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Weight Loss Exercise

Train Hard Rest Well


As an aspiring athlete (I think anyone trying to get in better shape is an aspiring athlete), your need to recover from your workouts and let your body heal. Resting, not relaxation becomes critical. As you sleep your body recovers instead of just recovering from the food that we eat and the quiet times that we are not working out.

For people that live a quiet and mostly sedentary life resting tends to mean sleeping. Hopefully this was just a past life for you but one of the main things that people do in a couch potato lifestyle is just exist, you probably know what I mean, wake up groggy, coffee, maybe food, work, watch TV, eat lots of snacks and then sleep.

sleepingAs an active, health concious person a lot of this gets turned on its head. We wake up feeling more rested and before or after work we will workout and find different ways to fill our time. I always find though that I am questing for a better way to get the rest that I need.

Why Do We get Muscle Soreness?

I find that my main recovery problems are muscle soreness and muscle weakness after my workouts. There is a major food component in this but I wanted to deal with rest and recovery today only. After any kind of overload to our muscles they are broken down and we lose the glycogen and at the same time the stress on the muscles can cause some pain.

The main problem that you are dealing with when you have muscle soreness is lactic acid buildup in your muscles and the microtrauma to your muscle fibers. Everyone that has worked out has felt this and although it can be painful, you will recover in a few days after resting correctly.

Rest and Recovery after Exercise

There are a few ways to recover after a good workout of any kind, we it a cardio or a muscle workout.

1. Stretching – Stretching should not be done before working out as it can cause you to pull cold muscles. What I find works best is to warmup the muscles and do my workout and then after every workout I stretch all of my muscles for 5 to 10 minutes. This really is the minimum as it helps build flexibility and you are in much better shape when you are flexible.

2. Sleep – as we know sleep is really really important. I know that I need 8 hours of sleep a night and the more you workout the deeper your sleep will be. There are a few things that we can do to get better sleep. I find that having quiet time for the hour before I go to sleep helps, studies actually show that if you have no TV, computer, or iPhone then you will fall asleep easier and I have to agree even though I will usually listen to a podcast as I am falling asleep. Also the darker your room is the better you will sleep, and keep the temperature down in your room.

3. Baths – Having a warm bath after you have cooled off will work well for your muscles. Baths are very soothing and many people say that having a bath with epson salts will help soothe sore muscles even better.

4. Meditation – I am very bad for neglecting this but there are many great changes in your physiology that happen when you meditate on a regular basis. The act of meditation also puts your mind in a more sleeplike beta level which helps concentration and restfulness as well.

These are a few of the things that you can do to improve recovery after your workouts. Why not add some of your own in the comments below?

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Weight Loss Exercise

6 Reasons Why You’re Gaining Weight While Working Out


Are you concerned because you’re working out and gaining weight at the same time? Many people work out and diet in order to lose excess pounds, but sometimes they gain weight instead. Before you start to panic or have doubts about your weight-loss program, let’s find out why you’re putting on more pounds.

Why Weight Gain While Working Out

Muscle is Denser Than Fat – If your workout routine is focused on strength training, you may have noticed an improvement in your muscle tone. Strength training builds stronger and bigger muscles, and this is actually a good thing for both men and women. Men want to have big biceps and washboard abs. Toned muscles on women flatter the figure.

When your body starts to replace fat with muscles from working out, you may experience a weight gain. Working out and gaining weight can happen because muscle tissues are denser than fat. As you develop more muscles, you may get heavier but your body will become sleek and trim. You may gain weight, but your figure will look great.

6 Reasons Why Youre Gaining Weight While Working Out

Can Workouts Lead to Weight Gain?

Too Many Calories – Just because you are working out is no excuse to eat more than you should. Sometimes, people consume more calories without knowing it. If your goal is to lose weight, dieting and exercise should go together. In order to lose weight, you must consume fewer calories than you burn in a day.

Eat foods that are rich in nutrients, including lean protein. Proteins provide amino acids required by the body to build muscles. You want to lose fat and gain muscles, because muscle tissues burn more calories compared to fat. Building more muscles will increase your metabolism, allowing you to burn extra calories even while resting.

Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle
burn the fat feed the muscle is an exercise and diet program. My review of Burn the Fat shows that it is designed and written by an ex-pro natural bodybuilder but is a system that was written for regular guys and gals. Teaching you how to workout and eat to lose weight.

Not Enough Cardio Exercise – If you want to lose weight faster, incorporate cardio or aerobic exercise into your workout program. You need at least 30 minutes of aerobic exercise for your body to get into a “fat-burning” stage. Perform cardio workouts at least three days a week to get the best results.

Not Getting Enough Sleep – You may be surprised to learn that lack of sleep can be the reason why you’re gaining weight while working out. Lack of sleep puts extra stress on your body, and it will cope by storing fat more efficiently. Besides, your body won’t be able to function properly if it’s not well rested. You’ll have low energy levels and will not feel like working out.

Try to get 8 hours of sleep each night. Keep in mind that regular exercise will help you sleep better.

Medical Condition – If you’re working out regularly but still gaining weight, you may want to consult a doctor and check for medical conditions that could be causing the weight gain. Hypothyroidism is a common medical condition that affects the metabolism and causes weight gain.

Medications – Certain medications and prescription drugs can make you gain weight, including steroids, diabetes medications, antidepressants, high blood pressure medications, and oral contraceptives. Some drugs cause fluid retention, which appears on the scales as weight gain.

When it comes to weight gain as a side effect of medication, you’ll have to balance the increase in weight against the health benefits offered by the medication.


6 Reasons Why You’re Gaining Weight While Working Out, 5.0 out of 5 based on 1 rating

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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.

Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle
burn the fat feed the muscle is an exercise and diet program. My review of Burn the Fat shows that it is designed and written by an ex-pro natural bodybuilder but is a system that was written for regular guys and gals. Teaching you how to workout and eat to lose weight.

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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