Archive for the ‘workouts’ Category

Easy Exercise

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

Sometimes, exercise seems tedious, and it is. If you run, you just run along on a path or on a treadmill, and it’s not necessarily fun. This being said, frankly speaking, one of the best things to do for yourself is to actually make exercise fun, find a fun and easy exercise for you. If you like soccer, obviously this makes it easy. You are still getting all the cardio in, and you are distracted in terms of time, because you are actually doing something you enjoy. If you go on a walk with your dog, you are more distracted and will therefore exercise for longer and lose more weight.

But otherwise, there are other exercises that you might not necessarily think of as quickly. For example, something as simple as just gardening is a big deal. Gardening is something that my grandma did until she died at the age of 100. She also went on walks on a regular basis. But when she ended up gardening, she burned a number of calories, stretched her muscles, and ultimately ended up losing weight.

And finally, you can start associating with other people. If you go on walks, take someone along with you. Obviously, if you play sports they are probably teen sports. With my friends, we’re rough, we’re mean, we’re loud, and quite frankly speaking, it’s effective. We really get each other going, and while it’s not the nicest thing, we end up working out more, playing more, and getting farther. But it also works for things like walking.

Squats As Cardio

Friday, July 31st, 2009

With squats, there is no doubt that you can break a sweat, and this has led some to actually use it as a form of cardio or at least they think so.  You can get your heart rate pumping in general from lifting heavy weights as well and break a sweat.  It can certainly help you to achieve greater results in your workouts.  However, it is not a form of cardio.  It should be combined with good cardio routines. 

 

Generally, people tend to follow a pretty standard routine of a few reps and maybe 5 sets of reps, which is highly unusual.  This will not actually get you up to a sufficient level of cardio, let alone extend through the time frame you would need it to.  So unfortunately, despite what you may like to think, you will actually have to participate in aerobics, running, walking, or some other kind of actual cardio training in significant amounts to give yourself those kinds of workouts.  This is not to say you shouldn’t use squats.  You should use squats, just don’t use it in place of your cardio workouts among other things.  You have to remember a greater balance.  Of course, some don’t prefer squats in general.

Workout Music

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

When you are working out, one of the best things to do is actually to listen to music.  As simple as it may seem, it actually works.  I mean honestly, you can’t tell me that if and when you’ve tried it, you haven’t been slightly distracted.  If you’re exerting yourself as you should, you certainly won’t be singing along.  But you may be singing along in your head, which is good enough.  It’s more distracting for some of us. 

 

But the point is that you actually focus less on the time, and you check your time less, making it seem to go by faster.  I’ve also been better able to ignore by little downtime till I push past it, and it really helps in varying capacities.  I’ve used generally music I like, because otherwise I spend way too much time skipping past it, and I have a certain mix that is more upbeat and will keep me going rather than the slower songs that make me want to stop.  But who knows, maybe you only like David Lanz or something, which is basically all pretty calm.  It depends on your personal preferences as to what you choose and how you use it.