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Weight Loss Exercise

How to Prevent Injuries This Summer


I have always found that the best way to get started on something is to do it for consecutive days. Exercise is no different than anything else but in the past I have been terrible for this as I used to never do enough to prevent injuries

What I have always done is set a goal, lets say to run a 10k. Well I go in gung ho and run hard everyday for a week, not getting started and moving up in distance but just moving up too quick and I end up with lots of aches and pains and injuries that just end up stopping me. This is bad.

What happens when we start and exercise program is that we need to strengthen a few things. We need to strengthen our will, our tenacity, our strength, our joints, and our form. Lets looks at each of these.

Prevent Injuries By Working Up

How to Prevent Injuries This SummerStrengthen our Will – The very first day that you go for a walk or run, or even a weight workout you will be excited and carve out a piece of your day to squeeze it in. We are all busy and fill everyday so something falls off that day. What falls off? TV, or Facebook, or just some quiet time, even sleep sometimes. Well after that first day, especially after the first week life invades again.

For me my internet surfing and quiet time have to be sacrificed to get a workout in unless I workout at lunch. The trouble is that after a few days of this for most people, me included means that life is not the same as it once was. I miss idle time, I miss just “catching up”. But these priorities are not as important as a daily workout. In my household workouts are a top priority but in most households they are not. So what do you do? Strengthen your will, get serious about your exercise priority and realize that there are no shortcuts. You can workout at lunch (like I tend to do) but if that is not convenient then maybe getting up an hour earlier to workout will help. Whatever it is this is a painful change in your schedule.

Strengthen our Tenacity – I call it this because I am not much of a runner. If I start running then a few minutes in I will think about walking for a few minutes. After about 20 minutes of running I want to just be on the couch. Again this is tough at the beginning but exercise in the beginning is always tough. After a few workouts, and I really mean a few like 5 or 6 workouts your brain gets less lazy, and your body is able to get these workouts done and you don’t have the lazy brain telling you to stop because your body knows it can handle more.

Our Strength – Leg strength and arm strength, even core strength takes time to increase. The trouble is that we get sore. After a weight or cardio workout you feel invigorated but in the morning it is hard to get out of bed. I feel this most in my legs and lower back but truth is that your body will get the hang of it and strengthen pretty quick unless you take a week or more off of your training. This is another reason to not be dumb like me but to progressively up your output as you get your workouts, or new style workouts going.


How to Prevent Injuries This SummerOur Joints – This is a tough one for me. Whenever I start running I know that my legs and back will get sore later but what really has always stopped me is my joints. I have trouble with my hips and my knees and always have. One of the problems with me is that I have a pretty big frame with a fair amount of muscle on it and I don’t think that 200 pound guys are really built to run.

What I have always found is that there are alternatives to hit joints and the internal ligaments better. I find that bike riding has always strengthened my knee joints since there is a lower amount of force but a huge number of reps when you ride a bike. Try to find these high rep ways to strengthen your joints and you will be in much better shape to make them work better.

Our Form – This is critical. Have you ever seen a good long distance runner in training? These guys are awesome. They have short strides, float between strides, and seem to make the action more effortless. This is good form and this makes all the difference to all of the points above. If you learn proper form then the mechanics of the exercise will make things much easier for you and lead to less injuries and a much more enjoyable time training.

Another opposite example of this is a new weight lifter. Have you ever seen a guy on his first time doing lat pulldowns or bench presses? It is all about jerking the weight up and down, once you learn the biomechanics of the exercise you will see people with really smooth reps up and down and there is a much more even and steady force on the muscles.

Safest Way to Move Up Our Training

Really there are no excuses for bad form. The easiest way if you are running is to join a running club, if weightlifting get a few workouts from a personal trainer, and otherwise with most sports you can have someone record you on an iphone or video camera and then after watching this you can go to youtube and watch how a pro moves and see what you are missing.

All this leads to progressive exercise. I know that just for my wife and I starting to do distance walking for our Kidney March we have to eventually get to 100 kilometers in 3 days. The forst week is just a 3 kilometer walk for three days which is easy, but after 8 weeks there are a couple of 20 kilometer walks. Finding time for a 40 minute walk is ok now and our muscles and joints can take it but finding 4 or 5 hours a day in a few weeks will be tougher on our time, muscles, and joints. Having a chance to progressivley move up from 3 kilometers in 40 minutes, to 5 kilometes in and hour and 10 kilometers in 2 hours over a few weeks will allow everything from our style of walking to our joints, our will, and our muscles to get stronger

Follow these steps to prevent injuries and you should have a much more safe and enjoyable summer


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Weight Loss Exercise

Quit Smoking With Exercise



One Great way to help you with kicking the legal weed is to quit smoking with exercise. When you decide to stop smoking, you’ll bring on other changes in your life as well. Smoking is a very addictive habit, meaning that it is very hard to quit. There are a lot of changes that take place, although exercise can be a big help to you when you decide to quit.

Try to set a new routine, such as working out or going to the gym. If that isn’t possible, you should try waking up earlier and going for a short walk. If you can turn that walk into a run or a jog, it is going to be very stimulating and the best way that you can start your day.

Quit Smoking With Exercise

Quit Smoking With Exercise

Quit Smoking With Exercise

Keep in mind that to quit smoking with exercise doesn’t really mean pumping metal. If you don’t have the time to stop by the gym every day, then it isn’t really that big of a problem, as you can always choose to workout at home.

Whether you choose to workout at home or at a gym, you should always remember that regularity is the key. It isn’t getting started that’s the difficult part, it’s sticking to a regular exercise program that is difficult and proves to be stumbling block for most people.

Some people have a great start. They will buy track suits, gym wear, running shoes, and a lot of other gear, so their first day at the gym is almost like a celebration. As the days go by, they find it very difficult to meet the demands and their routine will slow down a lot and finally come to a complete exercise burnout.

One mistake that several people make is choosing the evenings to exercise. If evenings fit your lifestyle, then it’s fine. For most people however, the evening hours are when they are completely pooped. By the evening most of us are drained, and simply too tired for exercise. Therefore, it is always best to set some time aside for exercise in the morning.

In the morning, wake up a half an hour or so earlier, put on your shoes, and hit the road. Most roads are less crowded in the morning and less polluted as well, making it a wonderful and relaxing way to start the day.

Change Beverages to help Quit Smoking

You should also steer clear from the coffee and try tea instead. If you are moving around in the house, try playing music. You can also redecorate your room by adding a few pictures around. When you redecorate, you should get rid of everything that reminds you of smoking.

Plan your day where you’ll have something fun to do at the end of the day. It doesn’t need to be something that involves money, as you don’t want to end up bankrupt. Spending time with family, playing games, or going for a walk with your family are all good activities.

Watching television doesn’t really fit into the list. The reason is because television isn’t something that demands a lot of attention. You can easily do something else while you are watching television.

Stress Reduction to Quit Smoking

You should also make a list of things that build up your stress and try to avoid them. If it isn’t possible, you should try to find out some some ways to bust stress and use them. Whatever you do, you shouldn’t use stress as an excuse to start smoking.

There are many other methods that you can use to beat stress. You can try breathing exercises, mediation, or even music. Another great way to beat stress is using the distressing ball. If you don’t have one or access to one, you can always wiggle your fingers and toes. This too is a great and natural method to beat stress.

Use these tools as a way to cut down and especially if your want to quit smoking with exercise.

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Weight Loss Exercise

How to Workout in Less Time


Everyone should learn the basics of how to workout in less time. One of the real problems that I have seen with people is a lack of a good plan when getting started in a gym. You look at the big loud guys, see what exercises they are doing and subconsciously or not you start doing the same things. Of course the big guys are breaking their body parts up and working each set until failure with lots of long breaks between sets.

Often you don’t need long rest between sets and you never need to spend more than 45 minutes doing a weight workout, in fact mine usually take me about 30 minutes. I think lots of people would like to know how to workout faster.

So here are some rules on how to workout in less time.

1. Start with a weight based warmup – I start by doing one easy set of each (usually with machines) bench press, shoulder press, lat pulldowns, rowing. Many people will start with 5 or 10 minutes on a bike, treadmill, or elliptical trainer to get the blood flowing and that is perfectly fine too but I like to engage the muscles.

2. Do weight workouts faster – Sure we need a break between working our individual muscles but a great way to workout in less time, get more done, and get your heart working, is to do exercises back to back. There are two methods to do this circuit training and supersetting and you can really mix these up between workouts. I personally work all my muscles in each workout three times a week.

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3. Cooldown and abs – I like to do my stretching after the workout and do a few sets of abs

Then I am done. The biggest part of the time of my workout is spent doing the actual weights and the best way to save time while doing the weights is either those supersets or the circuit training so I will explain how I do those here. Just to let you know I do both of these forms of exercise actively, I will do one for a few weeks and then switch to the other for a few weeks just because mixing it up with your muscles is so important to keeping interested and making gains continue without plateaus eating up your time.

Circuit Training To Workout in Less Time

Circuit training simply means that you are doing one long set or sets to work all your muscles. As you go between exercise you do not take a break and by the end of the set of sets you are exhausted and it probably takes 8-10 minutes to go through each one of these circuits. This is the first and most common method of how to workout in less time.

I like to start with my legs, chest, back, shoulders, biceps, and triceps, in that order. There reason for this is that as you get more tired and winded it is harder to work your big muscles like legs or back or chest near the end. Also after doing back your biceps are a bit tired and after doing shoulders or chest your triceps are tired so I leave those until the end.

Here is a sample circuit training set

Leg press, leg curls, bench press, seated rows, shoulder press, alternating curls, tricep pushdowns.

All of these exercises would be sets of 1o or so and almost until exhaustion (make sure you have the weight that you can’t do another rep after the set) and make sure you are doing each rep at a decently slow rate. You want to get the workout done fast but each set should be done slowly. There is very little break between exercises and after your set you will really want to take a few minutes before the next long set and get a good long drink of water as well.

Do two or three of these sets. for your workout.

Supersets To Workout in Less Time

How to Workout in Less Time

How to Workout in Less Time

Supersets are another way to get more done quickly. I will do two exercises back to back and then move to two other exercises. the idea is that I am exhausting the muscle group much quicker and by the end the muscles do really hurt. This is similar in time to circuit training but much more focussed for each set of two muscle groups.

Here is a sample superset workout

I will start with chest and back in this example and I don’t usually do legs in my supersets as they are tough enough on their own. I will so bench press and seated rows only for these two exercises and try and really kill it. I do a set of bench press with a fairly heavy weight for 8 or 10 reps and then as soon as I get finished I will move to the seated rows and do the same, after that set I go back to the bench, raise the weight by 20 pounds and do maybe 7-9 reps as I am more tired but my chest really has not recovered so I am not as strong yet. Then I go to the seated rows and just the same add 20 pounds and get as many reps as I can.

Those are the first two parts of the bigger set. Now that I am winded I will go back to the bench with the same weight on still and get as many reps as I can. At this point my chest is really tired and I can shoot for about 5 or 6 reps at most and then strip off the 20 pounds that I had added earlier and get another 3 or 4 reps out. My chest is burning and I am done with that. I then limp over to the seated row and do the same with a few reps, stripping some weight, and then getting a few more reps in.

I then take a break and do the same thing with a rotation of shoulder press, tricep pushdowns. Take a break and then do a mini circuit of abs and biceps.

Doing the Supersets like this is very taxing and I am always really sore the next day but if I try doing to many workouts like this I start really losing my motivation. It is really hard to do effectively for a long time.

As you can see from these examples there are a few ways to really change things up in your workout and in the end I am still able to work my whole body in one workout without spending too much time at the gym and really making the most of the time.

By trying circuit training or superset style workouts like this is the secret of how to workout in less time and really make you work for it. Try it out and tell us what you think of these methods below


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