Spring Outdoor Workout

Spring Outdoor Workout

Spring Outdoor Workout

It’s that time of year again! Spring brings with it new resolutions, new beginnings and finally warmer weather and sunshine. For many people, the temptation to ditch the gym for the warm weather is too tempting and their exercise routines suffer as a consequence. If you don’t feel like doing an intense hike, try doing your workout outside at a park or tennis/basketball courts. These spring outdoor workout exercises done quickly and with little rest in between are a great high intensity workout.

Incline Pushup

Incline Pushup

Inclined Pushups: This could be done with your feet on a bench (or a swing set if you want to challenge your core as well), keep your back straight and level with your hips. Do 3 sets of 10 reps each.

Pull Up

Pull Up

Pull ups: Hanging onto a bar, pull yourself up as high as you can. Repeat to failure.

Tricep Dips

Tricep Dips

Tricep dips: Using a park bench, face away from the bench, hands on the seat, keeping your feet as far away from you as possible ??? do 3 sets of 10 reps each. To challenge yourself, lift one leg off the ground.

Bench lunge with toe up

Bench lunge with toe up

1 Leg Squats: Use a bench for stability. This can be done in a couple ways. First, stand behind the bench using the back as support and do a one leg squat for 10 reps on each leg. 3 sets each. Another way would be to face away from the bench, perform a lunge with one toe on the bench for added stability. Again, do 10 reps on each leg ??? 3 sets.

Sprints (doing lines on the basketball/tennis court). Starting at one end of the court, run to the next line ( this might only be a couple feet ) and back, then run to the second line and back to the beginning, third line and back and so on. The drill is complete once you???ve gone to the farthest line at the other end of the court. Repeat 3 x.

Crunches on a park bench

Crunches on a park bench

Core: Crunches on a bench, planks and hanging knee raises will tighten and tone your core!

Try some of these exercises out and add your own. Happy Spring and Keep Active!!

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, strength training programs, 50 page meal plan, fitness tracking and personal training included with their membership.

Facebook:??????www.facebook.com/cardioblast
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Core and Balance Training

Core and Balance Training

Core and Balance Training

I often get asked ???what???s the big deal about core and balance training???? To be honest, I think a lot of people misunderstand what is meant when they are told to train their core or do some balance work. Core and balance training is so much more than just doing some crunches or a plank. Preventing injury at any age is paramount to living happily and healthily and it can???t be achieved without core and balance training.

Balance work is another way to challenge your core and improve its strength and your ability to function on a daily basis and NOT sustain an injury. Have you ever known someone (maybe even yourself) who goes to do a simple movement like pulling a full jug of milk from the back of the fridge and pulled their back? Or maybe you???ve bent down to pick up something and felt sharp pain running down your leg? Often a twisting motion can cause injury too.

The word ???core??? refers to all the muscles in the abdomen, pelvic floor, side of the abdomen reaching up to the ribs, along the spine to the neck and down to the gluteus maximus. In order to adequately exercise these all of these various core muscles, one must do more than crunches. The best way is to challenge them with functional movement training. For example, a squat is a functional exercise because it engages the secondary core muscles that you use when you raise and lower yourself. Done slowly, with or without resistance, this movement is much harder than you might think. It will allow you to concentrate on keeping your core engaged during the motion, thereby strengthening it.

Balance training is often associated with the elderly. Their reflexes aren???t as quick as they were once and are more prone to tripping and falls. Many active and fit seniors include balance work in their weekly regimen as they recognize the benefit to preventing falls. However, its benefits aren???t limited those in their golden years. Athletes can continue doing the activities/sports/competitions that they love for many years without serious injury if their bodies can quickly adjust during activity. Through practice one can become accustomed to balancing on uneven surfaces, strengthening their core in the process and creating muscle memory for the motion. Then in real life, when they are caught off balance, they can catch themselves more quickly, more often averting an injury compared to those who neglect this aspect of fitness.

Here are a few samples of functional core exercises:
One Leg Squat

One Leg Squat

One Leg Squat

One Arm Plank

1 Arm Plank

1 Arm Plank

Lunge with knee in air

Lunge with One Leg Up

Lunge with One Leg Up

Try these today to challenge your core & balance!

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, strength training programs, 50 page meal plan, fitness tracking and personal training included with their membership.

Facebook:??????www.facebook.com/cardioblast
You Tube:??????www.youtube.com/user/CardioBlastWorkout
Twitter:??????www.twitter.com/alexkotai
Pinterest:??????www.pinterest.com/cardioblast

Effects of Sugar on the Human Body

Effects of Sugar on the Human BodySugar is one of the most common ingredients found in almost all of the ???foods??? found on grocery shelves in North America.?? The American public has been warned of the effects of sugar since the 50???s.?? Now, increasingly, doctors and nutritionists are changing their tune.?? Instead of cautioning people to moderate their sugar consumption, many of them are calling on people to eliminate this ???toxin??? from their diet and are comparing it to a drug.?? They point out that during the refining process, since sugar is stripped of all its??? original food value including its vitamins & minerals ??? it can no longer be classified as ???food???.?? It holds no value except for its carbohydrates ??? pure calories. It contains no vitamins, no minerals, no fats, no enzymes, no protein ??? nothing would classify itself as belonging to a true food group.?? Some claim that the effects of white sugar is so harmful, especially in the amounts consumed by the average North American as to warrant classification?? as a ???drug???.??

Dr. David Reuben, author of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Nutrition, says, ???white refined sugar is not a food.?? It is a pure chemical extracted from plant sources, purer in fact than cocaine, which it resembles in many ways.?? Its true name is sucrose and its chemical formula is C12H22011.?? It has 12 carbon atoms, 22 hydrogen atoms, 11 oxygen atoms and absolutely nothing else to offer.?????? The chemical formula for cocaine is C17H21N04.?? For all practical purposes, the difference is that sugar is missing the ???N???, or nitrogen atom.

Let???s set aside the fact that on a chemical cellular level, sugar is one nitrogen atom, a few carbons and a little oxygen away from crack cocaine and look at the impact this substance has on our bodies.

1.?? Sugar wreaks havoc on your heart and circulatory system.
In a scientific study published in 2012 in the Journal of the American Heart Association, doctors found ???that sugar sweetened beverage consumption had a 20% increased risk of coronary heart disease even after adjustment for age, smoking, physical activity, alcohol, multivitamins, family history, diet quality, energy intake, body mass, pre-enrollment weight change an dieting were taken into account.???

2.?? It is toxic to your liver.
Table sugar is composed of 50% glucose and 50% fructose.?? Both are metabolized by your liver.?? Some experts estimate that our bodies can safely process between 2-4 teaspoons of sugar per day.?? The average can of cola contains over 11 teaspoons!?? When you take into account that even if you avoid sweets or sugary foods, sugar is still hidden in ketchup, tomato sauces, barbeque sauces, tonic water, most breads and crackers, cereals, spice mixes and almost all dressings ??? especially fat free ones,?? it is easy to see how we are consuming copious amounts of this substance.

3.?? It is making you fat.
Eating healthy fats in reasonable amounts doesn???t make you fat.?? Eating sugar and fructose is making our nation fat!?? When we consume sugar, our bodies produce insulin in response to the large amounts of glucose in the blood stream.?? Glucose is toxic to our bodies, so it???s the job of insulin to get the glucose out of the bloodstream and into our cells where it can be used for energy.?? Over time, large amounts of glucose regularly consumed cause our cells to become insulin resistant, triggering the pancreas to secrete larger and larger amounts to ensure cellular absorption. This leads to Type II Diabetes.?? However, insulin also performs other tasks.?? One is to send signals to fat cells telling them to collect the fat in the bloodstream and store it and NOT to burn the fat that they are currently storing.?? During times of elevated insulin levels, significant amounts of the energy from our food is directly deposited in fat cells and stored.?? Excessive levels of fructose consumption triggers high blood insulin levels and in turn, insulin resistance.?? It is when this happens that our bodies can???t access the fat stores, and then we start to feel hungry again. And we eat again.

Check your diet and make sure you aren’t eating too much sugar and improve your health.

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, strength training programs, 50 page meal plan, fitness tracking and personal training included with their membership.

Facebook:???? www.facebook.com/cardioblast
You Tube:???? www.youtube.com/user/CardioBlastWorkout
Twitter:???? www.twitter.com/alexkotai
Pinterest:???? www.pinterest.com/cardioblast