Bodybuilding | Weight Lifting | Fitness

Our society loves beauty. The most beautiful bodies are symmetrical, lean and firm. So why are most women starving themselves and spending hours on cardio machines trying to be skinny? Lack of knowledge! Most women don’t understand the importance of weight training and how it can help shape their bodies into fat burning machines. The more strong active muscles you have the more fat your body will burn. Remember, muscleburns fat!!

I hear women say that they are afraid to weight train because they don’t want to get “big and bulky”. Women who weight train won’t increase their muscle size much, just their muscle’s density and strength. So forget about that “bulking up” fear. As a woman ages, she begins to loose more muscle because after puberty your essential muscle growth is over and your muscle starts to deteriorate. The act of pregnancy further accelerates your muscle loss because the amount of protein your baby needs to develop requires the baby to steal protein (muscle) from you! Furthermore, re-menopausal, menopausal and post menopausal women have lower hormone levels causing accelerated muscle loss. Weight training with a proper nutrition plan will help re-build your lost muscle.

So why is muscle so important? Muscle is the driving force behind your metabolism. The more muscle you have, the more fat and calories you will burn. A good metabolism doesn’t happen by accident, yes genetics play a part in metabolism, but your life’s choices affect your metabolism as well. Some keys to a good metabolism are: weight training, a nutritious diet, an active lifestyle and a consistency in each.

We are often programmed to think we have to weigh a certain amount to be happy. We say to ourselves “If only I could weigh what I did in high school”. You need to get rid of that scale mentality. Who cares how much you weigh. The most athletic bodies are often considered overweight if you place them on the standard height/weight chart or BMI chart. How is that possible you ask? Because muscle is so dense that it weighs much more than fat. Muscle also holds about 60% more water than fat tissue causing muscular people to weigh much more than their “skinny fat” counterparts. Since muscle weighs more than fat, don’t think that you have to be a certain weight. What you should be most concerned about is your muscle mass % and your body fat%, your body composition. How much muscle and fat is on your body? Or are you firm and tight? To be “lean” you need to have a high percentage of muscle and a lower amount of body fat. That way you can see those sexy muscles your fat is hiding.

So how do you go about getting those muscles you ask?? Weight train! There are 3 larger main muscles that our bodies are comprised of, your legs, back and chest. Metabolism will be affected most if these 3 muscle groups are emphasized since they comprise the majority of the muscle mass on our bodies.

Let’s talk about the area that all women are concerned about the most, legs and your butt. Leg muscles are the biggest strongest muscles of our body. The majority of women don’t realize how strong and powerful their legs can be without getting bulky. I know that most women have a fear of lifting with their legs because they often carry a higher amount of fat in their legs and therefore fear adding bulk to their lower half through strength training. As women we don’t have the levels of testosterone necessary to build big bulky muscles as men do, so don’t think that if you lift with your legs you will make them significantly bigger. Initially yes, a small amount of muscle growth will occur and before you start loose your fat on top of this muscle, you may notice a slight size increase, but this is temporary. Shortly thereafter, you will notice your legs start to gain new shape, firmness and a leaner appearance. All of which is caused by these muscles becoming more active and therefore burning more fat.

Oh my favorite, the back! Most women are absolutely unaware of the huge potential fat burning muscles they have on their back. Our backs are full of muscles. There are tons of them holding our spine, ribs and shoulders in place. These muscles are very important to our health. How often do we hear about back and neck pain? I truly believe that weak back muscles cause much of the pain. Lifting with your back requires proper form and extreme focus on the muscles you are working.

Finally, our chest muscles. I am talking about your pectorals, the muscles all women need to embrace. Pregnancy and breast-feeding do horrible things to a woman’s breasts. The looks of a woman’s breast goes beyond the mammary tissue, it lies underneath in the pectoral muscles. Pregnancy can rob our bodies of muscle which means the muscle that once lifted our breast now is gone and it too needs to be rebuilt. If you want to give yourself a natural breast lift and boost your metabolism, build up your chest.

You must find a way to challenge your muscles. Lifting the same weight every time you perform an exercise will maintain what muscle you have, but not change them. I don’t know many people that like spending an hours at the gym every week to stay exactly the same. We all crave to improve ourselves, so we must challenge our muscles by lifting weights that are challenging. There is nothing complicated about this, make sure you find yourself slightly challenged by your lifting program.

Lastly change it up! If your muscles get used to the same thing over and over again they will get bored just like you do. Boredom causes your muscle to not respond just as it causes you to not want to do your boring workout. Don’t be afraid to change, try some new exercises, change the number of sets and reps of your exercises, increase or decrease your rest time between sets and workouts and change the order of your exercises. Remember muscle burns fat.

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All weight lifting routines must contain certain exercises in order to provide good results. There is a hierarchy of effectiveness when it comes to weight lifting exercises. And to obtain the best results, the most effective exercises must be included in all workout routines. Every muscle group has its own exercises that work out that muscle the best. So if you want to get the best results possible, no matter what your weight lifting goals are, all weight lifting routines you use must contain these exercises.

The most important body part in the body is the legs. The legs bring stability, balance and strength to the entire body. When it comes to weight lifting, the same holds true. In fact, if you have weak legs, it’s hard to achieve overall muscular strength because of the importance it has to the rest of the body. There are many exercises that work out the legs effectively because there are many muscles in the legs. But these exercises are the best of the best: squats, leg curls, lunges, and calf raises. If you include these exercises in all you workout routines, you can expect to see stronger legs.

Another important muscle in the body is the back. The back brings stability to the upper body as well. But more important, it provides the upper body with a lot of additional strength. For some reason, the back isn’t given the respect it deserves by weightlifters, probably because it isn’t a muscle that grows very big or fast. However, this shouldn’t impact how hard you should workout this body part. If you want a strong back, include these exercises in your weight lifting routines: weighted pull-ups, standing barbell rows, and deadlifts. With these exercises included in all your workout routines, your back will grow stronger than it has ever been.

The most important upper body muscle is probably the chest. Because of it’s size and position on the body, it’s a muscle that provides the upper body with most of it’s strength. Also, it’s a muscle that weightlifters define themselves on. If it’s big and strong, weightlifters think that they are strong. If it’s small and weak, weightlifters think they are weak. However, the importance of the muscle goes much further than personal thoughts and appearances. A strong chest can be obtained if you include these exercises in your workout routines: bench press, incline press, dumbbell flyes, and decline press. All weight lifting routines must include these exercises for the chest, otherwise results won’t happen.

A final muscle group that many weightlifters love to target is the arms. The arms consist of three parts: the biceps, triceps and shoulders. This is most weightlifters favorite muscle because in most of their minds, big arms mean strength. Although this isn’t necessarily true, it seems to affect most weightlifters as they put more time and effort on such a small part of the body. However, the arms are a crucial muscle because they partake in almost every exercise weightlifters do. For strong arms, include these exercises in all your weight lifting routines: barbell curls, hammer curls, weighted dips, tricep pushdowns, overhead press, and shrugs. As long as you put in good and equal effort to each of these exercises and include them in all your workout routines, expect to see good results fast.

Weightlifters must understand that achieving their goals means performing the correct exercises to effectively workout their muscles. That’s why all their workout routines must contain the most effective exercises for each muscle group otherwise success cannot be expected. Whether you are exercising your chest or your legs, there are certain lifts that must be done over others because of how well they target that particular muscle. If you want to achieve your goals, make sure all your weight lifting routines include those exercises.

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Strength training isn’t just for muscle men. It is the best way to help your body turn into a weight loss machine. That may not initially make much sense to you as muscle is very heavy (it is heavier than fat.) But each extra pound of muscle on your body will another 50 calories per day, even when you’re doing absolutely nothing. Imagine yourself with 10 extra pounds of muscle. That muscle will burn an extra 500 calories a day which will certainly turn your body into a fat burning machine. Think about how much easier it will be to burn off extra calories when your using so many more calories a day?

I recommend this strength training strategy not just to men but also to women. Too many women think that strength training is just for men. And even when women do lift weights they usually do it in a “girlie” way. Instead of lifting heavy weights for muscle they lift a small amount of weight a lot of times for this mythological thing people call “toning.”

“Toning” does not actually exist. It’s a myth. Muscle can only get bigger or smaller. It cannot get “toned.” That doesn’t actually mean anything. The top way to grow your muscle (which is the purpose of strength training) is to lift heavy weights. Why? Because the body responds to these heavy weights by growing more muscle. Lifting light weights many times is actually an awful way to go about strength training.

Yes ladies, I’m telling you that you should train like a real man. You should lift heavy weights for a small amount of reps. In fact I recommend only doing one set of about 8 reps for each muscle area. How much weight should you lift? As much as you can lift without injuring yourself! The more weight you lift the more it will stress your body and the more likely your body will respond by growing new muscle.

That new muscle is the key to your fat burning power, particularly in the long run. Most diets fail because they do nothing to speed up your metabolism. In fact most diets actually slow down your metabolism with restricted calorie intake. But by adding new muscle to your body you are actually speeding up your metabolism in a way that will make it easier to burn off fat and to keep it off! You know how everyone says that it is so difficult to maintain fat loss? That’s because most people who lose weight starve it off but don’t do anything to really change their bodies at an intrinsic level. When you add muscle to your body you are becoming fit in a much more permanent way then you are by starving fat off your body.

What about that common fear among women that they will become “too muscular.” This is a mostly nonsensical fear. It takes a lot of weight lifting to get to the stage of being muscular in a manly way for a woman. And if you do see yourself beginning to develop more muscles than you would like (as unlikely as that is) you can always begin to slow down or stop your strength training. If you get to that point then you are likely set with your muscle needs anyway. But again, these circumstances are unlikely to develop anyway. Do not let this irrational fear stop you from doing what you need to do to improve your health.

It is recommended that you choose an online diet program that includes a free strength training program. Probably the best example of that is The Day Off Diet which is includes an excellent strength training program (free of charge) with it’s diet program (which is also very effective.)

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Your muscles need 48 hours to recover after a weight training workout. During this period the muscle development you are training for takes place – each time you work them out your muscles should come back that bit stronger. You need to allow the time for this muscle recovery and should leave at least 48 hours after working a muscle before you work it again.

Caution should be exercised if the hand-behind-the-head position is used during sit-ups or crunches. Don’t confuse neck movement for spine articulation. Some individuals with a higher risk of neck injury may need to keep their neck in a neutral position so the added weight can be placed on the upper chest, just below the neck. Incidentally the chance of neck injury may be increased when the exerciser places the hands higher behind the head and attempts to throw the body upward, jerking the head forward with greater force than to which the neck is accustomed.

Most important thing you need to do before starting any weight lifting exercise. You, and you alone, need to determine exactly what it is that you want to get out of your weight lifting exercise routine. Is it losing a specific amount of fat? Building strength or lean muscle? Is it for an athletic event? Is it to improve your physical appearance? Is it to improve your health? The bottom line is that you have to determine exactly what it is you want to accomplish.

Most people think why grip and what the heck are finishers? I focus all my clients on real world strength or functional strength. By training the grip you will have more wrist control (less injury) and also you will be able to focus more and that will allow you to recruit more muscle fibers thus making you stronger. Finishers are stuff that is functional. After a hard leg session go out and push your car around the block. I have my clients do plate clean and press, carry sand bags either in front of them or on there shoulder, or do the dreaded Drill Instructor special (this consists of 5-10 minutes of push ups, situps, jumping jacks, deep knee bends, and running in place). Principle of progressive overload.

One of the fundamentals of resistance exercise is Progressive overload means that you increase the workload gradually over time as your muscles accommodate to the resistance with the objective of gaining strength and/or mass. For example, suppose that you’ve been lifting biceps curls for two weeks with 12 pounds, 10 repetitions, and then at week three, 12 pounds is easy and you can lift more. According to the principle of progressive overload, at this point, you would increase the weight if strength improvement is your goal. Your strength will remain the same if you keep the weight the same.

Pre-Fatigue Technique – This technique is when the smaller muscle group is

completely fatigued before super-setting with the compound movement. That way the larger muscles will take over and force the already fatigued smaller muscle group to complete more repetitions. Thus, an overload response occurs. A great example of this is doing leg extensions to momentary muscle failure followed immediately by leg presses.

Along the same lines, don’t lift more weight than you are capable of, especially if there is no spotter on hand. You can seriously injure yourself, and it could end your lifting career. Unless you are competing, try to stick with weights you can do at least 5-6 reps with without killing yourself. You’ll get the same results as you would have struggling to push out one rep.

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Nearly every man alive wants to develop additional muscle. There are several reasons why a man would want to do this. The most obvious and one of the most common reasons is to improve their physical appearance. Most men feel that they look better if they are in great shape and have well defined muscles. Developing more defined and well conditions muscles also leads to a better overall state of health and it improves a man’s ability to lift things both at work and in their own home. The problem for most men is figuring out how to develop improve muscle tone and condition. For most men the best option available is to use exercise routines. For the highest level of benefits men should use exercise routines which focus on weight loss and muscle development. This will achieve results more rapidly and more effectively.

Using Exercise Routines to Improve Muscle Tone

exercise routines are often designed to achieve one of two things, or in many cases two things. The most effective types of exercise routines are designed to achieve both muscle growth and weight loss. These types of routines involve a fair amount of cardio vascular exercise in combination with strength training. When used effectively they can reduce the overall body fat while promoting more powerful and well defined muscles.

Some Common Exercise Routines

There is a huge variety of different routines on the market designed to promote muscle growth and weight loss. Some of these routines work quite well while others work only moderately. One great way to get both types of exercise is to mix weight lifting of varying degrees with walking, jogging or even running. A major benefit to exercise routines involving jogging or walking is that they do not require the use of special equipment. A man can walk or run in his own neighborhood.

Mixing weight lifting with cardio exercises such as martial arts is another great way for men to develop better muscle tone while losing weight. Using martial arts in conjunction with weight training has additional benefits which cannot be achieved as readily with running. Most forms of martial arts are able to promote a number of very healthy habits such as good breathing control and excellent flexibility. This not only helps a man to lose weight but it also offers benefits to the muscle development and endurance levels.

The Benefits of Cardio Vascular Exercise for Weight Training

Most people use cardio vascular exercises with their weight training to promote weight loss while they are working on the muscles. There is another major benefit to this practice which most people don’t consider. Cardio vascular exercise routines, unlike weight training, work the heart and lungs more heavily. This improves the strength of these major organs which leads to a large increase in a person’s endurance. Over time this increase in endurance will increase the amount of time a man can spend working out with weight lifting. This in turn will lead to a more rapid development of muscle tone.

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This is a common mistake made by men and women when working out.

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This is a common mistake made by men and women when working out.

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Dumbbell upright rows weight lifting exercises build shoulder muscles. Learn to do dumbbell upright row exercises with tips from a personal trainer in this free weight lifting video. Expert: Brad Aubry Bio: Brad Aubry is CEO of VersaFit, as well as a national natural bodybuilder, certified personal trainer and a nutrition and fitness therapy specialist through International Sports Science Association. Filmmaker: Christopher Rokosz

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Managing stress and getting relief from tension is possible through physical activity. Weight lifting can be an excellent source of stress relief, as it provides both long-term and short-term goals.

Short-term, you want to be able to lift a specific weight a certain number of times, and long-term, your goal is to get your body into better physical shape. The rewards of weight lifting increase the more you practice it, which can be perfect for relieving tension and focusing your goals.

Starting a weight-lifting routine isn’t always easy, and you may have sore muscles or be a little discouraged that it’s tougher than you thought. Continuing with your routine for a month or two will show some big changes, though, so stick with it and you’ll be amazed at the results.

There are a wide variety of workout strategies that you can apply, and you can tailor your routine to add muscle mass, tone the muscles you have, or increase your overall strength. Some people like to focus on one area of their body, such as working on biceps, legs, or abs, while others get into weight lifting just for something to do and to be in better physical shape.

If you have not lifted weights in a while, or ever, you will want to start with moderate workouts that work all the muscle groups you want to focus on. For a moderate beginning workout, you will probably want to do each lift ten times (called reps), and repeat three times (which are called sets).

You should use enough weight so that you struggle a little with the last couple reps in the third set. Most people recommend lifting twice a week, and four times a week at the most. After you can lift without getting sore, you can begin to tailor your workouts to focus on your long-term goals.

If you want to tone a specific muscle group, you will want to work that muscle group with lots of reps, probably 15-20 reps, with less weight then what you would normally use. You can do three sets, although more is better since the key to toning your muscles is to make them flex many times.

However, if you are only concerned with building strength and are not worried muscle tone, you will want to do less reps, like 5 per set (10 at the very most), and use more weight than normal. Regardless of what your weight lifting goals are, increasing your protein intake will typically help you achieve those goals sooner.

Your age, sex, and genetics will play a large part in the immediate results, but anyone can improve their health and reduce stress by lifting weights. Weight lifting can be a great way to blow off some steam or just focus on something besides work, bills, obligations, etc. that come up in everyone’s life. If you stick with weight lifting long enough, you will probably find it very enjoyable and that something is missing if you skip a day of lifting.

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Learn essential weight lifting exercise workouts such as the chest fly workout in this free exercise video on weight lifting for beginners. Expert: Kirk Watt Bio: Kirk Watt is the Fitness Director for VISION FIT a fitness professional with over 12 years experience in personal training and nutritional guidance. Filmmaker: Traci Holsey

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