Body Fitness
Body Fitness: Putting It First Into Your Lives
Fitness Workout
The human body is considered fit if its mental and physical health are good, it strictly follows proper habits, diets, and exercises, and can handle and deal with everyday stresses.
You should nurture your body with proper nutrition to function well and stay healthy. Important minerals, vitamins, and foods must be provided to achieve overall fitness. Keep in mind that good spiritual, mental, and physical health is the real meaning of fitness.
Body fitness occurs if all the processes of the body associated with mental and physical state are functioning at its peak levels. However, this is not only a one day task. It does not necessarily mean going to a gym or simply taking a walk in a park.
There are several factors that must be considered when talking about body fitness. Daily necessities as well as body conditioning are needed.
Physical exercises absolutely help the body to become strong. All parts of your body need to function as a whole. Therefore, the absence of one factor can fail your entire fitness needs. Take for instance; you only focus on maintaining your weight and meeting cardiovascular needs. You forgot that your body is not only composed of your heart. All your other organs should also be functioning well. Body fitness is not only achieving a beautiful figure but replenishing what was depleted from the body due to daily activities. Physical exercises should benefit your entire body.
Available resources must be used wisely. Educating one’s self about bodily needs for maintaining a fit body is also important. If you have an unhealthy body, you need to dig deeply for its causes. In fact, becoming fit again is not easy as you could observe that what makes your body unfit is several years of body abuse from bad habits, poor nutrition, and lack of physical exercises.
You should also know the difference between wellness and fitness since some have misconception about it. Being well and being fit is entirely different and have exclusive conditions, but both are essential in maintaining vitality and health. A fitness counselor or licensed fitness instructor at a fitness club or local gym can test your fitness levels, while wellness is determined by optimum functioning of your immune systems.
The body maintains its balance if both fitness and wellness are in its maximum levels. Generally, nutritional intake affects the ability of the mind, body, and staying well. If this is combined with healthy eating, clean living, and regular exercise, then it will result to total wellness and fitness.
Giving proper attention on the physical needs of every body parts can also result to total body fitness. Never forget that these parts are working in unison with one another. In order for the limbs to function at its peak levels, two hands, two eyes, two feet, and other parts are important. Read more
True Mass
5 Muscle Myths Holding You Back
In a hospital, using outdated information is considered malpractice; in a gym, it’s standard operating procedure. Don’t believe it? Take a look at today’s most sacred lifting guidelines, and you’ll find that some originated in the ’40s and ’50s, a time when castration was a cutting-edge treatment for prostate cancer, and endurance exercise was thought to be harmful to women. What’s worse, other, more-recent recommendations regarding exercise form have been negated by new research yet are still commonly prescribed by fitness professionals.
Chances are, these are the same rules you lift by right now. And that means your workout is long past due for a 21st-century overhaul. Keep in mind, I’m not suggesting that your current plan doesn’t work. After all, at its most basic level, building muscle is simple: Pick up a heavy weight, put it down, repeat. But improve the details and avoid mistakes, and you’ll build more muscle in less time, with less risk of injury. Put a check next to today’s date—it marks the official expiration of your old workout.
Do 8 to 12 Repetitions
The claim: It’s the optimal repetition range for building muscle.
The origin: In 1954, Ian MacQueen, M.D., an English surgeon and competitive bodybuilder, published a scientific paper in which he recommended a moderately high number of repetitions for muscle growth.
The truth: This approach places the muscles under a medium amount of tension for a medium amount of time, making it both effective for and detrimental to maximum muscle gains.
A quick science lesson: Higher tension—a.k.a. heavier weights—induces the type of muscle growth in which the muscle fibers grow larger, leading to the best gains in strength; longer tension time, on the other hand, boosts muscle size by increasing the energy-producing structures around the fibers, improving muscular endurance. The classic prescription of eight to 12 repetitions strikes a balance between the two. But by using that scheme all the time, you miss out on the greater tension levels that come with heavier weights and fewer repetitions, and the longer tension time achieved with lighter weights and higher repetitions.
The new standard: Vary your repetition range—adjusting the weights accordingly—so that you stimulate every type of muscle growth. Try this method for a month, performing three full-body sessions a week: Do five repetitions per set in your first workout, 10 reps per set in your second workout, and 15 per set in your third workout.
Do 3 Sets of Each Exercise
The claim: This provides the ideal workload for achieving the fastest muscle gains.
The origin: In 1948, a physician named Thomas Delorme reported in the Archives of Physical Medicine that performing three sets of 10 repetitions was as effective at improving leg strength as 10 sets of 10 repetitions.
The truth: There’s nothing wrong with—or magical about—doing three sets. But the number of sets you perform shouldn’t be determined by a 50-year-old default recommendation. Here’s a rule of thumb: The more repetitions of an exercise you do, the fewer sets you should perform, and vice versa. This keeps the total number of reps you do of an exercise nearly equal, no matter how many repetitions make up each set.
The new standard: If you’re doing eight or more reps, keep it to three sets or less. If you’re pounding out less than three reps, you should be doing at least six sets.
Do 3 or 4 Exercises Per Muscle Group
The claim: This ensures that you work all the fibers of the target muscle.
The origin: Arnold, circa 1966.
The truth: You’ll waste a lot of time. Here’s why: Schwarzenegger’s 4-decade-old recommendation is almost always combined with “Do three sets of eight to 12 repetitions.” That means you’ll complete up to 144 repetitions for each muscle group. Trouble is, if you can perform even close to 100 repetitions for any muscle group, you’re not working hard enough.
Think of it this way: The harder you train, the less time you’ll be able to sustain that level of effort. For example, many men can run for an hour if they jog slowly, but you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who could do high-intensity sprints—without a major decrease in performance—for that period of time. And once performance starts to decline, you’ve achieved all the muscle-building benefits you can for that muscle group.
The new standard: Instead of focusing on the number of different exercises you do, shoot for a total number of repetitions between 25 and 50. That could mean five sets of five repetitions of one exercise (25 repetitions) or one set of 15 repetitions of two or three exercises (30 to 45 repetitions.)
Never Let Your Knees Go Past Your Toes
The claim: Allowing your knees to move too far forward during exercises such as the squat and lunge places dangerous shearing forces on your knee ligaments.
The origin: A 1978 study at Duke University found that keeping the lower leg as vertical as possible during the squat reduced shearing forces on the knee.
The truth: Leaning forward too much is more likely to cause injury. In 2003, University of Memphis researchers confirmed that knee stress was 28 percent higher when the knees were allowed to move past the toes during the squat. But the researchers also found a countereffect: Hip stress increased nearly 1,000 percent when forward movement of the knee was restricted. The reason: The squatters had to lean their torsos farther forward. And that’s a problem, because forces that act on the hip are transferred to the lower back, a more frequent site of injury than the knees.
The new standard: Focus more on your upper body and less on knee position. By trying to keep your torso as upright as possible as you perform squats (and lunges), you’ll reduce the stress on your hips and back. Two tips for staying upright: Before squatting, squeeze your shoulder blades together and hold them that way; and as you squat, try to keep your forearms perpendicular to the floor.
When You Lift Weights, Draw in Your Abs
The claim: You’ll increase the support to your spine, reducing the risk of back injuries.
The origin: In 1999, researchers in Australia found that some men with back pain had a slight delay in activating their transverse abdominis, a deep abdominal muscle that’s part of the musculature that maintains spine stability. As a result, many fitness professionals began instructing their clients to try to pull their belly buttons to their spines—which engages the transverse abdominis—as they performed exercises.
The truth: “The research was accurate, but the interpretation by many researchers and therapists wasn’t,” says Stuart McGill, Ph.D., author of Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance and widely recognized as the world’s top researcher on the spine. That’s because muscles work in teams to stabilize your spine, and the most valuable players change depending on the exercise, says McGill. Read: The transverse abdominis isn’t always the quarterback.
In fact, for any given exercise, your body automatically activates the muscles that are most needed for spine support. So focusing only on your transverse abdominis can overrecruit the wrong muscles and underrecruit the right ones. This not only increases injury risk, but reduces the amount of weight you can lift. Read more
