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A Killer Arm Workout You Can Do At Home

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“Your arms are one of the first muscles to show toning results after starting a weight training routine,” says Adam Kant, owner of Intrepid Gym in Hoboken, New Jersey. “You don’t have to be lifting heavy to tone up (although it tends to show results faster if you do!)—doing lightweight movements with higher reps will help firm everything up ASAP.” Here’s how to sculpt your arms without stepping foot in the gym:

What you’ll need:
A yoga mat or towel to stand on
Two dumbbells (5-10 pounds)
A kettlebell (15-20 pounds)

The routine: Perform 3 rounds, 12 reps per move, 2-3 times per week. Pair with a cardio workout for optimal results. And try not to rest in between moves or rounds, to keep up your heart rate and those calories burning! (Keep up the good work with a fitness plan made for your crazy schedule; in just 10 minutes a day, you can transform your body with Prevention’s Fit In 10 DVD!)

1. Push-Ups

“Push-ups are a classic move that really get the job done!” says Kant. Start out parallel to the floor in a plank position then lower your body, bending your elbows until your chest touches the floor. Return to starting position and repeat. “If this is too challenging for you, rest your knees on the floor for an assisted push-up.”

2. Kettlebell Swings

“Kettlebell swings are an amazing full body exercise,” says Kant. “They work your core more than you realize, while also toning your arms at the same time.” Stand with your feet hip-width apart, holding the kettlebell with both hands in front of your body, arms loose. Bend your knees slightly, keeping your weight in your heels. Slightly swing the kettlebell through your legs toward your rear then explode with your hips forward sending the kettlebell up toward the ceiling, overhead or at least chest-height. Be sure to keep your arms straight and extended throughout the entire exercise. Bring the kettlebell back to the start position between your legs and repeat, using the momentum you’ve built up! “Remember to keep your weight in your heels and your core tight the whole time,” says Kant.

3. Triceps Kickbacks

Stand with your feet hip-width apart. Hold a dumbbell in each hand at your side. Bend your upper body at your waist slightly to make a 45-degree angle. Push the dumbbells back until they are parallel with your lower back. Return them to the start position, bending your elbows, bringing the dumbbells in line with your chest.

4. Dumbbell Shoulder Presses

Stand with your feet hip-width apart, bring the dumbbells (one in each hand) up to your shoulders. With a slight bend in your knees, thrust the dumbbells up overhead to meet at the top. Return to the starting position with dumbbells at your shoulders and repeat.

5. Floor Bench Presses

Lie on the floor, knees bent with a flat back. Hold a dumbbell in each hand, press them toward the ceiling then lower the weights until your triceps touch the floor. Repeat.

6. Plank Rows

Start in a plank position, holding a dumbbell in each hand on the floor. Row one dumbbell up until it reaches your waist. Return to floor and repeat on other side. “To up the intensity, complete a push-up between the rows,” suggests Kant. “It’s called a ‘man maker.’ ”

Source: prevention.com

6 Moves for Stronger Knees

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If you suffer from knees that feel like they have been bludgeoned with a scalding hot tire iron, you are not alone. One study from Gallup-Healthways found that 26% of the adult population in the US suffers from knee pain.

 Causation can be varied. Over use, under use, mobility restrictions and muscular imbalances are some of the big factors than can factor in to knee pain.  Whatever the reason, you don’t have to live with it. Try adding these exercises and stretches to your daily warm-up routine.
Follow these techniques to strengthen your knees for optimal weightlifting performance.

1) ANKLE BAND DISTRACTIONS

One of the main functions of the ankle is to hinge, enabling the knee and hip to synergistically work together in creating movement. Stiff, rigid ankles are common, which can lead to injury and discomfort. Band distractions serve to “floss” stubborn joints. They can enhance range of motion, get nutrients into cartilage and alleviate pain.

 

How To Do It:

Loop one end of a band around a sturdy base and the other around your ankle. Drop into staggered stance, with the banded leg in front of the non banded leg. Inch out until you feel tension and then drive the knee forward as far as you comfortably can. Keep the banded foot firmly on the ground (not up on your tippy toes) Feel free to rotate the ankle side to side as you drive the knee back and forth. Repeat on both sides for 45 seconds each.

2) ROLL OUT YOUR SHINS

Foam rolling is a tremendous tool for soft tissue work. Fitness enthusiasts use it for their hips, lower back and other trouble zones that can get irritated with frequent use. But there is an area that I rarely see being attacked in my day to day gym-goings- The shins. Perhaps it’s because it’s a tougher group to really hit, or just an oversight because it typically doesn’t feel horrendous. But don’t simply blindly chase pain. Even if that area doesn’t hurt, it could be a big factor contributing to knee issues. In my experience (not 100% mind you) people who suffer from some degree of anterior knee pain feel a great deal of discomfort while trying this movement.

How To Do It

Get into a pushup position with a roller at the base of your ankles. Turn your toe in towards the midline of your body in order to expose the muscles of the shin and address them. Press your shins firmly down on the roller and gradually inch up towards your knee. You completely control the pressure in this movement. For more intensity really lay your body weight into the foam, for less ease back on the throttle. I like trying to move my foot up and down during the rolling and search for hot spots. 45 seconds to a minute on each leg should suffice and free up those important lower leg muscles.

3) WALL QUAD STRETCH

The wall based quad stretch is a tremendous bang for your buck move that can be done just about anywhere. Got a wall? Good you can do this exercise.  The beauty in this stretch is that it hits the front of the foot, ankles, shins, quads and knees.

How To Do It

Get up against the wall (facing away from the wall) in the bottom of a lunge position. Flip your back foot up against the wall with your toes on the actual surface of the wall. Your back knee is the axis point and really determines how much of a stretch you will get during this exercise. The closer the back knee is to the wall the more of a stretch there will be through the foot, ankle and quads. If you are looking to get a little adventurous and want to stretch the hip flexors out, focus on pushing the hips forward.

4) HAMSTRING FLOSSING

The muscles in the hamstring group (semitendinous, bicep femoris and semi membranosus) all cross the knee joint. Issues in any of these muscles can cause knee pain in the posterior (rear) portion of the knee and leg.

How To Do It

Get a hold of a tennis or lacrosse ball and a sturdy box or ledge of about mid thigh height. Sit on the box and place the ball underneath the leg, firmly on the hamstrings. Extend and bend the knee while applying pressure to the muscle. Let the ball go up and down the back of the leg while you continue flexing and straightening the leg. One minute on each leg should have your hamstrings and knees feeling like gold.

5) BAND TKE

A classic rehab exercise, the Terminal Knee Extension serves as a great low impact quad activator. It can get blood flowing to the knee and quad to prepare your lower body for training.

 

How To Do It

Take an exercise band and loop it around a sturdy base. Step into the band with one leg and place it just above the top of the knee. Walk out and get some tension in the band. From there bend and extend the knee, really focusing on straightening the knee completely and contracting the quad as hard as you can. Perform for 25 reps on each side and get ready to feel a ton of blood rush to that area.

6) TFL DISTRACTION

The TFL (Tensor Fasciae Latae) is a small muscle located at the side of your hip just below the crest of your pelvis. When tight and bound up this nasty little bugger can affect the knee by pulling through the IT band and causing pain on the outside of the knee.

How To Do It

Again, we will make use of the versatile exercise band. Loop one end to a stationary object and loop the other end right underneath your butt. Get into a kneeling position with the banded leg in the back and the other leg in front of you (envision a kneeling lunge). Keep your torso tall and turn the banded leg out (internally rotating the hip). When you rotate the leg out you are really able to appropriately address the TFL as it’s a difficult area to stretch.  Squeeze the glute on the banded leg side to really stretch the heck out of the TFL.

Knee pain is no laughing matter and can rob the fun out of rewarding physical activities. Getting a thorough examination from a doctor or physical therapist is always recommended. But, if time or financial issues are a consideration then hopefully these exercises and stretches can serve as a way to alleviate some of the pain and get you squatting and lunging like a pro.

Source: muscleandfitness.com

24 Ways to Get Fit for Summer Fast

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Photo: Goanywhere.com

The experts have spoken.

Our goal with this piece is to give you enough information to get yourself ripped before the summer starts, no matter what condition you’re in now or how little you may know about training or nutrition.

It’s all here: how to set up a workout program, a diet, exercises you should do, ways to boost your intensity and metabolism, foods you must eat, and when to consume them for the best results. We’ve taken years of science and experimentation, culled from some of the brightest minds in the fitness game, and condensed it all into 25 ways you can get fit for summer. Fast.

Photo: Anytimefitness.com

1. Hit Your Numbers

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Just winging it with your diet will yield results as long as you make healthy food choices, but if you want to look movie-ticket ripped, you need to count calories and macros. “Twelve calories per pound of lean body mass is a good starting point,” says Nate Miyaki, C.S.S.N., a nutritionist and trainer in San Francisco. You can also use the weight you want to be. So if you’re a soft 200 pounds and think you would look ripped at 180, start at 2,160 calories per day (12 x 180). Set your protein at one gram per pound of your target weight, your carbs at one gram per pound, and your fat at 0.4 gram per pound.

2. Keep Going Heavy

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“A lot of guys will lower the weight they use when they’re trying to lean out,” says Derek Poundstone, a two-time Arnold Strongman champ and owner of Poundstone Performance in Waterbury, CT. “But it just robs you of strength.” Poundstone keeps going heavy while maintaining training volume, so he does multiple sets of low reps, such as eight sets of three.

3. Do More Workouts

Photo: USAtoday.com

Adding a few short, low-intensity sessions to your training week can increase your metabolism and recovery. “The trick is to keep these workouts to only 15 to 20 minutes,” says Jim Smith, a strength coach and author of Diesel Mass. And be sure to go light. You can even train twice in one day—morning and night. Take these sessions to work on weaknesses.

4. Have Heavy And Light Days

Photo: muscleandfitness.com

If you follow a body-part split, have a heavy day when you work in the range of five to eight reps and another day later in the week when you hit the same muscles with 12 to 15 reps. The undulating intensity promotes recovery and prevents injuries and burnout.

5. Flavor Your Carbs

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Rice and potatoes should be a major part of any diet to build muscle or shred fat. But, as you’ve noticed, they’re bland. “Boil them in low-sodium chicken broth,” says Gavan Murphy, owner of the L.A.-based catering company the Healthy Irishman, “and add some freshly grated ginger as well. “It adds a ton of flavor and no time to your meal prep.”

6. Do Full-Body Workouts

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“If you’ve been doing a body-part split, switch to full-body,” says Ben Bruno, a Los Angeles trainer to celebrities. Two good reasons why: Full-body workouts work more overall muscle in a session, thereby burning more calories. They also reduce the total volume you can perform for each body part, which means you’ll recover better and be able to train the muscles more frequently. “Higher frequency training yields faster gains,” Bruno says.

7. Blow Up Your Lats

Photo: watchfit.com

Want to make your waist look smaller? Make your lats wider. Here’s a tip from Chad Waterbury, author of High Frequency Training 2: Do one set of as many pullups as possible in the morning. At night, go back and do another set. Repeat this every other day. “After 30 days, retest your max,” Waterbury says. “You can expect an 8- to 10-rep increase.”

8. Make Your Own Salad Dressing

Green vegetables don’t count as carbs, and you can eat them with wild abandon without consequences. Here’s a recipe for a high-protein honey mustard to dress them up: Whisk together 1/2 cup fat-free Greek yogurt, 2 tbsp yellow mustard, 1/2 tbsp raw honey, and 1 tbsp lemon juice. That’s 12 grams protein and eight grams carbs.

9. Keep Moving

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Most of your fat loss will come by way of your diet, but the rest comes from physical activity—and we don’t just mean your workouts. Non-exercise physical activity (called NEPA) may account for 20 percent of your fat loss, according to Miyaki. “Walk or ride a bike to work, walk to do your errands, take a hike on the weekends, or enjoy more sexy time with your significant other. This type of informal, low-intensity activity can give you many of the same benefits as traditional cardio without the drawbacks—like joint wear and tear, repetitive strain, and impaired recovery from strength training.”

10. Stay In The 8-To-12 Range

No, we’re not contradicting what we said earlier, just amending it. Heavy lifting will preserve muscle and strength while dieting, but Bruno says sets of 8 to 12 will do the most to maximize muscle gains while in a caloric deficit. “Moderate rep ranges give you the most bang for your buck.”

11. Do A Back-Off Set

“Increasing metabolic stress during your workout has been shown to increase the potential for greater growth,” says Smith. One simple way to jack up the intensity is to perform a high-rep back-off set after your last main set of the workout. Take 50 percent of the load you used on your heaviest set of your main lift and perform 50 to 100 reps with it. So if you just squatted 315 for five reps, back off to 155 pounds and go for broke. If you can’t complete all the reps in one shot, rest-pause your way through the set. “But rest no longer than 20 seconds,” Smith says.

12. Add “Finishers”

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“High-rep kettlebell swings, high-rep barbell squats, pushups, and even plyometrics are great ways to leave you breathing heavy after your workout’s done,” says Lee Boyce, C.S.C.S., a strength coach in Toronto. “They can also catalyze fat loss by keeping your metabolism up for hours.”

13. Get Mobile

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Keeping your heart rate up between sets encourages more calorie burning. Instead of sitting and waiting for your next set, build some mobility training into your workout. Foam rolling, dynamic stretches (leg swings, shoulder rotations, etc.), and prehab exercises, like face-pulls, can all be used between sets to work on weak points, improve flexibility, and prepare the body for heavier sets to come later in the workout. “These won’t take away from your strength,” Bruno says, “but over the course of the workout they’ll increase the metabolic demand.”

14. Double Your Shakes

Photo: muscleandfitness.com

The easiest way to add more calories to your diet in order to gain mass is to start with your post-workout shake. Double your dosage. This allows you to deliver more protein and carbs in a quick fashion that’s easy to digest. It won’t bloat or fill you like a whole-food meal, so you’ll be hungry and able to eat again soon.

15. Keep Carbs High While Cutting

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You’ve heard the rhetoric: You have to go low-carb to lose fat. But that’s not true. “With adequate carb intake, you get better anaerobic fuel for high-intensity workouts,” says Miyaki, author of The Truth About Carbs. “You get better muscle retention, and you maintain natural hormone production and metabolic rate.” Plus, you don’t set yourself up for a post-dieting rebound in which you pig out eating every carb in sight.

16. Eat Runny Egg Yolks

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“Eating slightly undercooked yolks at night can push you further into the rebuilding and leaning-out state while you sleep,” says T.C. Hale, a celebrity trainer in Los Angeles and the author of Kick Your Fat in the Nuts. Night is when your body naturally prepares to rebuild and recover, so eggs eaten at this time encourage the process—the science is unclear, but it may have to do with the protein not being damaged by heat.

17. Eat Kimchi

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This Korean cabbage mix may be the healthiest condiment. It’s packed with prebiotics, which feed the gut bacteria that help you digest food, and also capsaicin, which a 2012 Purdue University meta-analysis found boosted thermogenesis.

18. Go To Failure

Last October, the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness published a study in which 79 subjects with training experience were divided into three groups. One took sets to self-determined failure, another was goaded to work until the participants couldn’t do any more reps, and the third used a rest-pause (five to 20 seconds). The ones who stopped their sets when they wanted had insignificant results. The rest-pause group saw good gains in strength and body composition, but those who went to failure had the best gains.

19. Buy Organic Where It Counts

Science is beginning to confirm what experimental bodybuilders learned years ago: Blood-flow restriction training builds muscle. A 2015 review in Sports Medicine found that subjects who trained wearing blood-pressure cuffs (you can also use elastic knee wraps) just below their shoulders built muscle effectively while using light loads and reps of 50 to 80 per set. Wrap your limbs snugly but not too tight—about a seven on a scale of 10.

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“When you buy factory-farm meat and dairy, you wind up ingesting many of the hormones and antibiotics used to raise these animals,” saysRestaurant Impossible host Robert Irvine, author of the upcoming book Fit Fuel. “They’re less nutrient-dense than their organic counterparts,” so go organic for these foods. But foods with a thick peel, such as bananas and avocados, are safe enough as is—so save your money.

20. Sprint

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Want a way to raise your metabolism and get in some cardio that makes you feel like an NFL running back? Find a hill, or incline the treadmill, and run up it at about 90 percent of your top speed. (Leave a little in the tank for safety.) The sprint itself should take five to 10 seconds. “Use the exercises in your workout to determine the number of sprints you perform,” Smith says. So if you did six different lifts, perform six sprints, followed by a one-minute jog after each.

21. Take Digestive Enzymes

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If you’re eating more to gain muscle, that means more stress on your digestive system. Digestive enzymes can help you break down the extra food and absorb nutrients better. Look for ones that contain protease, amylase, lipase, and lactase.

22. Use Giant Sets

Giant sets are three or more exercises performed back-to-back. Select two exercises that target weak points and do them after another lift for another body part. “So, for instance, if it’s leg day but you’re trying to bring up your back and biceps, you could do a set of squats followed immediately by pull-ups and then curls,” Smith says.

23. Don’t Overdo Fat

Photo:beautiful-diet.com

Even if you’re following a low-carb diet and losing weight, you can’t eat unlimited fat. Not only will it keep you out of the caloric deficit you need to lose weight (a gram of fat contains nine calories), extra fat in your diet can throw off your ratio of Omega-3 to Omega-6 fatty acids, and that can damage the heart, skin, and other body functions.

24. Add Vegetables

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As mentioned earlier, you need to eat more greens. Still can’t stand them? Start mixing them into foods you like so they’re virtually undetectable but still give you the fiber and nutrients you need. It helps fill you up, too. For example, when sautéing ground beef, grate in some raw zucchini. “Because it’s grated, it cooks really quickly,” Murphy says. Or stuff the meat into a bell pepper after it cooks and bake 30 minutes.

When you blend up a protein shake, add a cup of spinach. The blender will dice the leaves so small that you won’t even taste them.

Source: muscleandfitness.com

14 Key Benefits Of Exercise That Will Surprise You

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It doesn’t matter if you are a depressed teenager or an anxiety-ridden elderly patient; either way, exercise can help you fight depression without using a pharmaceutical cornucopia to treat your symptoms. Here are 4 reasons that exercise helps to keep you not just healthy, but happy:

1. Exercise Helps to Regulate Hormones

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Increased use of pharmaceuticals and advancing age can lead to hormonal changes, further leading to anxiety and depression. Exercise helps to return these hormones to homeostatis. Qigong in particular has been shown to reduce depression in elderly patients. And teen patients can even reap the benefits of exercise to help keep cortisol and adrenaline levels in check while increasing seratonin, melatonin, and oxytocin.

Another review examining  previous studies also affirmed that people who exercise are able to reduce the severity of their depression. The research came to us from the Cochrane Library.

2. Exercise Gives You more Energy

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You’ve heard Newton’s first law – objects in motion tend to stay in motion. The reason we feel unmotivated when we’ve been negligent in exercising is because our respiratory and cardiovascular systems become depleted (as do all our other bodily systems) when we don’t move. Our cells don’t turn over as fast.

Toxins start to linger longer in our blood and digestive tract, and we start to feel tired and flat out cruddy. When we exercise, all our systems support this life-promoting activity by ‘turning on.’ This is part of the reason we experience an endorphin rush during and just after an exercise session. It is the body’s reward for doing something good for ourselves – and then we have the energy and motivation to do it again!

3. Exercise Builds Confidence

Who doesn’t feel better when they start to see their waistlines grow smaller, their skin begin to glow from the reduced toxicity in the body from sweating during exercise, and the general tone of their muscles improve? Exercise is a huge confidence booster. Even taking a brisk walk every day can increase your sense of accomplishment when things don’t seem to be going your way.

More vigorous exercise at least three times a week can help make your confidence soar. Many feel depressed because they feel powerless, but you can’t feel both confident and powerless at the same time.

4. Exercise Slows Aging

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People who exercise usually feel at least five to ten years younger than their chronological age. They often look it, too. By exercising regularly you could potentially reduce your biological age by as much as 9 years when compared to your chronological age. The maximum reduction in age occurs when 3,500 to 6,500 calories are expended each week.

Depression can also trigger as we age, as the demands of life and its responsibilities mount. Low testosterone levels (in both men and women) can increase age-related depression, but exercise can help boost them. Not only does exercise make you feel and look younger, but it can actually reduce the stress that accompanies becoming an older adult.

5. Exercise Zaps Belly Fat.

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It’s the easiest way to beat the bulge, period. “Regular moderate- to high-intensity aerobic exercise has the greatest impact on reducing ab fat — the dangerous fat that ups your risk of diabetes and heart disease,” says Olson. Exercise is the ultimate middle manager because it lowers levels of cortisol, a hormone that has been linked to ab fat. In fact, women with the most cortisol in their system have higher BMIs and bigger bellies than those with moderate amounts of the hormone, found a University of California at San Francisco study.

6. Exercise controls calories.

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“It’s pretty simple: You need to burn more calories than you consume in order to lose weight,” says Nancy Snyderman, MD, a FITNESS advisory board member, editor-in-chief of BeWell.com, and chief medical editor for NBC news. Regular exercise blasts excess calories that would otherwise be stored as fat. “Plus, you continue to burn calories even in the hours following your workout,” says Dr. Snyderman.

BeWell.com

7. Exercise keeps lost pounds MIA.

“Ninety percent of people who have successfully lost weight and kept it off for a year do about an hour of physical activity a day,” says John Porcari, PhD, a FITNESS advisory board member and a professor of exercise and sports medicine at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Exercise is even prescribed by docs for people who have undergone weight-loss surgery to help them hold onto their newly thin figures.

8. Exercise boosts metabolism.

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Yes, you’ll lose fat when you diet without exercising, but you’ll also lose muscle, which means you’ll burn fewer calories. The more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism and the more calories you’ll torch.

9. Exercise trims inches.

The number on the scale doesn’t tell the whole truth, says FITNESS advisory board member Jari Love, a certified personal trainer and fitness DVD star: “When you shed fat and gain muscle you may lose inches and drop sizes without losing actual pounds.” For instance, if you gain 3 pounds of lean muscle and lose 4 pounds of fat, you’ve actually experienced a 7-pound improvement in your body condition, despite the scale only showing 1 pound of weight loss.

10. Exercise curbs emotional eating.

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“Working out has been proven time and time again to help regulate mood, which has a direct effect on people who eat when they’re stressed or upset,” says Robert E. Thayer, PhD, a professor of psychology at California State University, Long Beach. Translation: When you’re already in your happy place you don’t need Ben & Jerry to lead the way.

11. Exercise creates a healthy chain reaction.

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There’s a reason you find juice bars at the gym: “Healthy habits tend to cluster together,” says Boston-based psychologist Eric Endlich, PhD. “When people make positive changes, like getting more exercise, they tend to work on other health improvements as well, such as eating better.” The result? Weight loss.

12. Exercise brings on the fun.

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Let’s face it: Rock-climbing is way more exciting than eating a celery stick. That’s why it’s easier to be active to stay slim than to maintain a strict diet. “If you look at people who incorporate exercise successfully in their lives, they’ve found something they truly enjoy,” says Dr. Snyderman.

13. Exercise stops hunger.

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People who exercise and diet are actually less hungry than those who only diet, according to a study in the journal Obesity. Bonus: Your self-restraint is higher, too.

14. Exercise ups energy.

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Regular physical activity increases stamina by boosting the body’s production of energy-promoting neurotransmitters, studies show. That pep gives you even more motivation to get moving and shed pounds. When was the last time diet alone did all that?

Source: fitnessmagazine.com

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