Not Your Average Fitness Tips

Archive for June, 2010

Stepping aside from the traditional approach to workouts, I’d like to look at the newest evolution: video game exercise.  The so-called Wii workout games are ever increasing in numbers.  It’s amazing how far things have come.  A hobby that was in the past associated with lazy couch potatoes and one that was decried as partially responsible for America’s childhood obesity epidemic now may offer a solution to the problems it was once accused of causing.  The key question is whether video game exercise can really be effective for weight loss.

I was an early adopter of the Wii and it’s made for many fun times.  However, “exergames” have been available for longer than the Wii’s existence.  Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) is a classic that has been around for a decade and requires you to move your feet to musical and visual cues.  I’ve always enjoyed DDR and can generally work up a pretty good sweat at higher levels of difficulty. Continue Reading…

How many reps do you perform to increase muscle mass?  How do you “tone” your muscles?  Generally speaking, I think there’s a lot of confusion about how many sets and reps to perform to build strength vs. muscle mass.  There is an antiquated notion that exists stating that you should do a lot of reps to increase your muscle tone and a low number of reps to increase muscle size.  Oddly enough, this is exactly opposite from the reality. Continue Reading…

During my recent trip to San Francisco, my wife and I visited Alcatraz, the most historic prison in the world.  As the saying goes, “if you break the rules, you go to prison.  If you break the prison rules, you go to Alcatraz.”  Regardless of whether you are stuck in the most or least strict prison, the bottom line is that you are confined to a very tight space.  Despite this restriction, you can get a great workout in prison…not that I’m advocating committing crimes just to ramp up your workout routine.  Even though you have limited space and no gym equipment, you can use bodyweight exercises for strength increases.

The great thing about a prison workout routine is that it can literally be applied anywhere.  There aren’t many situations more restrictive than prison, so there are no more excuses for not being able to exercise.  So, how can you use bodyweight exercises to build functional strength? Continue Reading…

How often to workout is an important question when it comes to creating a balance between fitness and lifestyle.  The answer to how often you should exercise first depends on your goals.  If you want to lose 20lbs+, you’re probably going to need to workout at least 3-4 hours per week.  However, if you’re close to your goal weight, you can go through periods where you don’t exercise as much.  You won’t gain ground, but you won’t lose ground either.  Summer is a perfect time for these maintenance periods.

This is perfectly relevant to my situation over the past month in which my schedule has included a bachelor party, traveling to 2 separate weddings, and a case of bronchitis that I am still recovering from.  These have not only contributed to a lack of blog posts, but a lack of workouts as well.  Because I worked hard for a few months, I didn’t think some reduced time exercising would materially impact my body.  Additionally, it will actually help me prep for my next phase of aggressive exercising. Continue Reading…

Who is more physically attractive: a bodybuilder or an Abercrombie model?  I think the vast majority of people would say that the Abercrombie model easily wins that contest.  So why are so many people still obsessed with bodybuilding workouts?  Wouldn’t it be better to emulate a fitness models workout routine to develop lean, defined muscles?  This of course begs the question: how would an Abercrombie model workout?

There are two critical components to any fitness routine: diet and exercise.  Both have their place in developing the fitness model look.  Diet provides the best means for cutting fat while exercise provides the best means to build lean muscle mass.  These can be combined in a multi-phase approach that will help you build a body like an Abercrombie model. Continue Reading…

I just got back from a wedding in Napa Valley, CA.  This trip was interesting for a couple reasons.  It’s the first time I’ve been away from my son for multiple nights; it’s the first time in over a year that I’ve traveled and it’s the first time I’ve been out of the Eastern time zone in probably two years.  More relevant are some of the fitness lessons I learned from this getaway.

Usually I am not a fan of exercising while on vacationing.  I think you should work hard for the majority of the year so that you can enjoy vacations.  However, due to the time zone change, I ended up waking up at 2:30am the first night there.  Tossing and turning until 5am, I finally decided that I might as well get up and make good use of my time while letting my wife rest without me. Continue Reading…

Just a quick post about an interesting article I read a few days ago.  The article highlights how 10 minutes of high intensity exercise lead to metabolic changes that last an hour.  An emerging field called metabolomics performed metabolic profiling of people and hopes to determine what exactly causes health improvements from exercising or eating less saturated fat.  Metabolomics even hopes to determine if some people are biologically predisposed to get more benefit as well.

The first part of the study found that just 10 minutes of exercise led to metabolic changes that were still measurable 60 minutes later.  Quite obviously these benefits included fat burning and blood-sugar control.  More interesting is that the effects were exaggerated in particular groups.  Skinnier people received more benefit for blood-sugar control and people who were deemed more fit based on oxygen intake actually burned more fat than those who were less fit.

This is counter to my belief that less fit people would receive more benefit from starting an exercise program.  That being said, this study did just focus on differences in metabolites, not necessarily quantify fat loss over the long term.  From a biochemical standpoint though, it does provide hope that those of you who are already fit can receive increased fat loss benefits from exercise.  Up next for this research group is evaluating the effects of diet on metabolic changes by comparing the Mediterranean diet to a higher fat diet.

Over the years, I’ve had quite a few fitness objectives.  As I’ll discuss below in more detail, I’ve wanted to lose fat, gain muscle, increase my bench press, do more pull ups and pushups, run faster, jump higher, and run farther.  The problem is that many of these objectives conflict with one another and with my long-term goals.

The key to fitness goal setting is to create objectives that are both achievable and reasonable.  I prefer to create goals that can be met in the short-term but that provide some long-term benefit as well.  Fitness goals have to be challenging enough to motivate you to work hard, but not overly challenging where you’ll give up too easily. Continue Reading…