A recent article in the paper talked about a couple of senior women who were pumping iron for their health. One of these women recently competed in a national weightlifting competition, in the 65-69 age group. The other, 59, also competed in this national event. The older of the two lost about 80 pounds after getting into an exercise program that included strength training.

Strength training is important as you age, both to keep your mobility and to keep bones strong. It is also important for keeping your metabolism elevated and losing weight. Whether using weights, tubing, or just the weight of your own body as resistance, strength or resistance training is necessary to help fight anti-aging.

This is important for both men and women. The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons recommends strength training with weight-bearing and resistive exercise for all age groups. If you want to reduce your chances of falling or losing your mobility as you get older, you need proper strength. You definitely need to work on your mobility and flexibility to keep your muscles and joints from getting stiff.

Strength training is also important in staying lean. Your muscles burn calories all day long and can keep your metabolism from slowing down too much as you age. You will lose some muscle mass no matter what, but if nothing is done, you will lose more than necessary.

I remember seeing a report on aging a while back that featured a woman who was 101 years old. She exercised on a regular basis, including strength training. She was very mobile, independent, and energetic, still singing in her church choir. She led a busy life and appeared no older than 80. So is exercise and proper strength training a good way to fight the aging process? Maybe you should ask 92 year old fitness pioneer Jack LaLanne. The guy looks pretty healthy to me.

While the two women mentioned earlier were involved in weightlifting competitions, that isn’t necessary. Working your muscles against some form of resistance that challenges them is what’s important. That could be dumbbells or just your own bodyweight. It doesn’t require expensive equipment. Ideally, at least half of your training should occur in a standing position, because this is where movement occurs, on your feet. When standing, you work on your balance at the same time you build strength. Only working on machines where you lie or sit down takes away the balance aspect, which is important to avoiding falls, no matter what your age.

Strength training will make it easier to go up stairs, get up from a chair, or bend over and pick something up, things that give some seniors problems. Problems that can be avoided by most with just a little work on their part. Remember, the focus should be on prevention!.

Brian Morgan is a strength and conditioning specialist and massage therapist. For more information on posture, mobility and flexibility training, go to brianmorganfitness.com brianmorganfitness.com. or posture-n-motion.blogspot.com posture-n-motion.blogspot.com

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Tags: anti-aging, cialis, Hair, massage, massage therapist, muscle mass

The single most important fact that you should know about losing abdominal fat is that there is no magical formula that can make your abdominal fat vanish in a jiffy. Losing abdominal fat permanently requires patience and commitment to some basic tips. But do not lose heart. It is a feat anyone can accomplish the easy way if one understands the reasons why abdominal fat develops and why it seems so frustratingly resistant to all those exercise or diet plans you have tried out but given up too soon to see results.

The first thing you must understand is that there is no physical exercise that can reduce fat from a specific part of the body. When you burn fat for energy, as during an aerobic activity, fat loss will occur systemically, i.e., from all over the body. But since fat distribution naturally varies from person to person, depending on inherited genetic factors, some people will tend to lose abdominal fat faster while others may lose fat at say hips or thighs faster. So do not compare your abdominal fat loss graph with others.

Another thing, doing countless sit-ups and leg-raises or slogging out day in and day out on the latest abs equipment without paying heed to your diet and an aerobic activity is not going to make your abdominal fat go away. What these exercises do is to shape up and tone your abdominal muscles, but do nothing to metabolize away the layers of fat covering them. That is why the shaped and toned muscles remain elusive to the eye.

There is one and only one way of losing abdominal fat the easy way, and that is with the combination of a balanced and nutritive diet, aerobic activity, and strengthening exercises for abdominal and other muscles. The best kind of workout to burn the layers of abdominal fat along with overall fat comprises a cardiovascular or aerobic exercise like brisk walking, jogging, cycling, dancing, swimming or stair climbing, combined with abdominal exercises like crunches and hip lifts, and also weight training for other muscle groups. Weight training increases your lean muscle mass and hence your metabolic rate, implying that you burn more fat even while resting.

Glycogen (stored carbohydrates) is the primary fuel source during the first 10 minutes of an aerobic exercise. Substantial fat burning starts only after stored glycogen is depleted. Hence, the key to fat loss is working out at moderate intensity continuously for about 45–60 minutes. However, this comprises only 50% of the abdominal fat loss plan. The remaining 50% contribution comes from diet control. Abdominal exercises will help strengthen the muscles and give definition to the reducing midsection.

However, if your calorie intake is higher than your calorie expenditure, you are bound to put on abdominal fat as well as general body fat regardless of how diligently you work out and how many abdominal crunches you do – it is simple mathematics in action. Ideally, spread your calorie intake into five small meals a day instead of 2 or 3 big ones. Include a variety of foods that are rich in fiber and low in fat and sugar, with about 55% of the calories coming from carbohydrates, 30% from protein, and 15% from fat. Avoid carbohydrates late in the evening.

Remember, when it comes to losing abdominal fat, you have to adopt a holistic, whole-body approach – there are absolutely no shortcuts. A surgical shortcut like liposuction also becomes meaningless if you are not going to control to your diet, because removing fat cells from the abdomen by liposuction will lead to excess fat storage elsewhere – perhaps under the chin or on knees or shoulders – where it may look even worse than at the abdomen.

Lastly, here is a fact that is not exactly what you would want to hear: even if you are on a holistic exercise-cum-diet fat loss plan, abdominal fat is most likely going to be the last fat to leave your body.

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For more weight and fat loss ideas, visit fatburnworks.com/weightloss fatburnworks.com/weightloss.

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Tags: diet, exercises, Heart, muscle mass

The bodybuilding debates will never end. The endless arguments over how an effective muscle-building program should be structured will most likely continue until the end of time. Just scour the Internet message boards, flip through any muscle magazine or talk to the sales rep at your local supplement store. No matter who you talk to or what you read, it seems that everyone is an expert these days.

If everyone is an expert, confident in their own ideas and beliefs, how can the average beginner possibly know who to listen to? He or she is instantly confronted with endless questions that seem to have no clear-cut answer.

How many days should I train per week? How many sets should I perform for each muscle group? What type of rep range should I be using? What are the most effective exercises for stimulating muscle growth? How long should my workouts last?

These questions go on and on until he or she is eventually led to believe that building muscle is an infinitely complex process involving rocket-science precision and an intimate understanding of human physiology. I mean, that’s what takes to build muscle, right? Wrong! Believe me, there are answers to these important questions, and if you are willing to put in the time and effort you will most definitely find them. But that’s not what this article is about.

You see, amidst all of the confusion and endless debating, the majority of lifters end up losing sight of the big picture. Beyond all of the specific workout principles, such as rep range and exercise selection, remains one crucial principle, a principle that lies at the very heart of the muscle growth process. If this principle is not given full attention, or even worse, completely ignored, building muscle becomes next to impossible.

The bottom line is that muscles grow as they adapt to stress. When you go to the gym and lift weights, you create “micro-tears” within the muscle tissue. Your body perceives this as a potential threat to its survival and reacts accordingly by increasing the size and strength of the muscle fibers in order to protect against a possible future “attack”. Therefore, in order to continually increase the size and strength of the muscles, you must focus on progressing each week by either lifting slightly more weight or performing an extra rep or two. In doing this, your body will continue to adapt and grow to the ever-increasing stress.

Building muscle is all about building strength!

So what is the most powerful muscle-building tool available? Quite simply, it is a pen and a piece of paper!

Every time you go to the gym you must write down exactly what you accomplished and then strive to improve upon it the following week. If you aren’t always getting better, then you’re either staying the same or getting worse. Every week you should have an exact plan of attack ready to be executed. You absolutely cannot afford to start throwing weights around aimlessly without a clear-cut goal in mind.

The specifics of building muscle are important to understand and implement, but regardless of what style of training you’re currently using the ultimate deciding factor between success and failure is progression. You can sit around all day obsessing over specific principles, but the bottom line is that if you aren’t getting stronger every week, you absolutely will not be getting any bigger. Examine your training approach closely. If you haven’t been paying laser-like attention to the amount of weight you’ve been using, the number of reps you’ve been performing, and then striving with every ounce of your energy to improve upon those numbers each week, you are completely ignoring the very foundation of the muscle growth process. If you want to see the best gains in muscle mass and strength that you possibly can, a pen and a piece of paper is the most important tool you could possibly have in your arsenal.

Sean Nalewanyj is a bodybuilding expert, fitness author and writer of top-selling Internet Bodybuilding E-Book: The Truth About Building Muscle. If you want to learn how to build the greatest amount of lean muscle mass and strength possible in the shortest period of time, visit his website: musclegaintruth.com/ MuscleGainTruth.com/

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Integrating weight training into your regular exercise program can and does assist in fat burning and weight reduction for two significant reasons. The first reason being the muscle fiber type or types that are employed and the second reason is an explicit increase in metabolic rate.

Weight training, or as some refer to as strength or resistance training, should be consistently performed at a minimum of 3 times per week.

Although a skilled-personal trainer can prescribe a condition-appropriate program for you, as a rule of thumb it is recommended that a minimum of one set per exercise for each major muscle group be performed. Even more effective is the performance of several peak-intensive compound (multi-muscle) exercises. The major muscle groups are the chest,quadriceps, abdominals, hamstrings, low-back, upper back, biceps, triceps, neck and shoulders.

Each exercise should consist of about 8-20 repetitions, done in a slow, controlled manner, while emphasizing proper form and joint position. The resistance should fatigue the muscle group near the end of the set.

Simply put, the muscle fibers are the fundamental element of the muscle. The three types of muscle fibers are: slow twitch (slow oxidating (SO) or type I), fast twitch (Fast oxidative - glycolyme (FOG) or type IIA) and pure fast twitch (FT or
Type IIB). Slow twitch fibers get most of their energy from fat burning, a process that requires oxygen. This is also fueled by the fibers’ ample supply of blood vessels, glycogen, mitochondria (cellular furnaces where fat and nutrients are
burned) and the blood fats inside of various related cells. The pure fast twitch fibers are dissimilar in that they contract rapidly and fatigue easier. These fibers get their energy from burning glycogen. There are fewer mitochondria in the
cells that compose fast twitch fiber; therefore, these fibers burn less fat than slow twitch fibers.

Similarly yet distinctively, the fast twitch fibers do also contract rapidly, but sustain a greater level of endurance. This may be because they have more mitochondria than the pure fast twitch fibers, but less than the slow twitch fibers. By far the most remarkable benefit of peak or high intensity weight training (or extended duration aerobics) is that you can change pure fast twitch fibers into regular fast twitch oxidative fibers. This particular variety of high intensity weight training activity increases the amount of mitochondria in the fast twitch fibers to levels much higher than those found in the slow twitch fibers. And as you might have guessed, with more mitochondria present and employable in the muscle cells, more fat is burned. This is the key to weight management.

Your metabolism and the rate at which it functions represents the amount of energy you need on a daily basis to sustain your life functions. Even when lounging or sleeping, muscle tissue is very active and can require up to 45 calories per pound per day. Therefore, losing muscle (muscle atrophy) or more
specifically not maintaining muscle results in a decline in your metabolic rate. Subsequently, with less muscle, your body requires less energy.

Food (nutrients) once used as energy is now stored as fat. A prudent, long term and consistent weight training program is the greatest contributor to avoiding a decrease in lean muscle mass and overall metabolic rate, as well as metabolic and body systems function diminution. Commencing a regular weight training program can and should take some effort. But no matter what your age or level of conditioning might be, weight training will fuel an abiding lifestyle and add longevity, functionality and vitality to your
life.

Kurt’s website kreatefitness.com kreatefitness.com, as well as his Provo Utah Private Fitness Facility Synergy Fitness Systems, specializes in in providing leading edge exercise and nutrition programs and the Neo Physis super premium supplement line. All of these superior products offer superior results.

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