Thursday, April 23, 2009

What's Important About Proper Exercise

The Benefits of Proper Exercise



Proper exercise is extremely important to a healthy, well-balanced body. So many people are looking specifically at changing their diet to get more fit, but that is only half the battle. In order to get the maximum benefits from a healthier eating lifestyle, a healthier exercise lifestyle needs to be developed and followed, as well.



Some of the benefits of proper exercise are:



The benefits of aerobic exercise

- Strengthens and builds up our heart muscle and our bones.

- Lessens our body’s fat store because they are being used to fuel our activity level.

- Increases the level of oxygen to our lungs and bloodstream. This occurs because, during aerobic exercise, we breathe more deeply. The more oxygen that reaches the lungs, the more oxygen that can get into our blood. (Since oxygen is our most important nutrient, this is a great benefit!)

- We will not become breathless when doing activities like climbing stairs or walking around a shopping center. Doing aerobic exercise conditions the lungs so they are better able to handle everyday activity.

- Increases our immunity to disease, since it helps to drain the fluids from and circulate the fluids properly in the lymphatic system.

- Improves the endurance level of our cardiovascular system.

- Helps to detoxify the skin due to the promotion of sweating.

- Improves the flexibility and strength of our muscles throughout the body.

- Decreases our risk for developing heart disease.

- Lowers the total body cholesterol level while increase what is called “good cholesterol”, or HDL.

- Decreases our blood pressure.

- Improves the overall tone of our body. Aerobic exercise may increase the size of your muscles, your strength level, and your flexibility level while you are burning away unwanted fat.

- May help with the alleviation of stress and improve our overall mood, making us more productive in our everyday lives.



Aerobic exercise is a critical element for good health. However, you cannot stop there. For a well-rounded and proper exercise regime, you need to include some strength training activities, too.



The benefits of strength training exercise:

- Increases our body’s metabolism.

- Helps to intensify our body’s fat weight loss.

- Gives our body greater muscle strength, muscle tone and firmness.

- Helps to develop our tendon and ligament strength.

- Increases our body’s bone density and strength.

- Boosts our body’s stamina, energy and endurance.

- Helps increase our body’s coordination and balance.

- Helps improve our overall mood and attitude.

- Enhances our mental functions.



When you combine these two types of activity with stretching, you are working toward a proper exercise program. This proper exercise will give you significant weight loss and muscle toning results!



With aerobic exercise, you want to warm up with stretching or light walking before you build up to the higher intensity activities. After a set amount of time, you want to cool down, again with stretching or light walking. This will allow your body to do easy transitions from inactivity to activity.



With weight training exercise, it is also critical that you do a period of warm up and cool down activity. To warm up, do simple aerobic exercise for 10 minutes or so, as it will increase the blood flow to your muscles. Doing these warm up and cool down activities will help reduce the amount of soreness you experience after exercise and well as preventing strains and injuries.



Proper exercise helps our bodies in so many ways! The increased activity raises our metabolism, which allows our bodies to burn fat instead of storing it. This will help keep weight under control, if the activity level is maintained. Get up and keep moving to see realize the benefits for yourself.

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Friday, April 17, 2009

How To Build Muscle Properly

There are many things to learn when it comes to building muscle. There are three, however, that are considered to be the most important. Without any one of these your results will be minimal. Be warned, these three things sound ridiculously simple but aren't taken as seriously as they should be.

The first secret muscle building ingredient is to know your body type. Sure, it sounds simple and maybe a little cliché, but this is vital. If you don't know your body type you might as well quit right now.

Imagine that one day you decided to go on a vacation to Hawaii and you live in Michigan. Lets say that you have never been to Hawaii, you don't know where it is, but you have seen many pictures of it and have been dreaming about going for a long time. So you decide to pack your bags jump in the car and start driving in hopes to find this beautiful place. Sounds crazy, right? Absolutely it is. You need to know where you are in relation to Hawaii so you can create a plan to get there. The same goes for building muscle. You need to know where your body is in relation to where you want it to be. Only then can you come up with a plan to get there.

The second secret ingredient needed to build muscle is the most obvious and yet many people get it wrong. We're talking about an effective workout plan. A plan that works with your body type and your goals at the same time. So often people will go to the gym without a plan, let alone the right plan. It's important to have a workout plan and to know whether or not it is capable of forcing your muscles to grow.

Your workout is the vehicle you will take to get to the body of your dreams. Just like you could not simply drive a car from Michigan to Hawaii, you would not use a fat burning workout to build muscle.

Last but certainly not least, you need a muscle building diet plan. This is probably the most overlooked part of muscle building but it can many times be the key ingredient. Your body simply cannot do what it is asked of unless you provide it with the correct fuel. In order for your muscles to grow they need not only the right food, but they need it in the right amounts as well.

Not to sound to repetitive, but using the dream vacation to Hawaii scenario again, can you imagine what would happen if the airline you chose decided to use banana peels for fuel instead of the airplane fuel designed specifically for your plane? Exactly, you wouldn't go anywhere. That is precisely what happens when you put the wrong stuff in your body and try to use it for muscle building fuel.

So if your serious about experiencing maximum muscle growth you need to know your body type, use an effective workout plan designed for your body type and goals, and feed your body with the right food in the correct amounts. Don't let the simplicity of it all distract you. Going back to the basics is almost always a safe bet.

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