Getting Fit Fast!

In order to get in shape fast, we need to tear down the roadblocks that stand in the way of our fitness results. How do we do that? By avoiding the most common female fitness mistakes. Here’s the breakdown:

Mistake #1 – Working out too long
Many of us have rather extreme personalities. With that comes an “all or nothing” attitude which can get new gym users in trouble fast when it comes to getting fit. Just because you want to prove to yourself that you’ve made a solid commitment does not mean you need to spend two hours completing your workout routine. Not only is this counterproductive but it’s a strategy that’s headed for failure right from the beginning. Going from zero workout time to two hours per session will have you making excuses and skipping workouts within the first week.
If you’ve just joined the gym and are spending over an hour there per day, stop immediately! You can achieve much faster results with a streamlined, hard-hitting workout session. It should look something like this:

• Warm up with 5-10 minutes of cardio, something that actually makes you work, like the jogger treadmill set on an incline or the stair machine on the fat burner setting.
• Your strength training routine should involve 1-2 exercises for each muscle group with 2-3 sets of 8-10 repetitions of each. In the beginning, you may want to perform more reps with less weight until you build some strength and are able to add more weight. Always start with a warm up set, followed by your working sets.

With this quick and easy workout session, you should be in the gym no longer than an hour. Also, keep the following tips in mind:

• Form is key. It’s better to perform less reps with correct form than the other way around.
• Machines are perfect for beginners because they provide more stabilization during your movements.
• Keep challenging yourself or you’ll reach a plateau. Continue to add either reps or weight. Your body is a genius at adapting to routines. After a couple of months, change up your workout routine using different machines to target your muscle groups. Most gyms have at least 4-5 different machines for each muscle group.

Mistake #2 – Working out too often
Less is more when it comes to achieving female fitness results. Weight training every day will not only slow down your results, but it’s also dangerous. Your muscles need recovery time after lifting. Listen to your body’s cues. When your muscles are sore, they are still in recovery. Don’t train until they don’t hurt. By overtraining you will be risking atrophy and possibly cause your muscles to shrink.
It’s during the rest and recovery period that your muscles are actually built, so look at that time period as part of the entire workout process. Especially for beginners, two to three gym visits per week is more than enough to achieve the fitness results you are looking for.

Mistake #3 – Trying to Spot Train
Full body workouts are not time savers but they are practical as well. With full body workouts you don’t have to think about whether today is your legs and butt day or your arms and chest day. Every time you visit the gym, you’ll be working every muscle. During your off days, every muscle will be in repair mode.
A lot of women’s fitness mistakes (and frustration) comes from attempting to spot reduce trouble areas. If you are already at your ideal weight, you may be able to work on certain areas and tone them up, but not if you are overweight. Fat is not lost in “areas” so although weight training a particular muscle group will build that muscle, it will still be covered by a layer of fat until you shed the extra pounds.
We recommend that you stay away from trying to spot train. An ideal women’s fitness routine will incorporate all muscle groups. Your body likes to grow proportionately, so by favoring certain muscles, you won’t experience the best or fastest results.

Mistake #4 – Isolation Exercises
The best and fastest weight training routine will focus on the larger muscle groups, using compound exercises. Compound exercises move your body through multiple joint movements. This ensures complete muscle fiber stimulation and you’ll see much faster results than individuals who focus on a single joint using isolation exercises.
Examples of compound exercises would include dips and lunges, military press, bench press, and barbell squats.

Here’s a sample workout:

Notice it includes each of the main muscle groups and uses compound exercises. Perform three sets of each exercise. One warm up set with 10 reps and two working sets with 6-8 reps per set.
LEGS: Barbell Squats
BACK: Pull Ups (weight-assisted or using the pull up machine) & Bent-Over Rows
SHOULDERS: Military Press
CHEST: Bench Press
Total Exercises Performed: 5;  Total Sets Performed: 15
Each set, including the brief rest in between, should last about two minutes. This adds up to a 30 minute weight training session. Add your 5-10 minute cardio warm-up to this and you have a complete female fitness routine in under 45 minutes. A 45 minute session at the gym, three times per week (with guaranteed results) is much easier to fit into your life schedule than a two hour daily session.
The key to success to fast fitness results is a simple, practical routine that can be completed quickly so you can go on with your day. Incorporate this routine with a healthy, nutritious, clean diet and you’ll never have to say, “How can I get fit?” again!

Family Bootcamp Adventures

If you like me are a working parent and find it hard to get that balance between work and family time, I might just have the solution for you. Family Bootcamp adventures will get the whole family together ,doing what we love, spending time with one another with the added bonus of getting our weekly exercise in at the same time. We as parents know that our kids follow our every move, watching carefully and then trying to do it themselves. My kids saw the exercise-routines that I did at home and before I knew it, Sarah was showing everyone how to do a lunge and Daniel was doing sit-ups like crazy.

Family Bootcamp Adventures will be a carefully thought out program that would suit and challenge both Parents and Kids. There would be hourly sessions each Saturday, Venue to be confirmed. Do not be put off by the word "bootcamp". The aim of the bootcamp is to get Parents and Kids to interact in a fun but challenging way.

Please comment yay on this post should you be interested (or nay if not) in joining the Family Bootcamp Adventures or e-mail gisela.leach@gmail.com

Hate those lovehandles

You don't need to follow a full blown diet in order to see results and by making simple changes to what you eat can produce some great results in the beginning. Here are a few examples of simple adjustments you could make.

1. Cut out the funk foods
   Sweets and fatty foods contain empty calories that have no use to your body at all and just get stored as fat.
   
2. Don't eat after 6pm
   By eating late at night and then going to bed your body wont have time to burn that food off or use it as energy therefore will get stored while you sleep.
   
3. Drink more water
   Water helps increase your metabolism and flush toxins from your body. Aim for 2-3litres a day.
   
4. Eat healthy fats
   Oily fish such as salmon contains healthy fats omega 3, 6 and 9. Healthy fats will help provide your body with the fats it needs. This will help prevent fat storage and regulate hormone levels.
   
5. Don't skip breakfast
   Missing breakfast will cause you to snack throughout the morning. They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day and it is. Your body would have been fasting throughout the night and will need food.

After your diet is in order the next thing that you should be doing is working out to burn body fat. You should be looking at either full body weight training workouts, high intensity cardio sessions or a mixture of both.

You should be aiming for at least 3 sessions per week and you can pick one of the workouts from this site by using the navigation bar on the left.

The combination or cardio training and healthy eating will start to reduce your fat deposits and you will start to lose love handles gradually. The next step is to tone and firm your abdominal muscles which will tighten everything up.

There are several exercises that are good for targeting your sides (oblique's) and are demonstrated below.

Top Tip
Don't just rely on side bends and side twists to lose love handles. Too much oblique work will cause the muscles to grow under the layer of fat and they will appear bigger.

A good home abdominal workout should include exercises for the entire abdominal section to balance out your body.

Love Handle Targeting Exercises

Dumbbell Side Bends

Dumbbell side bends really target your oblique's and when doing this exercise you should focus on tensing and crunching your abs as you do the movement.

Starting Position: Stand with your feet about shoulder width apart.
Hold a DB in each hand.

Laterally bend your torso to the side and then repeat to the other side.

Return to starting position.

If you do not have access to dumbbells then don't worry you can do them without any weights or use a house hold object such as a bag of sugar to add some extra resistance.

Russian Twists

This is another of my favourite abdominal exercises, it is so easy to do and you can feel it working your sides as you do each rep.

The exercise can be done with a medicine ball as shown or by holding a weight plate or any other moderately heavy item.

Alternatively you can do the exercise without any weight and just concentrate on your own bodies resistance as you do each rep.

There are plenty more abdominal exercises that target the oblique muscles, but the above two are just examples of some of the ones you could add to your workout.

You don't need to train your abs everyday in order to lose love handles. 1-2 training sessions per week will suffice. Below are examples of 3 different abs workouts you could choose from. Just tack them onto the end of a cardio session or weight training workout.

Abs Workout 1
Sit Ups
Leg raises
Twisting sit ups

Abs Workout 2

Crunches
Reverse crunches
Bicycle Crunch

Abs Workout 3
Double crunch
Knee Ins
Wood Chops (With a light dumbbell)

For each exercise perform 2 sets of as many reps as you can do. Rest 60 seconds between sets. Each week you should aim to do 5 more reps then you did the week before.

Summary

To melt away those love handles you need to do a combination of the following:

1) A calorie controlled diet
2) Regular high intensity exercise
3) Tone and firm your abdominal's

Anyone can achieve great results from their training if they are consistent and dedicated to achieving their goals.

A good point to remember is that once you have gotten rid of those ugly love handles you will need to maintain your nutrition and training plans in order for them to stay away.

Reaching my goals

Good morning guys. I know that I have been quiet lately and not posting as regularly as I should. I hope that you have been giving yourself all the attention that you need and deserve. Yesterday I officially started with my training to reach my goals of 57kg and 5km run in 30 mins by 30 June. I have my visual boards at home and on my desk at work to keep me motivated and to remind me of what my goals are. Yesterday I started again with my 5weeks to 5km program, but I also signed up for 12 weeks to 10km yesterday on SHAPE magazine's website. I will be getting my first program on Friday (the new week's program received every Friday) and will be following that for the next 12 weeks. My next 10km run is on the 12th/13th of May and I am very excited about it as my Hubby will also be doing his first 5km run.

It is so nice to see my team at work also committed to their own goals, I am so proud of everyone for taking the step in getting healthy.

Do not give up on your goals. And do not set easy goals for yourself. I read that a study has shown that people who set easy goals and reach their goals have a less sense of achievement than those who set higher goals, not achieving it 100%.

Have a good week. I will be posting regularly during my 12 week challenge. I will let you know what I have to do each day - if you want to join in the program.

Female Fitness for Real People: No, I Can’t Do a Pull-Up or Jog a Mile…Where Do I Begin?

Good news, I can run again. I obviously have to take it slowly for now and not push myself 2 much. The below article got me even more motivated, I will be concentrating on this website for the next couple of weeks and sharing all tips with you guys on how to start an exercise program, strategies and sticking to your goal.

if you want to check it out, dailyfit.tv

It all begins with your attitude and your mindset.   You may be 10 pounds overweight and a have a few trouble spots on your thighs or you may be 100 pounds overweight.  The only difference between the two is the fact that it will take the 100 pounds a bit longer to come off.  But, you know what?  The time is going to pass anyway, isn’t it?  Whether you are changing your lifestyle and learning new, healthy habits or sitting on the couch watching television and eating potato chips, the time will pass.  Won’t it be wonderful this time next year when you can look back and realise it was all worth the small changes you’ll need to make in your life?  Of course it will be!
With that in mind, let’s take a look at female fitness for real people. You may not be able to do a pull-up or jog a mile (yet), but here are the steps to get you there:

Start a Food/Exercise Journal, Right Now!

Tracking what you eat and how you exercise are important tools.  After even one week you’ll be able to assess what you’ve done and look for areas of improvement.  Don’t track your food by calories.  That’s not necessary.  Instead, check out some of our healthy eating articles to learn about the right foods.  Your female fitness plan should be focused on changes, not restrictions.

Exercise / Start Where You Are!

So you can’t do a pull up or run the mile, right?  That’s okay.  Start where you can by making changes to your daily routine.  Set aside a solid 30 minutes at least 3 times per week to get your heart pumping.  Bike riding, swimming, or power walking are a great way to begin.  The whole goal here is to get you “in the routine” and used to exercising.  Cardio exercise not only burns calories, but also promotes feelings of well being.  You’ll find yourself looking forward to your exercise routines and that’s when the changes really begin.  As you continue to push yourself and add new things to your sessions (like weight lifting or Pilates) you’ll begin to get a glimpse of that person you desire to see in the mirror.  That is the best motivator of all!

A Word on Food.

As we mentioned, female fitness is a way of life and shouldn’t be centred around negative emotions or restrictions.  That’s setting yourself up for defeat.  You’ll probably need to do a cupboard and refrigerator cleanse when you first begin. Get rid of packaged, processed snacks, sweets, quickie frozen meals, ice cream, and other tempting but unhealthy foods.  Now, is the fun part.  Start replacing those things with fresh, whole foods, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and lean meats.  You can read more on this in our other articles.  Pay attention to food labels and don’t assume that packaged food labeled ‘low-fat’ or ‘diet’ is actually good for you.
Now that you’ve got the first steps in place, it’s time to begin.  Start making changes today!  Half of the battle is over, you’ve made the decision to begin.  Now take action in that direction.  Remember…six months or a year is going to pass anyway.

The Futility of Counting Calories

This was a comforting read for me as I always look at the ladies in the magazines who are always on about calorie consumption and was wondering how I will ever get to that level.. Fear not, reading the below will make you feel better about it is as well and give you a more reachable target when it comes to healthy food/diet.

It is often amazing to me how much thought and effort women put into the calories in the food they eat.  I’m sure you’ve seen them, shopping in the grocery store juggling a calorie calculator, pen and paper, and even one of those popular diet guides, trying to determine how many calories each item of food has and determining how many meals each piece of food will supply.  I’ve even had the privilege of visiting a friend’s home and witnessing each food item being weighed and expertly calculated before it goes into the frying pan.  Does this sound like you?  While female fitness does mean you must concentrate on what you eat and what you don’t, these extreme calorie calculating measures are not always required.
How does your diet work?  Perhaps you eat one meal a day that takes up all of your daily calories and simply drink water the rest of the day.  Or may you eat small meals five or six times a day and spread your daily calories out.  Even though each diet plan contains the same amount of calories, the results may be different.  Why is this and what can you do about it?

Female Fitness Does Not Completely Depend on Calorie Intake

While setting a daily calorie limit is important, as long as the intake is reasonable and healthy, this limit is not the only thing to keep in mind.  The place where your calories come from is just as vital to whether you are able to remain healthy and fit.  For instance, the calories obtained from a platter of fruits and veggies will be much different than the calories obtained from a piece of fried chicken.
Even if the calorie intake is the same for both, you will most likely gain more from the platter of fruits and veggies than you would the piece of fried chicken.  You will feel fuller, gain energy from the natural sugars in the fruit, and obtain valuable vitamins and nutrients.  A piece of fried chicken may be tasty for a little bit, but instead of giving you the energy you need to get through the day, the grease will most likely weigh you down.  You will also miss out on many of the vitamins and nutrients you need for a healthy body.

Other Factors You Should Think About

As stated previously, the calories in your food should not be the only thing you consider when you are choosing which foods to eat and when to eat them.

• Eat fresh foods.  These are most often more healthy than processed foods, which contain ingredients you may not be able to even pronounce.
• Make sure there is enough protein in your diet.  Protein strengthens and refuels muscles, and these are important factors for any female fitness routine.
• Don’t skimp on the starchy carbs, like yams, brown rice, and red potatoes, especially if you are going to be doing strength training or any kind of workout.  These carbs are converted to glucose in the body, which provides the extra fuel you need for your workouts.  Limit these kinds of carbs to days you will be training, though.  They should not be eaten ever day all day.
• Each meal should consist of grams of protein, like chicken or fish, and fibrous carbohydrates, like vegetables.  Instead of counting calories, count grams of proteins and fibrous carbs instead.  This will help maintain a healthy fitness routine.
• Your metabolism will work much faster if you eat several small meals a day.  Try eating small portions every three hours instead of eating one big meal a day.  Before you know it, your waistline will be much slimmer.

Counting calories is cumbersome and unnecessary.  With the right food, you will have no problem sticking to your daily calorie limit and losing weight with your female fitness routine.  Try it out.  You know you want to.

Fun Fitness Facts - a must read

Some of this you might have known already, but still worth the read

Fun Fitness Facts About Exercise

• There is only one type of exercise that requires you hold your breath in order to accomplish the exercise. What is it? It's swimming underwater.
• If you had every single muscle in your body work together at the same time, you could lift about 50,000 pounds.
• If you are not a regular exerciser, by the time you are 65 you may experience as much as an 80% decrease in your muscle strength.
• By the time you have reached old age, you will have walked approximately 70,000 miles.
• The best way to judge whether or not you are exercising at too high of an intensity is to see whether or not you can carry on a conversation. If you can't, you may want to back off of the intensity just a little until you can.
• Bodies are creatures of habit. The more you exercise, the more your body learns to burn fat rather than storing it.
• No wonder your feet hurt - running puts four to seven times your body weight in pressure on your feet.
• Regular exercise is linked to better sex, because it can improve body image, energy, self-esteem and overall fitness.
• Dancing is a terrific and fun form of exercise that can improve cardiovascular fitness just like any other more formal type of exercise.
• If you're always in a bad mood, then getting fit just may help. Regular exercise can enhance mood and overall well-being.
• The top three factors that determine whether or not you will stick to your exercise routine include having support, finding a workout that you like and knowing what you're doing. Your recipe for fitness success just may be working out with a buddy doing something you love after having received formal education on how to do it.
• If you have an inactive spouse, chances are that you will be inactive, too.
• In spite of what you may have read, there is no "best time to exercise." It turns out that the best time to exercise is when it works for you.
• Women's top three recreational activities are walking, aerobics and working out, while men's top three are golf, basketball and walking.
• Regular exercise can reduce the signs and symptoms of PMS.
• Being dehydrated reduces exercise performance. Make sure you hydrate for peak performance during a workout.
• Visualization can help to improve your workout. By visualizing yourself completing the exercise before you actually perform it, then you will be able to perform the exercise with more intensity and effectiveness.
• Visualization of specific exercise actually causes the muscle synapses to fire as if you were performing the exercise. Does this mean that you can get all of your exercise in your mind? Not necessarily, but visualization can be a valuable part of your workout.

• People who cross-train with a variety of exercise are more fit and less injury-prone than those who exercise using only one or two exercise modalities.