Resistance Activities And Exercise
in Endurance, Exercise, Strength @ 9:21 am by Healthy Body Healthy MindYou do not have to join a gym or go to the pool regularly to develop and maintain good muscle tone. Effective training can be done in the comfort of your own home using your body weight as resistance, particularly in exercise such as push-ups and abdominal curls. Other method includes the use of some elastic exercise bands or weights for hands, wrists and ankle, which all are easily available in the market.
Apart from deliberate, specific exercises, the best way to ensure your muscles remain strong and with good endurance capacity is to use them on a regular basis. Performing tasks all by you, rather than the labor saving gadgets, or other people, is the best guarantee of muscle tone.
Try new activities, such as ice skating or ballroom dancing, so as to exercise more muscles. Every single time you use a muscle in a different way, you help your body remain healthy and strong.
Ideally, activities to improve strength and endurance should increase the muscles normal workload moderately. First increase the number of repetitions you do, and then up the weight; raise both steadily rather than attempt big increase too soon.
Also Take Care that when doing resistance exercises, don’t hold your breath or keep still for more than few seconds. That will only raise your blood pressure and we don’t want that. Instead, steadily breathe out when exerting maximum effort and breathe in as you relax the effort. It is advised that if you have a high blood pressure, it is necessary to consult a doctor before you start resistance exercises. Take Care
May 16th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
You know, I used to be overweight, but I just decided one day that I was going to change my lifestyle and slowly try to work the weight off. One specific goal I set for myself was to get a good 6 pack. A year and a half later, and I am in the best shape of my life. I didn’t do anything crazy — no gimmick diets, no personal trainers, no weight loss programs…just eating healthier and a regimen of good old fashioned exercise. To be more specific, I quit drinking sodas and cut junk food down to a minimum. Now I drink mostly water, gatorade, milk, and natural fruit juices. If I have to snack, I try to eat fruits or veggies. If I’m in the mood for chips I try to stick to the low fat baked variety or even “healthfood” products like Sunchips or garden chips. If I’m craving sweets I try to eat yogurt or low fat ice cream. For exercise, I mostly took a solo approach. I was a little too self conscious to join a gym (moreso becuase of how out of shape I was rather than how overweight I had become) so I did most of my working out at home. At first, I started off just doing push-ups, sit-ups, crunches, chin ups etc. For cardio I would jog or play basketball. Occasionally I would swim as well.
Honestly, that’s really all I did. It might sound too simple to work, but the hard part is sticking with it. Get into a routine of exercising 4 or 5 times a week for an hour or two, more if you can stand it. Stick to your guns about eating right on top of working out, and you too should start to see results in a few weeks. Once I actually started losing some weight, I decided the next step was to begin toning up. When I began this, I just made my home excersie schedule a little more strenuous as well as purchasing a few inexpensive pieces of exercise equipment to supplement my routine. I picked up a stationary bike, some dumbbells and a basic weight bench. Everything together came out to less than $800 and I wouldn’t be surprised if you can actually find them for even less. I don’t own an elliptical machine personally, but they are good pieces of equipment if anyone is thinking about getting one of those instead. They give a slightly different work out than a regular bike, but either one are good for a low difficulty cardio workout.
Just remember it IS possible to lose the weight, you just have to be serious about it. Good luck everybody, remember — you CAN do it. And YES, I have a great 6 pack now! =)
January 10th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Good article. I am an advocate of working out at home. All you need is a set of low weight dumbells, a chin up bar and your own weight and your resistance training will be fine.