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Most fitness buffs and healthy living adults want to know how much exercisedoes an individual need every day?

According to Edward R. Laskowski, M.D. of the Mayo Clinic, For most healthyadults, the Department of Health and Human Services recommends:

Getting at least 2 hours of moderate aerobic activity (think brisk walkingor swimming), or 1 hour and 15 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity (such asrunning), per week – preferably, spread throughout the week.

Doing strength training exercises at least twice a week.

The rule of thumb is to get at least 30 minutes of physical activity in yourdaily routine. If you want to lose weight or achieve certain fitness goals, tryto increase your activity even more. If you can’t make time for a longerworkout, try 10-minute periods of activity throughout the day.

Source: Mayo Clinic

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The skinny jeans has made a successful and extended come back. it has beenin vogue for a few seasons now, and a lot of women are reaching for theirforgotten pair hanging at the back of the closet – only to find out it does notfit anymore.

Enter skinny jeans workouts. The fitness industry took advantage of women’sfrustration and came up with different versions of the skinny jeansworkout.

More than a lower-body workout

These skinny jeans workouts do more than just slim down your lower body.According to WebMD, these exercises are based on time-tested exercises. EquinoxClub Skinny Jeans Workout creator Molly Fox admits to getting inspiration from80s Jane Fonda exercises while adding some modern bits.

According to Lisa Wheeler, national creative manager of group fitness forEquinox, the skinny jeans workout classes focus on exercises for the abs,glutes, and thighs, including leg lifts, squats, and isometrics, but weremodified to include balance, core strength, light weights, plus yoga andPilates moves for a whole body workout.

Los Angeles fitness trainer Lisa Goldenthal’s version on the other hand usesmulti-tasking techniques so, as she explains, you do don’t have to spend somuch time working out. For instances, bicep curls and shoulder presses withlight weights are already incorporated into squats and lunges. Goldenthal’sLisa G’s Skinny Jeans Workout also has core strength training movesbased on Pilates exercises and yoga-style stretches.

Does it work?

According to skinny jeans workout follower Nichelle Toomire of Los Angeles,the workout actually works for her. She started doing Goldenthal’s program 2years ago when she was 39, and stuck with it because she saw results after ashort amount of time.

It enabled me to shave inches off my figure, especially my booty, she says.Now I don’t look like a pear in my jeans anymore!

According to Fabio Comana, an exercise physiologist with the AmericanCouncil on Exercise in San Diego, the skinny jeans workout is a good choicebecause of the motivation factor. He warns though that it is impossible tospot-reduce fat. But still, working the hips, butt, stomach, and thighs as partof an overall fitness program may help you look better in jeans.

Creating your own workout

According to Comana, like any good workout program, the skinny jeans workouthas to have cardio to promote weight loss and general conditioning, plusresistance training to build and tone muscles.

To create your own version of the skinny jeans workout, Comona shares thefollowing tips:

Incorporate lunges and squats – with or without weights, these moves make goodresistance exercises for toning the lower body. Include cardio exercises thatwork your lower extremities in your routine. These exercises burn calories andtone muscles overall. 30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercises, 3-5 times aweek should do the trick. If you want to include cycling or spinning in yourroutine, do not mash heavy equipment. Doing this might build more muscle thanwhat you might want. Worse, it can even injure your knees. Go easy on runningsteps and hills. This could build more muscle, which may not be the best ideaif you want to fit into your skinny jeans. Running steps and hills however, aregood for overall fitness. Ellipticals and steppers can work the glutes. But,like lunges and squats, it is important to use proper technique.

Source: WebMD

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Getting fit can get costly. What with gym memberships, fitness wear,exercise equipments, and personal trainers. During these tough economic times,the cost can be an excuse for you to skip exercise.

But actually, there is no excuse to skip exercise. There are ways to get fitwithout any of these expenses. WebMD shares the following tips to build abetter body on a budget:

Schedule your workouts

A membership to a gym or an appointment with a personal trainer isexpensive, and the cost means you are likely to skip out on your workout.

According to Susie Shina, director of FitnessOneEighty.com and author of60-Second Circuits: 1,000 Easy Exercise Combos You Can Do Anywhere,This means putting it on your schedule, making a specific time for when you’regoing to do your workout, and it means doing all you can to limit interruptions— like turning off the phone, making sure the dog is walked before you start,and, if necessary, letting family members know that for 30 minutes or so, theyare on their own.

You can also do the following things to keep your workout on track:

Prepare you exercise clothes the nigh before. This acts as a reminder thatyou don’t want to skip out on your session, says Shina.

Choose a playlist of your favorite songs and load them on your mp2 player,or create a workout CD. Timing the music to fit the length of your routine canhelp keep you on track. Motivation and music go hand in hand, so again, it’sanother way to ensure you stay motivated, says Shina.

Choose Workouts That Work at Home

Choosing which exercise to do can be difficult, especially if you are juststarting out, and haven’t got the budget for expensive workout equipment orpersonal training advice.

However, according to ut all you really need to do, says Charla McMillian,JD, CSCS, is follow a few simple guidelines.

You have to ensure that all your major muscle groups are targeted at leastonce each week — and no more than three times a week, and your program has toinclude 30-60 minutes of moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise three to fivetimes a week.

Remember to stretch. It helps improve strength and flexibility. Always beginevery workout with a few simple stretches, and always end with at least two tothree minutes of stretching, suggests Adrian Garce, a Greenwich,Connecticut-based personal trainer.

Grace and McMillian suggest these no-equipment workouts to start with:

Squats. Standing upright, feet wider than shoulders apart,with arms extended forward or hands on hips for balance, squat down. Push kneesoutward as you descend, until thighs are parallel with the floor. Continuepushing knees outward as you stand. Partial-body push-ups(with knees on the floor). Modified jumping jack. Instead ofmoving your arms over your head, do these while pressing the palms of yourhands together at chest level, with elbows out to form a straight line.Chair crunches. Sit on a chair with hands under your behind,arms straight, and fingers facing inward toward one another. Contract yourpelvis and lower abs, and, keeping your knees bent at a 90-degree angle, liftyour feet off the floor and tuck your knees in toward your chest, bending theupper body slightly toward your knees. Do as many as you can until you reachfatigue. Chair dips. Place your hands on the side of the chairand wrap your fingers around the edge. Scoot forward until your bottom is onthe edge of the chair and your arms are fully extended. Keep your feet about 3inches apart with legs extended, so knees are at approximately 150 degrees withyour heels grounded. With elbows pointed back and tucked in tight alongside thebody, do 15-20 dips, 3 seconds down and 1 second up. Keep your chest up andyour shoulders back.

Source: WebMD

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Indoor exercise can be a good addition to losing weight alongwith a healthy diet. Doing both as a routine can help make weight loss easierand faster to achieve. But there is also the issue of trying to make it aregular habit that can become a concern for some people.

One of the best ways to keep people to exercise is by making itinteresting. This can be true to indoor exercise. It can be easy for one to getbored and eventually stop exercising altogether especially when one always doit indoors. Keeping it interesting will help motivate one to continue on. Hereare some of the ways to make it fun , interesting and effective.

Adding Step Ups

One of the ways why some people easily get tired of doingindoor exercise is that they start to rely a lot on exercise machines to dopart of the work for them. Adding exercises that do not require complexexercise machines can give your workout a welcome change at times. One of theeasier methods is by doing step ups.

Step ups are pretty easy to do and can be done without muchpreparation. If you wish to do an instant indoor workout, then doing step upscan be the thing for you. Just go to the nearest stairs inside your home anduse it to do your step ups. Step ups can easily increase your heart rate aswell as quickly burn up calories. Three sets of 30 steps each day will do thetrick.

Do Some Squats

Another simple yet effective indoor exercise that you can do athome is squats. Doing squats can help build up your leg muscles. As you buildup your muscles, you also increase your capacity to burn up calories which caneventually translate into weight loss later on. You can start with doing 30squats and then adding up 10 squats each week as you gradually build upstrength and muscles in your legs.

Skipping Rope

Skipping is another simple yet effective exercise that you canadd into your daily routine. It can easily help you burn calories. But skippingrope can be quite taxing on overweight people. Some care should be taken so asnot to overdo it to cause possible injuries since it might require jumping, ahigh impact physical activity.

You can do 50 skips as a beginning routine if you can do itwithout feeling any pain. You can then gradually add 10 to 20 skips per dayuntil you think that you have reached your own physical limit. This will beenough to help you burn calories effectively.

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A recent study suggests that running barefoot may prove safer for your bodycompared to running with your shoes on. Daniel Lieberman, a professor at theDepartment of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and lead studyauthor, studied runners from the United States and those from the Rift ValleyProvince in Kenya whose residents are known to be excellent endurance runners.All of the participants ran an average of at least 20 kilometers or 12.4 milesa week.

The participants in the study have different experiences with using runningshoes. Those from the United States were accustomed to wearing shoes and thentried out barefoot running. There are those from Kenya who were used to runningon barefoot who also tried wearing shoes to run. The researchers also lookedinto two groups of Kenyan teenagers with one group growing up never wearingshoes and the other who grew up wearing them.

Lieberman and his colleagues found out that safer running has a lot to dowith how the feet lands on the ground while running. Barefoot runners tend touse the forefoot strike where the outer ball of the feet lands first before theheel. 75 percent of those who wore shoes tend to land on their heels first. Thestudy suggests that this method is more likely to cause injury.

Landing the foot front first seems to provide a smoother landing with lessimpact. Those who run barefoot tend to avoid landing heel first to avoid thesharp impact on the heels that can hurt when done repeatedly.

Because of the shoes providing additional cushioning, runners that wear themtend to land on their heels first and not feel the effects. The findings of thestudy were published in the online journal Nature.

Sources: http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/635403.html

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Many people have many questions in their minds regarding fitness and health.Such questions may continue to nag them without having clear answers most ofthe time. So here are some of those health and fitness questions beinganswered.

Will yoyo dieting affect the metabolism?

Some people have the habit of going on a diet to lose weight and then stopfor awhile and gain the weight back all over again. This is how yoyo dietusually happens. Some may ask whether this will affect metabolism. Experts saythat it does not matter how often you lose and then take on weight. What ismore important is the type of weight that you put on.

Most of the time, people who have the habit of going on yoyo diets usuallygain body fat instead of muscle. Fat can take a toll on the body’s metabolismover time. Muscle can burn more calories than fat. In case you gain weight, youmight try to gain muscle mass more than just fat so that your body metabolismwill not be affected negatively.

Will exercising make one gain weight?

The reason why people gain weight when exercising is that they may bebuilding muscles. Another reason that might suggest that exercising may makeone gain weight is that it might stimulate one’s appetite, causing one to eatmore. Muscle building through exercise can actually be beneficial even if itmight contribute to weight gain. It might replace the body fat that you lose asyou exercise and might help improve body metabolism. When it comes to appetite,you just need to carefully look after how much you eat so as not to gain weightthis way. Just as long as you burn off more calories than you put in would notlead to weight gain.

Does unused muscle turn to fat?

Many people may be bit confused on whether unused muscle turns to fat. Thesimple answer is that it doesn’t. Body fat and muscle are two entirelydifferent substances. Unused muscles may shrink in size but it is not convertedby the body into fat. The fat may accumulate and take the space that previousmuscles may have used.

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It seems that couples who workout together can also help enrichtheir relationship. People who find time to exercise along with their partnersmay be doing something that may help strengthen their bond and improve theirlove life. There seems to be two main reasons why this is so.

Deepens Intimacy

Exercise, in itself may help deepen intimacy. There are variousphysical and chemical changes that happen in the body when one exercises. Thesesame changes may also be affecting other aspects of one’s life such as arousaland libido.

Exercise can produce certain chemicals in the brain thatcreates feelings of happiness. The same chemicals may also help reduce stressand make one feel more relaxed. They can also help increase one’s arousal andlibido. Many studies have shown that people who exercise regularly may alsoexperience better sex more often with their partners as compared to those whodon’t.

Quality Time Together

Not only would exercise help couples become more intimate, italso helps them form a stronger bond with each other by spending more timetogether. It can be easy for many couples today to find time to spend with eachother by their hectic schedules at work and with other responsibilities.Exercising together may be a good way of not only trying to stay healthy butalso to spend time with one another. A couple exercise may be a way to findsome valuable quality time together.

More Motivated

Exercising with someone you love can become a great motivatorto do better. This way, the exercise may become more effective and couples maybe able to do more exercise together than what they can do separately.

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Athletes and their trainers have had this long-held belief that if theyexercise too hard, the body develops high amounts of lactic acid that halts thework out and causes muscle pains the next day. Recent study, however, show thatlactate has nothing to do with the burn, but can actually be tapped toturbocharge one’s training.

When athletes are training to push up their lactate threshold (LT), whatthey’re really doing is training their bodies to use lactate as fuel, accordingto George Brookes, PhD, of University of California at Berkeley. Scott Quill ofMen’s Health magazine provides some ways to tap that hidden potential.

While swimming - Do warm-up laps for five minutes. Then, doa 500-meter test by starting off at a pace you can keep up for more than 500meters, but build up the pace gradually until your last 100 meters is at 90percent effort. Count your strokes per length (SPL) in the first and last 100meters. To improve that threshold, swim 100-yards repeatedly for 20 to 30minutes, resting after each for one-fourth of your swim time. Swim at thefastest pace that allows you to keep an SPL count one or two strokes below yourcount during the final 100 meters of the previous test.

While cycling – With a heart-rate monitor at hand, performtwo 3-mile time trials on flat roads, pedaling as fast as you can. Multiply thehigher average heart rate by 0.92 and 0.95 to determine the ideal range toboost your LT. To improve your threshold, do three 6-minute trials, eachfollowed by 6 minutes of active rest. As you can, tack on 60-second blocks oneach interval, eventually adding a fourth block. If the total time is 10minutes, do the test all over again.

While running - The benefits of a higher threshold is thatit increases the pace you can sustain on short- and medium-range distances. Tofind your LT, run 5 kilometers at race pace after warming up. If you are timedin 15 to 19 minutes, your threshold pace should be between 25 and 30 secondsslower per mile; if the time is between 20 and 24 minutes, LT pace is 20 to 25seconds slower; and 25 to 30 minutes should have a threshold pace of 5 to10-second per mile slower than your 5K pace. To improve on that threshold, runfour 1-mile segments at LT training pace with a 60-second rest each.

Source: Yahoo!

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A recent study has shown that physically-fit students tend to score higheron standardized academic tests compared to their less fit peers. It also showsthat test scores dropped more than one point for each extra minute it took thesubjects, consisting of middle and high school students, to complete a one-milerun.

The subjects consisted of 749 fifth-graders, 761 seventh-graders, and 479ninth-graders who attended schools in Southern California between 2002 and2003. About half of the students were girls, 60 percent were Caucasian, 26percent were of Hispanic ethnicity, and about 7 percent were ofAfrican-American, Asian, and Pacific Islander. Almost 32 percent of thesubjects were overweight, while about 28 percent were obese.

The study, which was published in The Journal of Pediatrics, estimated eachstudent’s fitness by timing their one-mile run or walk on a flat track with a15-minute allowed time to complete the test. The boys averaged slightly lessthan 10 minutes, while girls averaged less then 11 minutes.

Sixty-five percent of the students were found to fall behind the statefitness standard for their age and gender. They have also lower average testscores compared to students who have met or exceeded fitness standards.

The researchers, lead by Dr. William J. McCarthy of University of Californiain Los Angeles, told Reuters Health that it’s good to be both aerobically fitand to have a health body shape in order to gain optimal brain function.

Source: MSNBC

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Having an ideal body size and maintaining it brings along anumber of benefits that may not just be limited to one’s health. There are alsoother benefits people can enjoy because of having an ideal body size. Here arejust some of them.

Better Self-Confidence

Having an ideal body size is a good way to developself-confidence. People who are overweight may easily feel insecure aboutthemselves because they might feel embarrassed about their outwardappearance.

Better Financial and Career Opportunities

It might seem unfair, but people with ideal body sizes areusually offered more and better opportunities at various professions. Itremains a fact that most companies tend to also judge people who work for themby their outer appearance. This is especially true for professions for peoplethat requires having direct contact with clients and customers. Discriminationagainst overweight people in the workplace exists, even though it is seldombeing discussed. This may be a good reason why one should try to strive andmaintain an ideal body size.

Better Attraction

On the aspect or romance, having an ideal body size may alsoplay a big role. People of both genders usually base their initial attractionbased on outward appearances. People with ideal body sizes are usually lookedupon as more attractive than those who are not. Therefore, having an ideal bodysize may also affect one’s love life and relationships.

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