Weight Training Helps Breast Cancer Survivors

A new study says that breast cancer survivors who engage in a progressive, supervised weight training program fare better than their counterparts who do not lift weights.

Occupational therapist Cathy Kleinman-Barnett works with breast cancer patients, but she has never encouraged women with lymphedema, a breast cancer-related swelling of the arm, to lift weights. A new study contradicts recommendations that breast cancer survivors avoid weight lifting, because of swelling.

However, she may be changing her tune, thanks to a new study in the August 13 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. It turns out that breast cancer survivors with lymphedema who engage in a progressive, supervised weight-lifting program fare better than their counterparts who do not lift weights. Read more

Cardio Makes You Fat

Finally, the mainstream media is catching on to the cardio-for-weight loss scam.

... The awful truth for every would-be slimmer is that going to the gym is unlikely to make you thin. It may even have the opposite effect: it could actually make you fatter. This will have personal trainers chewing their smelly insoles in fury, but there is sound science behind the theory that gym-going could actually impede weight loss.

The problem is the kind of exercise most dieters favour. Most eschew the weights area, inhabited by its hardcore of scary looking men.

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Dieters therefore tend to choose cardiovascular exercise, which works the big muscles of the body, for example the legs. It makes the heart work harder to pump more oxygenated blood to the muscles, so the lungs have to take in more air to provide this oxygen, which is why you feel out of breath.

However, while cardiovascular exercise might feel exhausting, the calories it burns are pretty pathetic. Thirty minutes on the rowing machine burns just 300 calories. That's 50 calories less than a 100g slice of pepperoni pizza. Read more

Is Yoga Really Enought to Keep You Fit?

For those who don't like aerobics or lifting weights, the practice of yoga has benefits well beyond flexibility and relaxation. Recent research shows that yoga may also improve strength, aerobic capacity, and lung function.

When it came to the fitness benefits yoga can or can't provide, yoga teacher John Schumacher had heard it all. A student of B. K. S. Iyengar for 20 years and founder of the Unity Woods studios in the Washington, D.C. area, Schumacher was convinced yoga provides a complete fitness regime. But many people, even some of his own students, disagreed. Yoga might be good for flexibility or relaxation, they'd say, but to be truly fit, you had to combine it with an activity like running or weight lifting.

Schumacher just didn't buy it. Read more

20 Minutes of Doom Workout : Sprinting and Puking

The "20 Minutes of Doom Workout" is a great all-around workout, combining, sprinting, pull-ups, and weights. The puking is a bonus.

Prep:

Load up a bar with 85 pounds.

Have a pull up bar about 200 meters away and on top of a steep hill.

20 Minutes of Doom:

As fast as you can without injuring yourself: Read more

An Exercise Routine for Everybody

Barry Lovelace demonstrates a five-exercise weight training circuit. This routine would be a good routine to substitute for your regular routine when you travel since it uses machines, which is all many hotel fitness centers have.

Can You Build Muscle with a Home Workout?

One of the most common obstacles to maintaining a regular exercise routine is the expense and inconvenience of going to a gym for your workout. Someone who exercises for health can do bodyweight exercises or dumbbell workouts at home, but, if you're a serious bodybuilder, you have to join a gym, right? Not according to natural bodybuilder Sean Nalewanyj.

I receive emails everyday from aspiring lifters all over the world, and one of the most common questions I'm asked is…

“Do I have to join a gym in order to build a strong, muscular body?”

The answer, my friend, is no. With the right equipment and planning you can follow an equally effective bodybuilding program from the comfort of your home without ever having to set foot in a gym.

In fact, my first 2 years of bodybuilding were spent working out with basic equipment in my basement, and I saw incredible results doing this. Read more

Forget Gyms: Do Dumbbell Workouts at Home

For people who claim they have no time to exercise, having to go to a gym for their workout just adds another excuse for not exercising regularly. Having a set of dumbbells at home, on the other hand, makes strength training quick and convenient.

If you are really looking for a way to get fit without having to fork out large sums of cash for a gym membership or fancy exercise equipment then why not get yourself a good set of dumbbells instead. There are lots of different exercises that you can incorporate in to your dumbbell workouts that will help to tone up every part of your body and not just your arms as so many people think they do. Read more

Working Out for Extreme Fitness

Many people think about building muscles as abandoning life outside the gym and devoting hours in the gym like a monk in a monastery. Perhaps the only way to chisel the body into a hot muscular physique is by toiling hour by hour over the rusty iron day in, day out and year in, year out.

This need not be so. Although hard work is truly required, extreme fitness doesn't demand one to be a slave of the iron weights. Full-body workouts can make one progress, and they easily fit in one's schedule. This is very convenient if one is looking forward to achieving extreme fitness but finds it hard to hold on to a single workout routine.

Genuine full-body workouts done by athletes with an aim in mind makes for maximum muscle contraction using heavy weights, makes room for full recovery so one can actually grow and continue to train hard plus it also prevents burnout which is inevitable due to excess training.

So if one is ready for extreme fitness, here is all there is to know about full body workout:

Full-body work out is a time saver. The biggest plus about having the whole body trained all at once is probably having to go to the gym less frequently; perhaps around two to three times for every seven days would be enough.

Another advantage of working out the entire body all at once is that one need not spend two or more hours of strenuous exercise in the gym for every session; one only spends one hour in the gym for every session. So that's just three to four hours per week in the gym right? With full-body workouts, it is all about the quality of exercise one does for session and not the quantity, nor even the amount of time you allot per session.

A full-body workout boosts the cardiovascular system for extreme fitness. One must allot two to four sets for every body part into the one hour session. Jam packed with exercising, each one hour session then gets the heart and the rest of the cardiovasular system pumping and up to speed in a flash.

Now feeling pumped up, next find out what rules does one have to follow when engaging in full-body work outs:

Training commences only once every two to three days. This is so easy isn't it? What is great about this is that there is time spared during rest days so that one can indulge in a few cardio exercise sessions instead of depending on cardio execises one normally does at the end of each workout session which are ineffective due to fatigue.

Heavy lifting is strongly advised. Contrary to popular belief, especially among athletes, t is not true that it is good to train lighter than one actually could so as to conserve energy for the other body parts that will come later in the routine. What is true is that one cannot achieve optimal progress if one is not training heavy, no matter which program that person is doing.

Do one exercise only per muscle group. This is very easy to follow and is also important. Doing basic exercises which are also intense means you do not have to do another different exercise for that body part.

Keep your workout short. Resistance training affects the natural hormones of the body connected to muscle building. Intense exercising boosts the testosterone levels and long workouts increase those of catabolic cortisol. Sixty minutes of work out allows you to get the best of both worlds.

Now with this convenient and powerful work out regimen, one can now truly experience extreme fitness.