Posts Tagged ‘fitness’

I used several of these 10-minute solutions DVDs back in college when I was at my heaviest and was looking for something that I could do in my apartment after classes and homework since I didn’t have a whole lot of energy leftover to go to the gym. I had a very hard time deciding to write about these 10-minute solutions DVDs. Mostly because of the emasculating effect I felt. To be honest, nowhere does it say these DVDs are for women, but it’s pretty easy to see that anyone with a Y-chromosome is not in the target audience.

Aside from that it’s pretty easy to recommend these DVDs as a good place for beginners! If you’re not familiar with how they work, it goes like this. Each DVD is made up 4-6 workouts based around some theme like kick-boxing, abs, legs, etc. Each workout is only 10 minutes long. You get to decide which workouts you do and in what order you do them.
10 minutes may not sound like much, but string 3 together and you have a 30minute, targeted workout that will definitely have you feeling a burn. Studies are showing that several small chunks of exercise are as effective as one single large chunk. So if you can’t seem to find the time to do a whole workout, make it a goal to work through the DVD over the course of a day!

Like any DVD cardio program, you’re going to get what you put into it. But the style and presentation is definitely geared more towards beginners than the hardcore cardio crowd. If you’re new to home fitness programs and want to dip your toe in before committing to an expensive set of DVDs, this is a good place to start. Or, if you’re looking for a simple, easy way to get off the couch and start a basic exercise program these are perfect for that too.

FYI: My personal favorite was the boot-camp DVD, since it had lots of kick-boxing elements and I felt was more of a all-around workout than some of the others.

One of the best ways to work your upper body is by doing pull-ups. You can give your biceps, triceps, shoulders, chest, back, and even abs, a fast, complete workout in a short amount of time with a good pull-up bar. Even if you can’t do a single pull-up yet, doing hangs and negatives (slowly lowering yourself) is a great workout.

When it comes to at home pull-up bars, they all seem to fall into two categories. The first, require you to drill into your door frame. Personally I hate the idea of doing that, so I opted for the second, which actually wraps around the door frame, and can be put up, taken down, and hidden away within seconds.

There are several of these types on the market, and I wanted a good one that wouldn’t break the bank. Here’s the one I ended up buying.

There are several others like this one out there, but at almost 50% more than this one, I decided to pass. It shipped pretty quickly, and was at my door in less than a week. Assembly was a snap, despite the fact that the box contained next to no directions. I suggest spreading all the parts out and spend a moment thinking about how to put it together and it turns into a pretty simple process. No tools are required, and it had all the nuts and bolts I needed plus a few extras. Assembly took me about 10 minutes, but I also had a curious cat distracting me!

The really great thing about this pull-up bar is the variety of hand positions. While I haven’t tried it, I’ve been told that this bar is ideal for the P-90X program. (I’ll update if/when I start that program)

My one concern is the black foam that presses against the door. Others have had a problem with it leaving black marks on their door frame, but it hasn’t been an issue for me yet. A few quick pieces of duct tape around the foam will take care of that though.

If your nervous about it holding your weight, check the online reviews and you’ll see guys as big as 250+ pounds hanging reliably from this thing! It claims it can also be used for dips and pushups, but I prefer a good set of phone books for that. Also included is a free set of arm slings for doing abdominal work, however you need to pay shipping on them, it’s still a good deal, but to me it makes sense to save the money and just wedge my feet under the couch and do sit-ups.

The absolute fastest way to start a war of words on a weight lifting message board is to ask what are better, high reps of low weight or low reps with high weight. It seems that either people have an unmovable opinion on one side or the other, or they have no clue, asked the question which stated the argument, and walk away even more confused. Let’s see if I can’t shed some light on the topic without loads of hate mail and/or someone trying to crash my site.

First, we need to define what we mean by “better”. Do we mean gives results faster? Or do we want a specific result and want to know if one method provides that result and the other doesn’t? Are we looking for a magic method that is easier than other ways?

Next let’s define what we mean by “high” and “low”. We will consider low to mean 3 -8 reps. High is defined as 12+ reps. Any ludicrously high numbers like 200, and the weight corresponding to do that many reps, can really be considered cardio exercise and doesn’t have a place in this article. The weight for high or low reps should be one that causes you to fail on the final rep. This way the low reps will have higher weight than the high reps. Doing low reps and low weight will give you no result, and high weights will not allow you to get to high rep numbers.

Perhaps the best way is answer the question for several common scenarios and tailor the answer to the situation:

I want to lose weight

Since any exercise you do will result in a calorie burn that can help you lose weight, let’s assume you want the way that will do it the fastest. The mechanism that forces the body to lose the most weight when lifting is muscle repair. This is when the body rebuilds the muscle after a workout, fixing the micro-tears caused by the weight lifting. The greater the stress on the muscle, the greater the amount of repair, the greater the calorie burn.

I want to look toned

What most people mean when they think of “toned” is that they want some muscle definition, without looking bulky. Naturally in order to see the muscle, you need to lose the weight first, so refer to the first scenario if you need to. Both methods will build muscle, by low reps, high weight, will do so faster. Luckily most people don’t need to worry about looking bulky. Unless you are a professional lifter, have good genetics, and a diet geared specifically towards bulky, you are in no danger of gaining the physique of a pro wrestler.

I want to be better at a sport

When training for a sport, the first best thing you can do is work on your fast twitch muscles, this is done through sprinting and other speed drills. The second thing you can do is increase your endurance. Higher rep exercises, force your body to work for longer periods of time. This forces your body to adapt by increasing blood vessel size and count. This allows more oxygen and nutrients to be delivered to your muscles.

Ok, the last workout I put up focused on the upper body so I figured I would even things out and create a workout for the lower body as well.

Its easy to want to skip lower body work, its hard, it hurts, and everyone hates rubbery legs for a few days after a good session of squats. But heres the truth:

You have more muscle in your legs than anywhere else! If you want to lose weight, hit the lower body hard. Lower body exercises will help you build muscle faster and burn weight faster than anything else.

Lower Body Focus