Muscle building tips #1:  3 Stages in exercise workout with coach

Normally, we perform not more than10 to 12 repetitions in a workout for an optimal result in muscle building.  You need to go through 3 stages in the workout:  Working repetition, fatigue and muscular failure.  Please refer build lean muscle article for lean muscle building stages.

A little more lean muscle tissue is built after the 3 stages in the exercise workout so that you can perform better in next muscle building training.  You can either go for heavier weight or longer time to finish one set of repetition.

It is always recommended that you have a coach or fitness trainer close by for safety purpose when performing weight loss exercise program.  Besides, they can point out if you have any mistake in posture, breathing method, and counting method especially in the initial stage of muscle building exercise.

Muscle building tips #2:  Exercise all body parts

Our body has different grouping of muscles and they all needed to be trained in a healthy weight loss program.  You need to arrange wisely.  You can do total body training if you choose to have your weight loss exercise in an alternate day.  However, please alternate your body parts if you perform muscle building exercise everyday.  As I mentioned in previous articles again and again, this is because muscle takes 24 to 4 hours to repair itself after a muscle building exercise.

In your exercise routine, complete only one exercise per muscle group for your body parts.  As an example, if your want to perform muscle building exercise for upper part of your body, try performing one exercise per muscle group, targeting to train all the muscle groups in upper part of your body.  The muscles include neck, chest, shoulder, back, and of course biceps and triceps. You need to do different exercise.  For example, bench press or push-up is a great way for chest muscle building, while using lat pull-down machine is targeting the back muscle.

Muscle building tips #3:  Track your progress

Always track your progress in the weight loss exercise program.  One of the common mistakes that people make is not tracking their progress and just return week after week performing the similar muscle building workouts.  They feel they are improving, but it is regret to say that only figures and facts count in a weight loss exercise program.

You can access your own progress during the muscle building exercise if you keep track on it.  Normally, people strives for a minimum of 5 percent increase every two weeks.  And, the larger muscles like biceps will gain somehow faster than the smaller muscles. Get advice from your personal trainer if your record shows no improvement or less satisfied.
Progression is important in muscle building

Remember, human body is designed to take on stress gradually.  You will see results you want if you follow these tips of muscle building in your program of weight loss.

Besides the weight loss exercise program, take care of food and nutrition aspect in your life as it will affect in muscle building workout.

From www.nowloss.com This fast program for weight loss workout has 5 different exercises you do that’ll help you lose up to 5 pounds a week and once you get to a point where you are not satisfied with how fast you’re losing weight on this right exercise then… You can do my other YouTube video called “Quick weight loss workout to help YOU Lose 15 pounds fast” to shock your body so you’ll break out of any weight loss plateau you’re in so you can lose weight fast again and… Remember anyway, right exercise in conjunction with correct diet habit is the only way to healthy weight loss.

In interval training, this recovery period is referred as “active rest” as you do not stop exercising during this recovery period.  Instead, you gradually lower your heart rate though this active rest.  At the same time, your body muscles are able to recover so that they can perform just as they did in the previous high intensity interval training in the next round.  Yet, the blood is kept pumping to the muscles as you continue to work.  This makes sure that your body is burning calories during the exercise session while helping you to build lean muscle at the same time.

Benefits of Interval training

For healthy weight loss purpose, interval training serves better for fat loss rather than perform steady state cardiovascular exercise, which means doing cardiovascular exercise at a moderate pace for an extended period of time.  The benefits of interval training include:

1) Improve calories burning

Study has been revealed that more calories are burnt during interval training than during normal exercise although with less time spent. This serves the healthy weight loss purpose.  The high intensity performed during interval training triggers an after burn effect which will help in fat loss or burning.

2) Pass weight loss plateau

Intervals training can help you to get past a weight loss plateau.  As interval training can tone the involved muscles to a greater degree than your regular aerobic exercise would, this can increase your basal metabolic rate (BMR).  This causes your body to burn more calories 24 hours-a-day, especially when more muscles are built.  This can help you getting past the weight loss plateau in a shorter time, and thus serve the healthy weight loss purpose.

3) Improve heart health

During the interval training, the higher intensity training performed will force the heart to work at a higher capacity and thereby exercises this muscle more vigorously than a normal exercise routine done at a steady rate.  This will increase the heart’s ability to cope with sudden demands on it which could otherwise be a trigger for a heart attack. In addition, it also improves the blood supply to the heart and can repair damaged tissue.

4) Improve lung capacity

The higher intensity of interval training also pushes the lungs to cope with it and thereby can help in improving your lung power.  As our lung power deteriorates with age and the deterioration has correlated with life expectancy and the immune system strength, interval training can benefit your lung power and help preventing this lung deterioration.

5) More energetic

Your increased level of fitness after interval training for a period of time means that you will be less fatigued from daily activities and will have more energy throughout the day. This also serves the healthy weight loss purpose.

6) Reduce boredom of monotonous exercise

Intervals training can make your exercise less monotonous and help the time pass more
quickly.  This makes you stay longer in performing exercise and thus increases the successful rate for a healthy weight loss program.

Please go for interval training in a healthy weight loss program because you are more likely to stick with your exercise program besides other benefits such as more fat loss and other health benefits.  Of course, it is recommended to consult their doctor first for anyone who has health issue and is new to this type of exercise program.   Remember, everyone is different and the intensity performed will be at a level according to your ability.  For optimal results in healthy weight loss, get more information about weight loss tips and right exercise.

Learn how to lose weight with our weight loss exercise routine for a healthy weight loss program.  Follow this workout with week 2 for a progressive workout plan to lose the maximum amount of weight. Each week, the exercise routine will get increasingly difficult. Start with Week 1 and progress when you are ready. Perform this routine 2x a week on nonconsecutive days besides getting more healthy weight loss tips…

Once you understand the concept of healthy weight loss and right exercise, you will know that there are 3 common misconceptions people used to have about progression in weight loss exercise:

1) We have to Run to Burn Calories
In fact, you are no need to run to burn calories in any weight loss exercise.  Some people believe that only running can burn calories because of the intensity.  Yes, running is very intense and it places high demand on the heart to pump blood to the working muscles.

However, you can also choose to perform other high intensity exercises such as biking, swimming or stair stepping instead of running.  By adjusting the variables mentioned in cardiovascular exercise article, one can have same intensity as running, with less risk of joints’ injury.  If your desire end result is losing weight through burning more calories, then running is not the only choices of weight loss exercise if you take consideration of your knee and joints’ health.

2) You will get injured during Progression
This is not true.  You will not get injured if you use small increments of progression and always listen to your body when you perform any type of weight loss exercise.  In fact, those who try to progress too rapidly are those who have high risk of getting injured.

Anyway, you need to aware one thing: The difference between pain and soreness. If you feel lasting pain during any weight loss exercise, stop and get immediate medical attention and please do not ignore them.  Very often that people ignore the minor pain, and mostly this pain may escalate in the future and cause you to cease in a healthy weight loss program.  Don’t perform any weight loss exercise that simply feels not right.

If you do not exercise for a long time and now you start back, especially strength and resistance training as your main weight loss exercise, you will most likely to feel some soreness lasting one or two days after the exercise.  This is normal, because your muscles are not challenged in a long time.  In this situation, you can always continue in your weight loss exercise program.

3) It is too Hard to make Progression
This is absolutely not true.  For better illustration purpose, let us use the example of climbing the corporate ladder.  When you have your first job, you usually do not have that much job responsibility.  As you climb the ladder or get promoted, you need to bear much more responsibility and stress than before, with the compensation of higher salaries.  Will you find very hard to responsible much more thing? No, but of course you will feel a little bit more challenge out there. This is normal.

The same scenario applies in the weight loss exercise progression.  When you make a little progression each time you exercise, you are alright.  But if you try to progress too rapidly, your body might not take in and thus increase the chances of injury.  This is the same thing if you are a new fresh graduate and ask you to take charge of the manager position, you will definitely feel too hard, and most probably you will quit.  The important thing here is everyone needs time to progress in weight loss exercise, and it is well worth the results for healthy weight loss.

Besides performing right weight loss exercise, you need to take care of your food and nutrition, as well as maintaining a good healthy lifestyle so that you can enjoy excellent results in healthy weight loss program.

When you perform cardiovascular exercise, say jogging, your large muscles in the lower body require oxygen to perform the activity.  So, the heart will pump the blood which contains oxygen to the particular working muscles.  Your heart rate is elevated at that moment.  However, when time goes by, once the body is efficient at supplying oxygen to the working muscles, it does not have to work as hard as before and thus will burn fewer calories.  When you are in a program for weight loss, you want to burn more calories, right?  Therefore, you must also make progression in your cardiovascular exercise so that you can succeed in a healthy weight loss.

Below are few options to make progression in the cardiovascular exercise:
1) Increase the Speed
When you increase the speed, you will increase the intensity of the cardiovascular exercise.  It is better if you invest a heart rate monitor besides other exercise equipments so that you will know when it is the time to adjust your speed when you do any cardiovascular exercise, whether a walk outside or on a treadmill, or the revolutions per minute on a bike, or elliptical trainer.  If you do not have one, then you can take a manual heart rate.

You may start your speed at 3.5 miles per hour with your heart rate at 145 beats per minute.  When your heart becomes fitter over time, your heart rate may only elevate to 125 beats per minute at the same speed.  This is the progress evidence.  Now you need to increase the exercise intensity and get your heart rate back up so that you can continue burn more calories with the same cardiovascular exercise.  This is a success way in a program for weight loss.

2) Increase the Intensity
Increase your cardiovascular exercise intensity does not equal to increase the speed.  You can increase the exercise intensity whether by elevate the incline on a treadmill, walk outside in a hilly area, or increase the tension on a bike or elliptical trainer.  What you do here is you increase the load on muscles and thus more oxygen is needed to get your work done.  You need a heart rate monitor once again to indicate when there is an increase in intensity and then respond accordingly.

3) Increase the Instability
You can always add in instability in your cardiovascular exercise to get better results for healthy weight loss.  For example, go for a walk on a hard surface, following a walk on soft sand at the same pace.  It will elevate your heart rate instantly, since you are on an unstable surface and thus recruit additional muscles and muscle fiber to perform the activity.  The same applies to biking on a gravel path rather than on cement.  Apart from that, you can try climbing uneven stairs outside or alternate between single stairs or do every other stairs.  Your body is forced to work harder in this situation as it needs to adjust to varying heights of the stairs.

4) Perform Cross-training
When we talk about health sport cross-training, it means performing a variety of physical activities.  For example, if you bike, then start walking; if you walk, then start swimming; if you climb stairs, then you use bike etc.  The concept here is every time you change an activity, your challenge your muscles a different way and thus cross-train the muscles.  Cross-training is good as it preserves your joints, since repetitive motions like constant running or cycling can wear out your joints over time.

It is important to make progression either in cardiovascular exercise or strength and resistance training to get good results in any program for weight loss.  However, make sure you understand the weight loss concept and have a well-balanced diet habit as well as make use of useful weight loss tips.

Normally, when we practice standing exercise using SPRI exercise tubing, we will perform in a stance referred as staggered stance. It means you place one foot forward, with another foot back about one to one and a half feet.  With this stance, you will use more of the gluteal muscles, which are the largest muscles of your body.  As such, you will recruit more muscle tissues and oxygen during the exercise.  During the workout, you place your right foot in front of left foot for the first 5 repetitions, and exchange your foot for the remaining 5 repetitions of workout.

These 5 ways of progressive resistance training are stated as below:

1) Lower your Stance
A good way to carry out progressive resistance training is lower your staggered stance for all standing exercise.  With a lower stance, you will place more tension on the body and core when you do the upper-body exercises.  One thing to remember here: never feel that you need to complete 10 repetitions right away with this lower stance.  You can do for 6 repetitions at the first time, and then gradually increase to 10 repetitions later on.

2) Stand Farther Away from the Door Attachment
This type of progressive resistance training will increase the intensity of the exercises.  It is advisable that you adopt this progressive resistance way before go to the next level of tension.  For example, let say you use green tube now to perform the exercise.  By moving farther away from the door attachment, you make the exercise harder.  When you feel you have gotten as far away as is comfortable, then it is the time to go for red tube.

3) Increase Body Instability
This is one of the good ways in progressive resistance, as we engage our core muscle group, we bring many more stabilizer muscles into play.  This stabilizer muscles will support each core muscle group, and thus enhance and tone the lean muscles and make you looked fitter than before.  You can do it either in one of the methods stated below:
# For standing exercise, we always do it in staggered stance.  When we want to make a progressive resistance, for example in back row, you can stand on one leg and life the other leg off the floor.

# Use BOSU ball:  It is an instability tool and looks like exercise ball cutting in half.  It is a good way for progressive resistance either you stand on the round part on the top or turn it over and work on the flat surface.

# SPRI Xerdisc:  It is also an instability tool, with same function like BOSU ball.  It looks like a small plastic flying saucer and is good for doing progressive resistance for upper-body, lower-body and also core exercises.

4) Change Hand Position
Another form of progressive resistance is change your hand position for all the standing exercise for lower body with the Lex Loop, such as the hip extension, hip abduction etc.  You can raise your hands directly over your head, this will increase the exercise intensity as you put more muscles into play and generally increase your heart rate.

5) Combination of 2 or More Ways
You always can combine 2 or more ways of progressive resistance that suit you the most after a period of time.  In fact, you can also switch to free-weight program and then come back to SPRI exercise tubing.  The most important thing here is having a good exercise planning ahead.

Before you enroll to any exercise plan in any program for weight loss, always understand the correct weight loss concept so that you can have a good idea in planning your program for weight loss.

There are number of ways doing progressive resistance and strength training, as stated below:

1) Increase the Weight Being Used
If you are just about to start or a beginner in the resistant and strength training, this type of progressive resistance is probably the simplest and most effective way for you.

There is always a good rule to follow with any new exercise movement to minimize muscle injury possibility and to progress consistently.  Always start with minimal weight at your first workout session.  After you can accomplish 10 repetitions of a movement without achieving failure, it is the time to increase the weight or tension because you can only build lean muscle when you go through 3 stages in strength training: Working repetition, fatigue and muscular failure.  Bear in mind, always increase with the smallest increment possible in progressive resistance training.

If you use dumbbells for free weight, start from 5-pound to 8, 10, 12-pound dumbbells and so on.  With the SPRI exercise tubing, always go from yellow to green, red, blue and finally purple tube.  If you find that yellow tube is too light like most people do, you can start from green color tube.  With a machine, start the set at perhaps 10 pounds and bump up the weight by 5 pounds or so each time.

Thing to highlight:  Never feel that you should be able to perform all 10 repetitions right away when you increase the weight or tension in the progressive resistance training.  The right way is do as many repetitions with proper form as you can and choose to exercise with “drop set” for last few repetitions.  For example, you can perform the first 8 repetitions with 8-pound dumbbells, and drop to 5-pound dumbbells to finish the last 2 repetitions.

2) Increase the Quantity of Repetitions
Actually, it is not so recommended to carry on your exercise with this type of progressive resistance way.  Most study reveals that increasing the repetitions means over-utilizing your joints.  So, it is recommended to perform 10 reps in each and every type of exercise, the most go to 12 repetitions.  Yes, I know some people increase until 30 to 40 repetitions, but the important thing here is your know 10 repetitions is just enough for you to build lean muscle tissues, and this is what you want in a weight loss program.

3) Increase the Quantity of Sets
Increase the exercise sets is one type of the progressive resistance too.  Anyway, one set to failure is just great for the beginners.  Even it gives excellent results for those who have been performing resistance and strength training for a period of time.

When you increase the sets, never feel that you should be able to perform additional one full set right away in this progressive resistance training.  You may perform 2 sets for half of the exercises and slowly go for 2 full sets for each type of exercises afterwards.  For example, you start to perform 1 set of exercise in the first 2 weeks.  For the following 2 weeks, after you finish 1 exercise set, you may add another set to half of the exercises you do.  Subsequently, you can do full 2 sets of exercises at the following 2 weeks later.

Thing to highlight:  It is advisable to do all upper body one day and lower body the next day if you perform resistance and strength training on back-to-back days.  In this case, it is good to double your sets, as you only focus on building muscle either on upper body or lower part of the body in a particular day.

4) Slow Down the Repetitions’ Speed
This is one of the progressive resistance system that really work and safe for people of all ages, including the senior citizens.  We normally start our strength training with 2 counts on the concentric (lifting) and 4 counts on the eccentric (lengthening or lowering).  Each set takes approximately 1 minute, given that you complete 10 repetitions (10 repetitions x 6 counts or seconds = 60 seconds or 1 minute) for each type of exercise.  The moment you finish with your set, go to the next exercise immediately.  If you need a drink or record your tension and repetitions, then make sure it is never more than 30 seconds between each exercise for a good progressive resistance workout.

When you want to slow down the speed for this type of progressive resistance, you can go for 3 counts on the way up and 6 counts on return, or 4 counts versus 8 counts, until you get 5 counts on the way up and 10 counts on return.  Have you noticed that you always spend at least double the time on the eccentric part compared to the concentric movement?  This is because your muscles are stronger on eccentric part in any resistance and strength training movement.  The good news here is the slower you go, your muscles and bones will absorb more stress, and less stress will be placed on your joints.  You can build up your lean muscle tissue and strength through this type of progressive resistance workout.

5)  Combination of 2 or More Ways stated above
If you are a beginner, then it is recommended you start your progressive resistance training by increase the weight being used.  After a period of time, you can choose any ways or combination of 2 or more ways that suit you the most.  The important thing here is never jump directly to a weight that seem a big challenge to you.  When you go at it too intensely or progress too quickly, you will injure yourself.

Always remember what you want in a program for weight loss is building lean muscle tissues through the right weight loss exercise with progressive resistance.  This is the only way that can help in boosting metabolism and enjoy 24 hours calories burning in a day for the rest of your lives.

An article “Baby Boomers Stay Active, and So do Their Doctors” published in The New York Times in April 2006 stated that baby boomers today, who are the first generation to embrace cardiovascular exercise as the main exercise, break down much earlier in life.  It is hard to believe but it is true to say that the number 2 reason that baby boomers visit a doctor’s office is because of sport injuries.

A famous orthopedic surgeon compiles all exercise-related injuries cases.  It has been found that knees, hips, shoulders and lower back have vulnerabilities that surface over time, and it is exactly these vulnerable joints that are used and abused when we do most of the cardiovascular exercises.  Why does this happen?  In fact, intensity must increase for cardiovascular exercise in order to burn the same number of calories over the time, as your heart becomes more fit.  Normally, an increase in intensity will lead to overuse which cause the sport injuries.

University of Utah School of Medicine carried a study regarding obese people and injury.  Study reveals that overweight and obese adults are much more likely to suffer meniscus cartilage tears in their knee joints.  When you go to gym, have you noticed who is carrying extra 30, 40, 50 or more pounds to perform the cardiovascular exercise?  Have you noticed who is increasing the intensity in order to burn enough calories to lose weight?  Have you ever thought what will happen to their knees?  In fact, I start to worry about their knees when I see some overweight or obese people walking on the treadmill with extra pounds of dumbbell in their hands.

Below are common injuries possible caused by cardiovascular exercise:

• Knees and Feet:  Damage of tendons, ligaments and cartilage as a result of the repeated pounding.  For example, our cartilage serves as cushion in our joint.  When you pound away on your joint, it will break the cartilage down, causing pain and inflammation.  Some people need to have complete knee replacements even at their early fifties.

• Hips:  Pounding will cause stress on the hip, which usually manifests in the lower back.  Some people even require complete hip replacements after the injuries caused by cardiovascular exercise.

• Shoulders:  Although knees, lower back and hips are involved in most of the cardiovascular exercise, shoulders is used during spinning class, on rowing machine, stair stepper, elliptical trainer with arms etc.  Injuries normally occurred when you perform cardiovascular exercise while holding weights, or having excessively arms pumping on a machine that is not suit for you.

• Elbows:  When you overuse the joint and put the stress on the surrounding ligaments and tendons, you will cause elbow injuries.  Normally, it happen when you hyperextend your joints by insisting hang on the stair stepper or use arm attachments on cardiovascular machines that do not fit your size.

If you are really serious in losing weight, please refer my weight loss exercise article to understand criteria for a strategic exercise plan.  Cardiovascular exercise is good for health, but the most important thing in a program for weight loss is losing fat.  As far as we know, strength and resistance training is the best exercise to increase your lean muscle mass and thus effectively reducing body fats.  Besides performing right weight loss exercise, get some more weight loss tips and take care of your food and nutrition aspect in your life, so that you can lose weight and keep it off forever.

Is that true? The answer is no.  In fact, you must overload the muscle in order to stimulate it through strength and resistance training.  There are basically 3 stages to make the muscle overloaded in this weight loss exercise:  Working repetition, fatigue and muscular failure.  Please refer how to build lean muscle article if you would like to have more detailed information about these 3 stages, especially you are in a program for weight loss.

During the whole process, the muscle know it is going through 3 stages (working repetition, fatigue and muscular failure), but it does not know if you achieve muscular failure either with heavy weight and few repetitions, or less weight and more repetitions.  This weight loss exercise is over once the muscle hits failure, but the process of building muscle is just beginning.  You are right.  The muscle building process occurs AFTER the exercise.  You will have tiny tears in the muscle when you fail to perform the final repetition.  A signal is sent to brain asking help for better performance in next weight lifting.  So, the muscle will be repaired in the next 24 to 48 hours when you rest, and additional muscle tissues are built in order to be stronger.

When you have more muscle, you have more strength, and with more strength, you have more muscle with the correct weight loss exercise.  As muscle and strength always go hand in hand, it is very important to perform strength and resistance training in your weight loss exercise.  Get some common questions and correct information of strength training before you perform them.

Now you understand how muscle is stimulated and built through 3 stages. It does not matter whether the muscle was stressed with high repetition and light weight or low repetition and heavy weight.  The muscle simply does not care about it.  The most important thing here is you correctly and safely perform it in 30 to 90 seconds, under 3 stages, and you can have your muscle toning and building up.  Of course, please eat before and after exercise for optimal weight loss results.

Always remember your weight loss goal in any program for weight loss is losing body fat rather than losing weight only.  That is why you should perform right weight loss exercise to build muscle.  And as long as muscle is stimulated, it will grow and you will look fitter than ever before.