Thursday, July 06, 2006

DON'T RUN AWAY FROM STRENGTH TRAINING

Don't Run Away From Strength Training
If you have more muscle, then you will burn more calories throughout the day! Gain that muscle!!

What is Strength Training?
Strength training also called weight lifting or resistance training, is exercise where you are using resistance to condition your musculoskeletal system (muscles and bones), this improves your muscles ability to work effectively without tiring as quickly as usual. A bonus, you get an improvement in your muscle tone, strength as well as appearance.

If you consistently strength train you will increase in bone, tendon (attach bone to muscle), and ligament strength (ligaments attach bone to bone). If these improve your appearance will improve as well as your physical capabilities and metabolism. If you combine your strength training program with a solid cardiovascular training program you'll have an amazing exercise program. It may just be the key to helping you accomplish your goals.

Our physical appearance as well as our physical performance can be enhanced with the gain of more muscle or even hindered by muscle loss. Once we pass the age of 25 we begin to lose muscle mass about three to five percent per decade. If you do strength training it will help in preventing this loss. this will allow you to continue doing all the things we are so used to doing, such as walking upstairs, carrying groceries, getting in and out of the car or bathtub.

I bet you'd be surprised at the amount of strength that such common things requie. Many people actually believe that it is normal to stop being active as we age and instead rely on canes to move around. There is no reason why we all can not be active in our "golden years." (Alive, No. 282, p123, April 06)

Get Into Swimming! Work All Of Your Muscles

Get Into Swimming!! Work All of Your Muscles

All of your major muscle groups are working hard when you are swimming. Especially if you mix up a variety of strokes such as the backstroke, breaststroke, and the front crawl or freestyle. Propulsion activates abdominal muscles, triceps and biceps, deltoids, lats, other back muscles, glutes, hamstrings and even the quadriceps. We don't have gills so we have to coordinate our muscles while we are breathing during our swim. When you perform these strokes you get the results of better coordination and balance. This helps reduce injuries in sports that you perform on land.

Water: A magical healing effect.
As we know our bodies are made of 60% of water. When we were developing as a fetus we were in a watery environment. When our bodies are in water we weigh about1/10th of our usual land weight. Waters bouyancy effect does not have the same brassy effect land based training has on each of our joints. Swimming allows you to concentrate on muscular strength as well as flexibility. Because of all of this, swimming becomes and amazing way to come back from an injury that you received playing a sport, recovery from a surgery or just keeping up your fitness while you wait to get back into your own sport.

Swimming boosts your stamina, suppleness, and strength. It has every single cardiovascular benefits of running paired up with the strength building effects of strength training. This arises from the resistance the water offers you as you are propelling yourself forward in the water. The use of a variety of strokes helps promote balance as well as your coordination. Not only does swimming cause you to use all of your muscles groups it also is a highly demanding aerobic exercise to help your heart and lungs to be healthy. It also helps your joints to stay flexible especially those of the shoulders, hips, neck and groin. In conclusion, you can increase your intensity of your physical activity by clearly, swimming faster or changing your strokes. This increases your caloric output, which is a vital component with weight management.(Alive, No. 281, p 94, March 06)

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Did you know that Pilates principles can improve performance in any sport? Pilates is gaining a lot of fans! I bet you're picturing a whole group of women in tight pants lying on the floor stretching...think again, it's men too! These principles.... continue reading article...

Don't Run Away From Strength Training
If you have more muscle, then yu will burn more calories throughout out the day! Gain that muscle!

What is Strength Training?
Stength training also caleld weight liting or resistance training, is exercise where you are using resistance to condition your musculoskeletal system (muscles and bones), this improves your muscles' ability to work effectively without tiring as quickly as normal. A bonus, you get an improvement in your muscle tone, strength as well as appearnce...continue reading...