Archive for the 'Physical activities' Category

7 days to a Better Body : Day 7

Published on July 2, 2006 in Daily, Exercises, Health, Mental, Nutrition, Personal, Physical, Physical activities and Sports. 0 Comments

Our 6 days

1. Preparation
Like in anything you’ll do in your life, preparation is always a good step, physically and psychologically. Confidence is a huge factor in how you’ll be able to accomplish the task that’s awaiting you.

Resume: Eat enough, try to avoid fast food at all cost, eat correctly (not too much), drink plenty of water (8 x 8 oz).

2. Daily Routine
The daily routine will make sure you get into a good physical cycle by keeping you working each and every day. Cardio activities such as jogging or rope-jumping will help you burn the fat and will also improve your heart muscle. If you’re looking to burn fat, you should do low intensity cardio which means you jog at 65%-75% of your maximum heart beat for the longest period of time. You should know that dropping 2-3 pounds max/per week is safe and higher will cause loose skin.

Resume: Warm up, cardio, Cooling down.

3. The Workout
Working on every muscle separately is a great way to improve your fitness. Not only will it improve your health in general but it will allow you to perform a lot better in the sports you do.

Resume: The 5 BX method will get you to work muscle everyone wants to be in shape: pectorals, abs, legs and arms. The exercises will take you less than 11 minutes to accomplish and are done in a specific order which will produce the best results. (no warm up needed as it is part of the work out)

4. The Sport
The sport is the best way to enjoy your strenght and agility while having fun at the same time. Sports also improve our fitness in many way and increase our coordination.

Resume: Do a bit of cardio to warm yourself, some stretching (specifically dynamic movements related to the sport) and cool down at the end of your session. Don’t forget to drink water before and after, water in-between can result in cramps.

5. Stretching: all covered
Stretching is an important part of any physical activity. You do not want your muscle to rip while performing your activities. Stretching allows you to improve the range of your movements and also prepares your body to physical performances.

Resume: Stretch should not fatigue you. Try doing the morning routine if you’re looking to improve your flexibility.

6. Supplements
Since only eating cannot provide all the nutrients our body need, we have to look somewhere else for that amount we carve in. Post-workout shakes are the best method to get your body back in shape after and hard and long period of work.

Resume: Post-workout shakes will give your body the nutrients he needs to repair the micro-tears in your muscles. As proteins is the main ingredient to muscle reparation and growth, a shake containing an high amount of it will give your body more than enough to repair and grow (exactly what we’re looking for).

Stay motivated

Our mind control everything about us. Staying motivated is the most important step to your workout and your sport since it will keep you doing it. Find ways to enjoy these activities and what is their return into your life. Logging your progress is a great way to keep you motivated especially in times where you think you’re going nowhere. Look back at your log each time you feel no more confident about yourself and you’ll see that results are still showing up.

Conclusion

The program comes to an end. I hope you’ve enjoyed the information I gave you through the whole 7 days and that you will continue to work with your body because it is the only thing we’ll own until our death so we must take care of it. Physical health will ameliorate your life in many way and will result in a more interesting lifestyle. Enjoy it.

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7

7 days to a Better Body : Day 5

Published on June 30, 2006 in Daily, Exercises, Health, Physical and Physical activities. 0 Comments

We’ve already discussed about stretching before but now we’re going to go in great details about it. I know many are looking for ways to improve their flexibility and to be able to perform splits or high range moves. All this can be accomplished with repetitive flexibility training after your workout sessions or your sport. The stretching you do before your exercises are generally to warm up your muscles and to get them ready for intensive stretching but they also improve your general flexibility.

STRETCHING: ALL COVERED

Once again, I’d recommand reading Tricks Tutorial Developing flexibility guide. If you have a lot of time on your hands, you could also read STRETCHING AND FLEXIBILITY: Everything you never wanted to know by Brad Appleton. Here’s I’ll be discussing about the important step of a good stretching session.

  1. Stretching should not get you exausted. If you’re getting exausted, you’re putting too much strenght in it and it is not good because it will reduce your range of motion and will set your nervous system alert at this range, thus reducing your flexibility which isn’t what you’re looking for.
  2. I’d suggest you do the morning routine they suggest on Tricks Tutorial as flexibility exercises are easier when you just woke up.
  3. Like I’ve said many times, stretchings are to be perform at two different moment in your training session or your sport. At the beginning in the warm up session and at the end in the cooling down session. Each kind of stretching will provide specific advantages to your activities as the pre-session is used to prepare the muscles to perform and the post-session is used to make sure the muscle will recover faster from their hard work.

The WHYs of STRECHING

  1. Static stretches help to speed up your recovery
  2. Stretching reduce the possibilities of getting easily injured during and after your physical activities.
  3. Stretching helps you recover from injuries faster
  4. Dynamic stretching is a good warm up method as it involves movements, but don’t forget to do cardio also.

See you tomorrow for day 6.

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7

7 days to a Better Body : Day 4

Published on June 29, 2006 in Health, Physical, Physical activities and Sports. 0 Comments

It’s important to do something else than only exercising. You need to play a sport or do something you enjoy doing physically. The exercising part is just to help you get better performances by improving your muscles and reflexes. Doing sport allows you to enjoy your physical abilities and the muscles you’ve worked on while ameliorating your fitness at the same time.

Doing a sport is important in itself because it will stimulate more muscles at once and it will also help you improve your coordination. When you are exercising, you do not have to look at a ball coming toward you and to get ready to hit it with what happen to be in your hands. This increases the difficulty just a bit more. But since you’ve exercised, your reflexes will be boosted as you’ve gained more physical power.

THE SPORT

Warm up like before any physical exercise or performance. Do a bit of cardio and warm up the muscles that will be triggered the most during your activity. You’re now ready to perform your sport and get the most out of it.

IF you have no sport in mind or you’re not doing sport currently I would suggest you find one. If you can’t decide which one to do, try them all, see what you like. If none interests you, I’d suggest you take swimming. Swimming is great because it’s one of the best sport to improve your cardio while working pretty much every muscles on your body. If you already have one sport, then you might want to do swimming also because of it’s great benefits. You can check the Wikipedia List of Sports for a list of possible sport that might interest you.

Be sure you’ve hydrated yourself before the activity because if you drink while you’re in the middle of it, you might get cramps. Drinking water will help you to keep your saliva liquid for a longer period of time. When we perform intensive activities such as running for an extended period of time, our saliva start to become more sticky and turn into mucus which doesn’t feel good in your mouth.

Tips to get the most out of your sport

  1. Warm up before performing, this include doing dynamic stretching in order to increase the temperature of your muscle and their effectiveness
  2. Do your sport using your brain. If it’s a team sport, play with your team, not alone.
  3. Cool down a after your performing in order to prevent soreness and other pain
  4. Stretch while you are cooling down to gain flexibility

I’ll keep this article short because there are so many sport and each of them have specifics tips that can help you improve your abilities to perform them. What I’ll suggest you is that you take 30 minutes of your time for the rest of this serie of articles (today + 3 days left = 2 hours) to look online for tips on how to perform your sport correctly.

See you tomorrow for day 5.

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7