Busy Moms make your workout more efficient

Busy Mom's make your workout more efficient

Busy Mom’s make your workout more efficient

Quite often we hear from stay at home Mom???s who are trying to fit a lot into their busy schedules. Between taking kids to school, preparing meals and running errands, their lives are busy and they find it tough to fit their workout program into their daily lives.

We all know how important exercise is for our physical health as well as for our emotional health. Keeping your workout in your schedule is crucial for you especially when you are busy which tends to make you a little overstressed.

To help busy moms make your workout more efficient and ensure you achieve success in maintaining them we have two suggestions for you. One is to do with the way that you do your cardio workouts and the other is to do with the way you do your strength workouts.

For your cardio, we suggest doing interval training for your workouts. Interval training involves short bursts of high intensity exercise follow by a short period of rest or moderate intensity exercise. This form of cardio has been found to be much more efficient than longer duration aerobic cardio (ie, running for an hour). Your heart rate tends to stay higher for longer periods of time which burns more calories. Also, interval training challenges your heart more than steady state training which helps it to become more efficient and will eventually help lower your resting heart rate. This means a heart that will remain healthier for more years of your life.

To make your strength training more efficient we suggest you do what are called supersets. Normally when people strength train they pick a body part or two and focus on those for the day. They end up starting on one body part and do a set of an exercise and then take a rest. With this method of training there are a lot of rest periods and this can add significant time to the length of your workout. Supersets are where you take two opposite body parts and work them at the same time to make your workout more efficient. For instance, you could work on your biceps and triceps. You can perform a set on your biceps and then while they are resting you would perform a set on your triceps. Basically you are taking your rest period and filling it in with another exercise on another body part. Both body parts still get the rest they need while the other body part is being worked. Another benefit to this style of strength training is that it tends to increase the heart rate a little more; thereby burning more calories and creating somewhat of an aerobic workout for you.

If you???re a Mom looking to make sure you fit exercise into your busy schedule we highly recommend these two tips to increase the efficiency of your workouts. You can use these ideas effectively for your home workouts, at the park or at the gym.

About the Author: Alex K is an online Fitness Professional providing health and wellness to the world through his online workout program Cardio Blast. Members of www.Cardioblast.com receive new cardio workouts every week, full meal planning, fitness tracking and customized online workout programs.

Fix your posture before it damages you

Fix your posture before it damages you

Fix your posture before it damages you

Posture is a good overall indicator of the health of your muscles and we don???t look at it very often at all. Just by looking at someone standing up you can tell a lot about whether their muscles are weak, strong, tight or flexible.

Have someone stand up and take a look at them from the side. Here are some pointers on some things that could be going wrong with their posture and some suggestions on how to fix your posture before it damages you.

??? The top of the head is level and not dropped down at the forehead (ie. texting syndrome where people are constantly looking down at their phones). This can cause strain in the neck and possible headaches. Make sure your head is level. It may seem ackward at first but give it a couple of weeks and it will seem more natural.

??? The head should also be retracted back so that the neck is vertical and not angled forward. The ear should be aligned over the ball of the shoulder joint and not in front of it.

??? The shoulders should be rotated back and not rounded forwarded. Many people have their shoulders rounded forward (ie. in a slouched position) and this causes their chest to tighten up and their upper back muscles to weaken. You often see seniors with what looks like a ???hunched??? upper back. This is caused by tight chest muscles, weak upper back muscles and degenerating bones. Stand tall keeping your shoulders back for a strong posture.

??? The stomach and low back should be tall and strong. Often times you will see the stomach rounded, the hips tilted forward and the low back in an excessive arched position. You want your stomach and back to be tall and work as one unit. This has the effect of making you seem leaner in the stomach and will help reduce pain in your lower back.

??? The ball joint at the top of your leg (where the leg bone connects into your hip joint) should be aligned vertically under the shoulder joint.

??? The knee joint should also be aligned with hip and shoulder joint as well. The knees need to remain slightly bent and not locked.

??? Finally, the ankle joint should also be aligned with the knee, hip and shoulder joint.

The younger you are the easier it is to correct your posture as your muscles are generally stronger and more flexible. As you age, your muscles become stiffer and smaller. This makes it more difficult to maintain a correct posture. If you find that you have any of the issues above we recommend that you undertake both a strength training and flexibility program to help you correct and maintain a strong posture. This can be implemented at any age!

About the Author: Alex K is an online Fitness Professional providing health and wellness to the world through his online workout program Cardio Blast. Members of www.Cardioblast.com receive new cardio workouts every week, full meal planning, fitness tracking and customized online workout programs.

Warmups are key to a good workout

Warmups are key to a good workout

Warmups are key to a good workout

One of the most important keys to a successful workout is a good warm-up. People often skip or cut their warm-up short, especially if they are in a hurry. However, here are some reasons why warmups are key to a good workout and why you need to make sure you plan it into your activities.

First of all, a proper warm-up will help reduce the risk of injury. During the warm-up there is increased blood flow to the muscles. This increased blood flow increases the temperature of the muscle along with its elasticity. By increasing the elasticity, the muscles are able to stretch further during your workout without becoming injured. Your warm-up should include what is called ???dynamic stretching???. This is where you do moving stretches that stretch the muscle out and then relax it. This is repeated over and over again until the muscle is able to achieve the length needed for the activity you are going to pursue without feeling excessive strain.

The second benefit of a good warm-up is that it reduces lactic acid buildup in the muscles. When you workout intensely you get waste products (lactic acid) that build up in your muscles and this reduces the intensity with which you can workout as well as causes soreness in the muscles. By gradually increasing the intensity of your workout through a proper warm-up, you delay the process of lactic acid buildup. The muscles are better able to effectively get rid of the lactic acid and this gives you a better workout.

If you are playing sports a proper warm-up also helps facilitate the mind-muscle connection. This helps your brain send the right messages to the right muscles in the fastest way possible. If you???ve ever tried to go play a sport and feel a little ???rusty??? when you start you???ll know what this means. Your hand eye coordination and balance just don???t seem right if you go straight into activity. Therefore, a proper warm-up that gets the mind-muscle link properly established will allow you to be ready to compete right from the start of your competition. This includes footwork drills where the feet are made to move over and around objects, balance drills that challenge both sides of the body and hand eye coordination drills for sports that involve the use of objects.

Plan a proper warm-up into your exercise routine and we guarantee you will notice better results immediately.

About the Author: Alex K is an online Fitness Professional providing health and wellness to the world through his online workout program Cardio Blast. Members of www.Cardioblast.com receive new cardio workouts every week, full meal planning, fitness tracking and personal training included with their membership.