Fitness and Health Tips.com

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

If maintaining a high level of personal fitness is important to you then getting a good nights sleep on a consistent basis should be pretty high on your priority list…

Research and studies have shown that people who sleep well perform better and have quicker reaction times then those who sleep less then the average recommended 6-7 hours per night.

And that’s just for sedentary folks…

Folks like you and me who work out at the gym or maintain home fitness programs need sleep that much more because when we sleep our body’s are recovering from whatever workouts we’ve put them through.

If you’ve been reading this Blog for any length of time then you know how important I think working out with weights is to your personal fitness… well all of your hard work in the gym or in your home fitness program will be completely for not if you don’t get adequate sleep.

Sleep (recovery) is only 1/3 of the personal fitness puzzle and you need all three aspects of the personal fitness puzzle in order to achieve a high level of personal fitness… Along with sleep/recovery you also need to exercise and have a good, clean diet.

Popularity: 28% [?]

I’m in my early 30’s and a lot of my friends are starting to get beer bellies (not me please I look like I’m a pro athlete) and I discovered something about beer bellies the other day that I thought we should all share with our beer swiggin’ buddies… apparently research indicates that the fat (especially if it’s hard to the touch) found in the bellies of a lot of men is visceral adipose tissue which has been directly linked to heart disease!

So the bad news about visceral adipose tissue is that it has a direct link to heart disease but fear not there is some good news…

The good news is that this type of fat is usually one of the first our bodies will dispose of when we first engage in some type of weight loss program. This is a case where weight loss will actually benefit your health in more ways then the obvious benefit of the weight loss itself.

The bottom line is that any belly fat is bad for your health but hard belly fat may actually lead to other much more serious conditions and it’s a condition that can be very easily avoided with a little bit of exercise and a cleaner diet.

Exercise 3-4 times a week and lower your caloric intake by 10-20% to put your body into fat-burning and weight loss mode.

Take the first step in a weight loss program and your body, your health and your heart will all thank your for it.

Popularity: 57% [?]

Working out with weights or performing anaerobic exercise routines is the easiest and fastest way to boost your metabolism and also the best method for maintaining a high metabolism as you age.

You see as we get older our bodies begin to shed more and more muscle (lean muscle at that) and we replace it with more and more fat and this results in a body that already has some fat on it and now because of the additional fat (and less muscle) our metabolism is going to suffer for it!

The only way to reverse this trend is by working out with weights to boost your metabolism!

Lean muscle has a tremendous positive effect on your metabolism and the only way to acquire lean muscle is by working out with weights and by consistently performing an anaerobic workout routine.

In my last post: Follow This Workout Routine To Bust Through Plateaus I talked about performing a high-rep workout routine to “switch things up” and to bust through training plateaus and that workout routine is also ideal for someone who is new to lifting weights (anaerobic exercises).

Usually folks that are new to lifting weights and anaerobic workout routines are weary of getting “too big” (don’t worry about it you don’t eat enough - trust me), are intimidated by heavy weights or just don’t want to hurt themselves since they’re new to “pumping iron.”

If this is you, a high-rep workout is for you.

Using a high number of reps while working out ensures that you’re building lean muscle tissue and not trying to “bulk up”… remember this: high number of reps = lean and defined muscles and low number of reps = big, bulky muscles.

Working out with weights or performing any anaerobic exercises is the fastest and easiest way to boost your metabolism, so make sure to include it in your exercise regimen.

Popularity: 85% [?]

OK so in the last post we talked about circuit training working as a hybrid workout that we can utilize as both a cardio workout and an anaerobic workout as well.

So how can we take this workout routine to the next level? How can we continue to work our muscles through resistance training and increase the intensity of the cardio workout at the same time?

Most of the time when we think circuit training we think of anaerobic exercises… the cardio effect comes into play because we’re jumping from one station to the next basically never taking a break between sets.

What I recommend you do is mix in some cardio exercises into your circuit training.

This will increase the intensity of your cardio workout and it will really increase the amount of calories you burn during your new hybrid circuit training workout!

Here’s what i recommend:

4 sets of 4 exercises.

3 anaerobic exercises (anything where you have to push or pull any type of weight even your own) and one cardio exercise at the end of the set.

For the cardio exercises I recommend 5 minutes on the treadmill, 5 minutes on a stationary bike at a good pace or 5 minutes on an elliptical trainer.

Take your circuit training and fat burning to the next level… try the circuit training hybrid workout the next time you hit the gym!

Popularity: 100% [?]

According to most health and fitness experts, a fit male can run a mile in less then 6 minutes…

You’re considered out-of-shape if you can’t complete the mile in under 10 minutes…

And the average time for running a mile is about 8 minutes.

How fit are you?

Popularity: 59% [?]