Beginning Kettlebells

If you haven't given kettlebells a try, follow this short total-body kettlebell workout and see for yourself what all the hype is about. Start with a bell that’s a comfortable weight and perform 1 to 3 sets of 8 to 20 reps of each of the following exercises.

The Swing: This is a great exercise for your core and lower body. Start by holding the handle of a kettlebell with both hands using an overhand grip. Stand with legs hip-width apart. Squat down with your arms extended downward between your legs. Draw your body up using your hips and swing your arms out in front of you so that they are parallel to the ground (don't let them go above chest height). Tip: Make your hips, not your arms, do the lifting here.

Figure 8: This is another great move for your core. Start in a squatting position, holding a medium kettlebell in your right hand between your legs. Circle the kettlebell between your legs and grab onto it with your left hand, creating a figure 8 shape as you move it around and between your legs.

Two-Arm Pull: Hold the handle of a medium kettlebell with both hands and stand with feet hip-width apart. Squat down, keeping arms straight. Then thrust up, pulling the kettlebell to your chest by bringing your elbows above your shoulders. Note: Skip this one if you have shoulder problems.

Smart Snacking

Make snacks work for you by choosing nutrient-rich foods from the grains, fruit, vegetable, dairy and protein food groups. Snacks can boost your energy between meals and supply essential vitamins and minerals. There is a place for snacks in a healthy eating plan. Just choose wisely:

• Think of snacks as mini-meals that contribute nutrient-rich foods. You can fit snack calories into your personal healthy eating plan without over-spending your day’s calorie budget.
• Snack only when you’re hungry. Skip the urge to nibble when you’re bored, frustrated or stressed. Feed the urge to do something by walking the dog or working in the garden.
• Keep portion control in mind. Have a single-serve container of yogurt or put a small serving of nuts in a bowl. Eating directly from a multiple-serving package can lead to overeating.
• Plan snacks ahead of time. Keep a variety of nutritious ready-to-eat supplies on hand, such as whole-grain crackers and low-fat cheese.

Tip: Lose Weight by Eating Less Fat

Even without extreme dieting, eating low-fat foods leads to healthy weight loss.

To lose weight without your stomach eating itself, here are some easy ways to eat less fat:

• Switch to low-fat milk and yogurt, or try a soy or hemp version.
• Cut down on butter, cheese or eggs. You can also try alternatives like vegetable oil spreads, or use apple sauce or ground flax seed instead of eggs when baking.
• Cut the fat from your meat, or eat leaner cuts.
• Eat fruit instead of fatty baked goods, which often contain animal-based saturated fats.
• Snack on vegetables, which may fill you up before you zip off for some fast food.

Tip: Don't reward yourself with food

Do you allow yourself to have that extra piece of pizza or order that dessert when dining out because you "went to the gym" earlier? While rewards are a good motivator, rewarding yourself with food isn't the right way to reach your goals. Your food rewards may be undoing all of that good calorie-burning that you accomplish in the gym.

Educate yourself on the calorie content of your food (and your treats) as well as how many calories you burn at the gym. You don't want to undo all of your hard work in the gym by enjoying that brownie, do you?

Tip: Get your Rest

You won't be able to train properly or have an effective workout if your body is burnt out. Depriving your body of sleep can hinder your weight-loss, as sleep triggers a number of hormones that influence cravings and a tendency for weight gain.

In addition, too many sleepless nights will leave you tired and unfocused for your workouts, which means that you won't get much from your efforts. Since a lot of recovery and muscle repair happens while you rest each night, sleep is an important component of an effective workout routine.

So don't skimp on your sleep.

Tip: Squat for a Six-Pack

Do squats and deadlifts . . . to build your abs. Research shows that these two exercises force your abdominal muscles to do a significant amount of work to maintain your posture.

Tip: Buy Shoes That Fit

Shop for workout shoes late in the day. That's when your feet are the largest. Make sure there's a half inch of space in front of your longest toe, and that you can easily wiggle your toes. Then slip off the shoes and compare them with your bare feet. If each shoe isn't obviously wider and longer than your foot, go half a size bigger.

How to Build Great Six Pack Abs

Many people regularly bust their guts doing sit-ups and crunches with one goal in mind: a washboard 6 pack stomach. Unfortunately, the washboard abs look has more to do with the absence of belly fat than with well-developed stomach muscles - don't waste your time attempting to trim the inches from your waist by simply crunching them away. Instead, use these simple tips to strip away the fat and reveal your six pack:

Reduce Calories
For your abs to be visible, you have to start by getting rid of the fat. This is done simply by burning more calories than you take in. If you cut your calorie intake by 250-500 calories per day, this should promote a gradual fat loss of around 1-2 lbs per week, and you will be on your way to the ultimate 6 pack in no time

Consume Quality Protein
Many people fail to realize the importance of protein when trying to get lean and develop great abs. To get the lean, defined look, your muscles need around 2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. So, a 70kg man should aim for 140 grams of protein per day. Protein feeds your muscles the essential fuel they need to help recover after a tough workout in the gym.

Don't Forget Essential Fats
Although too much fat isn't healthy, some fat in your diet is essential to developing those great abs. High-fat, cold-water fish such as salmon or mackerel are rich in the long-chain Omega 3 fats which are essential to good health. Foods like avocados, nuts and olive oil contain primarily monounsaturated fat, which is another type of 'good' fat, and should be eaten on a regular basis.

Consume Quality Carbs
Once your protein and fat intake is taken care of, the next step is to adjust carbohydrate intake. Cut back on high sugar foods such as cakes, candy bars, and sugary drinks and replace them with more fruits, vegetables and fiber-rich foods. This will help you strip away fat faster, and allow you to start to develop the 6 pack abs you are after.

Eat little and often
Grazing (eating little and often) rather than gorging (eating 2-3 big meals) throughout the day takes the edge off hunger so you eat less at meals and help shed the belly. One popular approach is to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner and then have a shake or bar as a mid-morning and/or mid-afternoon snack.

Weight Training
When you cut back on your calorie intake, there's a risk that you'll lose the ab muscle as well as fat. That's why it's vital to do some form of resistance training 2-3 days per week. Resistance training will help you keep the muscle that you've worked so hard to build. Stick to heavy compound lifts such as the deadlift, squat, bench press and shoulder press. Try to get in and out of the gym within 60 minutes, and follow your workout with a protein-rich recovery drink. This will allow you to quickly and effectively develop your 6 pack abs and begin to get the toned look you are after.

Cardio
Cardio is the traditional and best 'fat burning' exercise, but it's important to do it correctly to promote fat burning while preserving muscle. Perform one of these workouts 2-4 times per week. Low intensity cardio (such as jogging or cycling) should be performed at 70-75% of your maximum heart rate for 30-60 minutes. If you're very fit, you may want to try high intensity interval training (HIIT), such as 10 x 100m sprints separated by 2 minutes of brisk walking. HIIT increases calorie expenditure after exercise and is also a great way to boost your cardiovascular fitness. Make sure to sandwich your HIIT workouts between a 5-10 minute warm up and cool down session.

Ab Exercises
As well as stripping away the fat, you also need to build the abdominal muscles to get the 6 pack definition. The best way to do this is to train your abs 2-3 times per week, using basic crunches, planks, reverse curls and oblique crunches. Do 2-3 sets per exercise, 8-15 repetitions per set (using extra resistance where necessary to make the load challenging).

Strong Muscles, Strong Bones

Exercise in any form - mild, moderate or intense - is good for you and can help reduce the risk of disease and keep the heart healthy.

But when it comes to strengthening bones, milder forms of activity may not be enough.
Thirty-eight men and 46 women, ages 55 to 75 years, all of whom were generally healthy but didn’t exercise regularly, were recruited to help determine the link between physical activity and bone strength.

Researchers concluded that neither overall aerobic fitness nor mild physical activity had a significant effect on bone density. Greater muscle strength, however, was associated with stronger bones.

''Although some activity may be better than none at all for certain aspects of health, like heart health, milder forms of activity may not be sufficient to hold off or attenuate the age-related decline in bone,'' says lead researcher Dr. Kerry J. Stewart of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland.

Source: Journal of Internal Medicine, 2002; 252, 5, 381-388

Fad Diets and Diet Food: They Don't Work

With over two-thirds of adults in the U.S. overweight or obese, losing weight is a hot topic. There’s a lot of money to be made from selling books about the latest diet craze or inventing a better tasting low-calorie snack food that people can gorge themselves on.

In spite of what the media portrays, a new study shows that Americans are not actually that helpless when it comes to slimming down.

By looking at data from 4,021 obese people over 20 years of age, researchers found that 63 percent of them were trying to lose weight. Of those, 40 percent lost at least five percent of their body weight. Another 20 percent lost even more—at least 10 percent of their body weight.

Clinical guidelines suggest that obese people lose at least 10 percent of their body weight to see significant health benefits. Other studies, however, show that even a five percent loss can help.

With all those people losing weight, what are the secrets to their success? Well, it’s not fad diets. Or nonprescription diet pills. Or even special “diet” foods. People who jumped on those bandwagons still had trouble shedding the pounds.

The method that really worked is what many have been saying for years—exercise more and eat less food and fat. Prescription diet pills were also effective, but only a small percentage of the participants used them.

People who lost the most weight—more than 10 percent—were more likely to use commercial weight loss programs, which combine healthy living and personal accountability. These people also avoided low-fat and low-calorie products targeted toward people struggling with their weight.

So forget about the 30-day juice cleanses and convenience store diet pills. Real weight loss for most people comes down to two things: eating right and exercising.

Eric Turner's Five Favorite Glute Exercises

Eric Turner  – Houston, TX

People frequently ask what I do for glutes.  They can’t believe that a white boy can have a booty like mine.  It’s taken time and a lot of exercises to get to this point.  But these are the five I’ve found most helpful to develop a full, round booty:

Deep Squats

Your glutes are the strongest muscles in your body, but the gluteus maximus isn’t fully engaged unless your hip is lower than your knee. Doing a deep squats get you low enough to fully engage the muscle.  Start with light weight on a Smith Machine and once you feel comfortable with your form, graduate to the squat rack.

Walking Lunges

Make sure when doing lunges that you keep your front heel down and take a large enough step so that your foot stays ahead of the knee. For the first several steps, put your hands just below your glutes on your upper hamstring. You should feel those muscles tighten. Avoid holding dumbbells. They cause you to lean forward which is one of the worst things you can do to your lower back.  If adding weight, use a straight bar held on your traps like you would while doing a squat, and it will help you stay upright and keep the pressure in your glutes.

Weighted Knee Ups

When doing a knee up, make sure that your starting position has your knee ABOVE your hip.  Doing a knee up instead of just a step up also throws in the added factor of using the muscles in your core and legs to balance.  Again, when you add weight put it on your traps so that you stay upright, instead of hunching forward.

Hip Abduction

The gluteus medius isn’t the largest muscle in the buttocks, but if you’re looking to create a ‘shelf’, it’s the most important.  Develop it, and it will also make your lower back look sexier.  Vary the angle by either leaning back or forward and feel the differences it makes.

Barbell Hip Thrusts

Once you’ve increased the size of your glutes, you’ll want to shape them.  A hip thrust will give you a ‘bubble butt.’  Sit on the ground with your upper back on a bench, with your hips under a barbell.  (I suggest using a squat pad to minimize the pressure on your pelvis.)  Keep your knees together and your feet close to your butt and thrust upward, holding the bar with your hands.  Slowly lower back to the ground.

Tip: Eat 6 Small Meals

Rather than eating 3 large meals spaced every 6 or so hours, cut each meal in half. Make the same amount of food you normally would, but divvy it into 2 portions. Eat 6 “snack sized” meals spaced every 3 hours or so. This keeps the metabolism up throughout the day, and keeps the body constantly fueled. This also keeps the body out of “famine mode.” When the body enters this mode, it clings to everything the next time you eat (since it doesn’t know when it will eat again). This is why starvation diets do not work, and is the reason you will, eventually, regain all the weight you lost, plus some.

Tip: Breakfast is Important

Even if you eat nothing else, eat breakfast within 45-90 minutes of waking up. Breakfast can positively affect your body’s use of food more than any other meal. If you’re going to splurge on junkie foods, do it at breakfast – this will not only give you the whole day to burn off the crap, it will also lessen your yearning for it throughout the day.

You are what you eat

Remember: Diet is 70% of success in fitness: You are what you eat!