, protein can act as the building blocks for your muscles and getting enough of it can make a notable difference in the results you get from working out. You may also need to eat more than you have been normally in order to give your body the nutrients it needs to power you through your workouts and recoveries.
3. Create a Workout Routine
It can be a well-known fact that weightlifting is generally the exercise of choice for individuals interested in building up mass, but there can be a lot of different elements of a good muscle building workout to consider. You should plan a workout that pushes you to be stronger and capable of lifting more. The number of times you repeat a movement and the amount of weight involved should be designed to push you to new levels of strength without causing injury. Keep in mind that recovery time can be just as important as the workout itself and that overdoing it during training can cause more harm than good to your muscles and joints.
4. Consider Using Supplements
While not meant to be used in place of exercise and good nutrition, supplements can be one more tool for you to use in your journey towards increased strength and toning. Depending on your personal level of health, there are different options for supplements that can be better suited for you. Protein supplements, as well as vitamins and minerals, can all be worthwhile considerations. You should always make sure that any supplements you use are safe and that you only consume them in healthy amounts.
5. Do Personalized Research
The most successful mass building plans should be catered to fit you as an individual. You can do further research into the different aspects of mass building online. There can be a lot of good information available such as this 30 Day guide to massbuilding. The more knowledge you are equipped with going in, the better prepared you can be to succeed at meeting your goals.
Reaching Your Preferred Mass
Like any worthwhile goal, building up muscle mass can require commitment. While it takes dedication of both time and energy, you should find that reaching your preferred level of muscle mass is a great reward that can make it more than worth the work. By using the steps above and balancing the different aspects involved with healthy body mass increase you should find that you are on the track to success.
Let’s face it, eating healthy is expensive. Not each and every individual can afford to spend extra $500 per month on groceries. That is why people often give up on losing weight due to budget constraints. There is, however, a solution to this problem. There are ways in which you can lose weight without inflating your budget.
This is even more important when you’re exercising as you’re sweating the water out of your body. To counteract this you’ll need to drink before and after you exercise. In fact, many people prefer to drink water while they are working out. But is it a good idea to drink cold water when exercising?
The first thing to understand about cold water is that it will reduce your internal core temperature. If you’re not exercising when you drink the cold water then your body will need to increase your core temperature. This boosts your metabolism and helps you to burn more calories.(more…)
Most people who exercise do so for two main reasons – to lose weight or to build muscle. Sometimes these can be done concurrently. In order to lose weight people do cardio exercises which help in shedding the fat. They also focus on burning more calories than they are consuming. Building muscle is a bit more complicated because it requires eating and exercising in the right way. A lot of lean men and women fail to build muscle because they think it is as simple as lifting some weights and waiting for the results. Building muscle takes hard work, consistency, and most of all knowledge on how exactly you can pack on the muscles.
So here are 8 tips to get you started on your bulking journey.
1. Eat Enough
As you work on increasing the size of your muscles you must provide your body with enough food to support this growth. It is important to consume enough calories to ensure that you are taking in more calories than you are burning. A calorie deficiency leads to weight loss so aim for the opposite. Taking in more calories leads to weight gain and when coupled with weight-training this will result in muscle growth.(more…)
The liver is the marvel of our body. It is a vital organ responsible for secreting bile and breaking down the fats along with eliminating toxins from the body. Weight loss is the prime concern for most people when they think about the food they consume. But what most fail to realize that they should be mindful of your food intake to save your liver from severe health problems.
Let us take a look at some common eating habits that are detrimental to the health of the liver. In our daily lives, we tend to adopt eating habits that gradually deteriorate our liver. A full liver cleanse can be helpful in reversing the damage to some extent.
Excessive Alcohol Intake
You might not know what too much alcohol means as far as your liver health is concerned. From mild scarring to severe inflammation of the liver cells, an excessive intake of alcohol can cause a severely negative impact on the liver. It reduces the liver’s capability to eliminate toxins from the body. Moreover, if the negative impact of alcohol takes a toll on the liver, the ability to break down alcohol further reduces, thus, causing chronic damage. So, it is advisable to keep the consumption of alcohol at a moderate pace. A good rule of thumb is one standard drink for women and a maximum two for men per day.
Here is an interesting guest post by a good friend of Project Swole. He wishes to remain mostly nameless (aside from mentioning his name is Andy), but trust in me he is smart and experienced, and I think this piece will really connect with most Swole readers.
“It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.”
“What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?”
“You ask a glass of water.”
– Douglas Adams, British author, and humorist
Human beings like habits, as a rule. It’s like that old phrase, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” So, if we do something, and it works out ok, we’ll do it again.
Good or bad, habits allow us to predict the future – if I do this (exactly as I did yesterday), I know what will happen. Habits equal proven outcomes. Get on this train at this time in the morning, and I’ll be at work on time.
And if those habits are linked to a reward of some description, anything from a hit of dopamine in the brain by achieving a specific goal or, heaven forbid, one of a human being’s primary rewards – either food or sex, we’ll be back same time tomorrow, guaranteed, with our plate in our hand, as it were.
Habits provide routine, and for us, routinely provides security.
Unfortunately for us, some habits don’t sit well with others, and the rewards each brings actually off-set against one another, which kind of defeats the object. Take, for example, the diabetic cake-shop owner. You get my point. In fact, like the rest of our existence, it’s all just one big juggling act, seeing what works, what doesn’t, what affects something else, and so on, and hoping for a happy medium somewhere along the line.(more…)
You have to remember that you can start to really change your life when you are working out and trying to build muscle as fast as possible. Someone who is trying to build muscle needs to have a plan, and it is much easier for you to start following a plan. This plan helps you get the best chance to have the muscles you have always wanted, and you can do this if you are young or old. You look your best, and it all happens in about 90 days.
Follow these steps, make a plan, stick to it, and live healthy for 90 days. When you see what you accomplish and how you feel, you might never stop.(more…)
