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Weight Loss Exercise

How to Lift Weights Properly for Strength Training



Ever wonder how to lift weights properly? Lifting weights is the best way to build muscle mass, gain strength, and improve your physique. However, strength training puts a lot of stress and pressure on your body especially when you begin working with heavy weights. Regardless of whether you are lifting heavy or lighter weights, it is vital to do so correctly. Before doing any strength training exercise, it is important to learn how to lift weights properly.

Always warm up before you begin your strength training exercises. Walking or jogging on a treadmill is a good way to limber up your muscles to avoid injury. There should always be a gym instructor or fitness professional present when you exercise. A gym instructor can show you how to do each exercise properly, what equipment to use, and how to use it.

How to Lift Weights Properly

How to Lift Weights Properly for Strength Training

How to Lift Weights Properly

Knowing how to lift weights properly will reduce the risk of injury and provide a more effective workout. The following tips are applicable when doing strength training exercises:

  • Choose a weight that allows you to perform 12 to 15 repetitions when you start out. Add more weights as you gain strength.
  • Control the weight and lift slowly from the original position. Return to the starting position slowly. Although you may be tempted to do so, do not allow the weight to drop quickly to the starting position. The downward motion is just as important as the upward motion. Both are necessary parts of lifting and will work your muscles in both directions.
  • When lifting, use your muscles to complete the motion and not momentum. Do not arch your back or rock your body to get the weights up. If you have to swing your body to lift weights, you may be trying to lift too much weight. Reduce the load and learn how to lift weights properly.
  • Move the weights through the full range of motion for the exercise. You should feel your muscles stretching and contracting fully with each repetition.
  • Don’t forget to breathe continuously while lifting. As you lift the weight, exhale through your mouth. Inhale through your nose as you lower the weight. A lot of people hold their breath when lifting weights. This is a dangerous practice as it can cause your blood pressure to spike.
  • Use a spotter when doing exercises where you may accidentally drop a barbell or dumbbell on yourself. Part of knowing how to lift weights properly includes making sure there’s another person close by to monitor you when you are working with free weights. You’ll be able to push yourself harder if you have a spotter who can help make sure you do not injure yourself as you make that final rep.

You always have to remember to be careful, mindful and focussed when lifting weights properly. Strength training can transform your body when done right.


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Weight Loss Exercise

How to Stay Fit While Traveling

We all travel and I am always asking myself how to stay fit while traveling. Well trainer Jon Gallo has written this great article full of tips and I hope you find these travel fitness tips as great as I did

How to Stay Fit While Traveling

How to Stay Fit While Traveling

How to Stay Fit While Traveling – By Jon Gallo

Many fitness enthusiasts find it difficult to follow their normal exercise plan while traveling. Unfamiliar environments, tightly-scheduled business meetings, or lack of exercise equipment may hamper even a fitness fanatic’s best intentions for staying fit while on the road. Jon Gallo is a certified fitness trainer. When planning your next business trip or vacation, he offers the following tips for putting together an exercise program that travels with you.

If you’ve worked hard to establish a good fitness routine, going on a business trip doesn’t have to mean your healthy habits will be derailed. Here are some tips on how to stay fit while traveling. You can keep your momentum and endorphins flowing and maintain your fitness level when traveling. How? For one thing, keep moving. “Drink a minimum of eight 8-ounce glasses of water each day. Airport food, sitting on a plane, jet lag – all contribute to bloat. The best way to fight it is to stay hydrated,” says Jon Gallo.

  • Use good body mechanics when you lift your suitcases up to the check-in counter.
  • Lift from your knees, not your back.
  • Be aware of your posture as you carry your bags.
  • Even though you’ve left behind your daily routine, try to eat three meals a day, maintain a balanced diet and eat plenty of fruit and vegetables.

How to Stay Fit While Traveling – Eating Tips

If you’re going to eat a high-fat meal, eat a smaller portion, or order an appetizer instead of a main course. Split desserts with a friend. Rest. If your schedule is shot and you’re not sleeping enough at night, take cat naps whenever you get the chance.  Stretch in the morning and evening, especially if you’ve been sitting all day. If you will be drinking alcohol at business mixers, drink a lot of water between events.  Pack snacks: bananas and apples, yogurt, protein bars. You can make meal replacement shakes in your room. You don’t need a blender, just a container with a tight fitting lid, large enough to shake the contents.

How to Stay Fit While Traveling – Workout Tips

To know how to stay fit while traveling it is critical to have a  workout plan. To find out if your gym reciprocates its membership with a gym where you’ll be traveling, log onto the International Physical Fitness Association’s Web site, http://www.ipfa.us/, or ask at your home health club before you leave town. Jon Gallo says that, “Three to five days off from a strength routine can give your muscles a rest. But you wouldn’t want to go a week or more without serious exercise and a short respite for your biceps doesn’t mean you should ever let your cardio workout go.”

  • Ask your travel agent about hotels that offer fully equipped gyms, pools, and/or other fitness facilities.
  • Bring along a CD or Ipod with your favorite music and work out in the privacy of your hotel room.
  • Pack a jump rope for a go-anywhere aerobic session. Invest in “travel weights” -inflatable weights that can be filled with water or sand when training, folded and stored while on the road.
  • Plan active recreation during vacations -check out the local golf course, riding stable, and so on.
  • When site-seeing, forget the tour bus and walk. You’ll not only see more, but you’ll be sneaking in some extra activity.

For more fitness options, place in your luggage a Resist-A-Tube or any of the home exercise tubing, a stability ball, jump rope or exercise video. ”If you like classes, make your own class in your room,” offers Jon Gallo. If you work with a personal trainer, ask him or her to design an exercise plan before you leave town. When you’re sitting on a plane or in a conference room, take deep breaths occasionally, tighten your stomach muscles, then relax.

How to Stay Fit While Traveling – On Transportation

Travelers need to periodically flex and stretch the hamstrings and hip flexors, the muscle at the upper part of the leg that connects into the pelvis. For women who spend the day in high heels, a walk around the room toe-up, heel-down will stretch the calf muscles. Or, do toe raises by putting the heels on the floor and stepping up onto a telephone book. “Men often complain of being cramped when traveling,” states Gallo. “They need to stretch their lower back and legs.” He recommends the cat stretch. Get up on your hands and knees, arch your back for 15 seconds, then release. Repeat.

Jon Gallo points out that the more comfortable you are with operating fitness machinery at your home gym, the easier it will be to set up unfamiliar equipment when you’re on the road. And consider Thera-Bands, which you can buy online and at most sporting goods stores. Thera-Bands are heavy-duty elastic tubing, graded by color according to elasticity and tightness that you can use in resistance exercises. They are easy to pack and you can do a complete maintenance workout with them.

FIT FLYING

Air travel may be fast and convenient, but for many of us, it can be uncomfortable and restrictive due to cramped cabins and sardine-like seating. The following tips can help you make the most of your next airplane trip by helping you stay flexible and fit while you fly.

  • DEEP BREATHING is an instant-relaxer and can be done anywhere at any time. Try taking 4-5 deep, cleansing breaths several times during your flight.
  • RELAX YOUR SHOULDERS by bending forward slightly, hands on knees and “rolling” your shoulders in a circular motion 5 or 6 times. Repeat the “roll” in the opposite direction, then finish up by “shrugging” your shoulders up and down 5 times.
  • RELAX YOUR BACK by reaching overhead, holding elbows, and bending side to side. Repeat 5 times in each direction.
  • STRETCH YOUR LEGS by alternately lifting your knees toward your chest and bringing your body toward your knee to the count of eight.
  • RELEASE YOUR FEET by “drawing” the alphabet with one foot then the other.

These are great How to Stay Fit While Traveling tips that I hope that you can use this summer.

How to Stay Fit While Traveling

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Weight Loss Exercise

Fast Fitness Success


Fast fitness success may seem difficult for many but really it is something that you can achieve with planning and a set of goals. Losing weight and staying fit might seem like it is an uphill battle at times. The process does take a lot of patience and hard work, but many people get frustrated or lose sight of their goals only after a few short months. While being physically fit definitely takes effort, there are some things you should remember in order to stay successful in your fitness journey.

Keep these three simple fast fitness success tips in mind when you embark on the path towards a healthier you, and you should be successful in due time.

Tips for Fast Fitness Success

Fast Fitness Success

Fast Fitness Success

You have to change your lifestyle. Being fit does not just mean you can walk a great distance for a long period of time, or that you are not sick. True physical fitness requires an actual lifestyle change. Quitting smoking and the consumption of alcohol (except in moderation) as well as eating a healthier diet and getting proper exercise all require a change in the way you live your life.

To achieve fast fitness success you have to make changes, and quickly. You can make these lifestyle changes quickly by slowly incorporating new healthier meals in your routine once a week, as well as adding exercise and changing your lifestyle. Then slowly adding a few better meals a week in until they replace all meals. The same goes with exercise: start walking a few days a week for a short distance, and then increase the length of the walks as well as the frequency. Eventually you’ll be able to incorporate tougher, more rigorous exercises.

Invest in some fitness equipment, or use it at the local gym. Whether you decide to buy a piece or two of good exercise equipment or just go to the gym, using this equipment will make your workouts easier and more effective towards your fast fitness success. Utilize the machines available to you and work them to your advantage.

It’s much more fun to work out with some fitness tools to help you out along the way, and they can help to spot tone or work on certain problem areas, depending what they are what the machine does.

Utilize a fitness trainer to help you along the way. Certified fitness trainers are another great tool that can help you to get fit. They are able to show you how to get the most out of a work out, assist you with tracking your success, and guide you to doing things the safe way so you minimize risk of personal injury.
You can hire a personal trainer if you have the money, but most local gyms offer the help of their trainers as part of the overall membership plan. This combined with a new, healthy lifestyle change and good fitness equipment should guarantee your fast fitness success when it comes to getting fit.

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