Showing posts with label bodyweight exercise. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bodyweight exercise. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

The Best Bodyweight Exercises

Here are 3 bodyweight exercises you can do anytime, anywhere to burn fat, stay energized, and avoid overeating.
Bodyweight exercises help you burn fat shockingly fast, without any fancy equipment.

1) Any Single-Leg Exercise
The pistol (single-leg squat to the floor) is the most advanced
1-leg exercise. But you can also do assisted single-leg squats with a band, or onto a bench, or even with a Stability Ball between your back and the wall.

If you aren't ready for single-leg squats, you can use Bulgarian
Split Squats, Reverse Lunges, regular split squats, or lying 1-leg
hip bridges if you are a beginner.

2) Decline Push-ups
These are harder than normal pushups, thanks to your elevated feet. And in this position, you can still use a close-grip to fatigue
your triceps, a "piked-hip position" to build your shoulders, or
even the Spiderman leg motion to work on your abs.

3) Bodyweight Inverted Rows
I choose these over chinups and pullups because bodyweight rows let your chest rest, while your back is strengthened. It's the perfect compliment to a pushup.

Do 8-12 repetitions per exercise. Don't rest between exercises. Go through the circuit up to 3 times, resting 1 minute after each
circuit.


Get in shape fast with Turbulence Training,

Monday, March 5, 2012

Did You Know Ab Workouts Slow Fat Loss?

Not only are most traditional ab workouts a waste of time, but they also slow your fat loss efforts. Each workout you spend crunching takes time away from more effective fat loss methods - such as interval training.
That's right, the common man's and woman's ab workout taken from Shape magazine or Muscle'n'Fitness often hurts their fat loss program more than it helps it.

Instead,  focus on exercises that build a 6-pack AND burn a lot of calories at the same time. That's why I'm a big fan of making EVERY exercise an ab exercise (by bracing the abs in every movement), as well as using total body ab exercises (such as Mountain Climbers, the Spiderman Lunge/Climb, and the Stability Ball Jackknife).

These exercises use far more muscle mass than a traditional crunch. In fact, some of the total body ab exercises are "interval-like" in nature, helping to put more metabolic turbulence on the body, and as you know, that's what burns calories during AND after the workout.

Now of course you know that you can't spot reduce the fat on your body - so doing an endless number of crunches not only does little for you in terms of losing fat, it also wastes your time in your quest for a 6-pack.

Here are a couple of strategies to maximize your workout time when your goal is to get lean, and get down to a low-enough body fat percentage to see your abs in as little workout time as possible:

A) First, simply cut back on your ab training - If your goal is to
simply lose fat, gain a little muscle, and just look as good
possible, then you can't spend 30 minutes on abs everyday. You can build your 6-pack by doing less than 30 minutes of ab exercise per week.

B) Second, replace your crunches with the total body ab exercises I mentioned earlier. Also, if you have access to a cable machine, you can do weighted ab exercises such as kneeling cable crunches.

C) And finally, if you are doing intervals for fat loss as I
recommend, you can use the following approach to increase the
difficulty of your ab and interval training. However, this is an
advanced method only.

During your interval workout, perform an ab exercise during your active recovery period. For example, if you are doing running intervals on a treadmill...

Run for 60 seconds at your work interval speed. Immediately stop the treadmill, get off, and go into a set of 20 Mountain Climbers. Climb back on the treadmill and start it up for your next interval. Repeat for 3-6 intervals.

You can also use basic spinal stabilization "ab exercises" such as
the plank, side plank, or advanced plank versions (i.e. plank with your arms on the ball) to train your spinal stabilization while under heavy breathing stress.

Remember: Always train safe, with good form, and be conservative. Don't try to be a hero in the gym, but you should safely challenge yourself in each workout.

Stick to the Turbulence Training  if you don't know where to start.