workout911.com

Nothing conveys a message better than a list. It’s simple and to the point.

David Letterman’s made a career out of using top ten lists. I’ll stick with a top five. Here are my top five tips to supercharge your routine. Always keep these principles in mind and you’ll optimize your body’s potential while preventing exercise from going stale.

1) Pump it up: While almost any form of exercise is beneficial, lifting weights is the most important activity you can perform. Not only does it produce a shapely, firm physique, but it also helps to reduce body fat. The reason has to do with the metabolic properties of muscle tissue. For each pound of muscle that you gain, your body burns up to fifty additional calories a day at rest. Thus, by putting on a mere five pounds of muscle (something that can be accomplished in just a few months time), you’ll burn an additional 250 calories a day, even while lying on your couch watching TV! Better yet, most of the resting energy is derived from fat, so you ultimately will tap into those hard-to-reduce areas.

2) Leave your comfort zone: If you want to maximize fat loss, you need to push yourself during exercise. Not only does an intense workout burn more calories during your workout, but it heightens a phenomenon called excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC)—the amount of calories you burn after your workout is finished—which can amount to several hundred extra calories burned a day. Thus, when you lift weights, make sure the last few reps are a challenge to complete. With cardiovascular, perform interval training where you combine short bouts of high-intensity intervals (i.e. running) with bouts of lower-intensity intervals (i.e. walking). Bottom line: train harder and you’ll get an exponentially increase the number of calories you’ll burn.

3) Mix it up: They say variety is the spice of life—well it’s also the spice of exercise. The human body is a very adaptive organism and will stop responding if the same workout is performed over and over. What’s more, the repetitive stress to the same muscles and joints can lead to an increased incidence of injury. To avoid this trap, strive to do different things each time you work out. When you lift weights, perform different exercises and vary your repetition range. For cardio, cross train amongst several different modalities. Not only will you keep your workout fresh, but you’ll see better results and reduce your chance of getting injured.

4) Less is more: Not only isn’t it necessary to spend hours in the gym, it’s counterproductive. Here’s why: When you train, your body breaks down muscle tissue. If you don’t allow sufficient time for rest and recuperation, you ultimately become overtrained and results cease to exist. Provided you exercise properly, three hour-long sessions a week is all that’s needed to optimally develop your physique. Remember, it’s the quality—not the quantity—of exercise that produces results.

5) Follow your biorhythms: It has been postulated by some in the fitness industry that it’s best to work out in the morning because doing so accelerates fat burning. All too often, people get caught up in this “best time to train” syndrome and drag themselves out of bed to an early exercise session. The trouble is, not everyone functions well first thing in the morning. If you’re more of a night bird, chances are that you’ll sleepwalk through a morning workout. The net result is that fat burning will be impaired. The best advice is to train when you are at your best. If you are a morning person, go ahead and train early. But if you don’t really get going until you’ve been awake for several hours, by all means train later in the day. The most important thing is to get a good workout.

Stay Fit!

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Perhaps you’ve seen them. They’ve been all over the internet. Yep, those very unflattering photos of Jennifer Love Hewitt, megastar of movies and TV and underwear model, enjoying the beach in a bikini. The unscrupulous paparazzi who took the photos decided to get up close and personal, honing in on every inch of Jenny Love’s body, especially her backside.

Needless to say, the photos have created quite a stir in the tabloids and chat rooms across the country. Insults have flown back and forth between detractors and supporters, and spunky Jen has publicly decried all the hoopla, stating that she is comfortable with her body. Good for Jen.

Let’s get one thing straight: In no way is Jennifer Love Hewitt fat. Heck, she couldn’t be more than a size four! If that’s fat, what’s the standard for thin—a size zero? The issue here is one of body composition. Namely, Jennifer Love Hewitt sports a high fat to muscle ratio and—gasp!—she has the dreaded C-word: cellulite. In combination, these factors makes her bottom half appear lose and jiggly.

In reality, Jennifer Love Hewitt faces the same challenges as most women. Because of hormonal makeup, women tend to store fat in their lower bodies. Blame it on nature. In anticipation of pregnancy, estrogen diverts fat into the lower body, creating the classic pear-shaped gynoid physique. As the photos of JLH show, Hollywood stars are not immune to nature’s rule.

For those who aren’t happy with their posteriors, the question becomes, “Can you defy nature and tone up your tush?” To this, the answer is a resounding “yes!”—at least within your own genetic framework (sorry, you can’t get down to a size two if you have wide hips—that’s reality). The catch is that, in combination with a sensible diet, you need to adhere to a dedicated regimen of strength training. And that means training smart and training hard.

There are two primary types of exercises that develop the gluteals (the primary muscles in your butt): hip extension (straightening the hip joint from a bent position) and abduction (bringing your leg away from the midline of your body).

Let’s first tackle hip extension movements. Exercises such as squats, lunges, leg presses and the like all work the glutes by extending the hip. However, they are multi-joint movements that also receive substantial contribution from the quadriceps during performance. To really target the glutes, you need to squat or lunge as low as possible—otherwise the frontal thighs will dominate the movement. As a general rule, the lower you go, the greater the contribution from the glutes (and contrary to popular belief, deep squats are not problematic for most people unless they have existing problems with the knees—but this is a topic for another post).

Hip extension can also be achieved with single-joint movements such as stiff legged deadlifts, good mornings, back kicks, etc. These moves take the knee joint out of the exercise, thereby more directly targeting the glutes and other hip muscles. Make sure, though, that you aren’t bending at the waist! The must originate at the hip joint, with the spine in a neutral position throughout the lift.

Finally there are abduction movements, which target the smaller—but no less important—gluteus medius and minimus muscles. Abduction can be performed on machines (such as the ever so popular inner and outer thigh machines in most gyms), with cables or simply using your own body weight. Lying and kneeling leg abductions can be performed in the comfort of your own home and, if the exercise becomes to easy, simply attach leg weights to your ankles.

Combining these exercises into a cohesive routine is where the art of training comes in. The number of sets, reps, rest intervals, and other variables will be determined by individual goals, abilities, and experience. Take the time to understand your body and how it responds to training and you can achieve the physique you desire.

Stay Fit!

Brad

TAGS: Jennifer Love Hewitt, bikini photos, butt exercises, abduction, hip extension, squats, lunges, glutes.