Spot Toning

Many people don’t realize that you can build muscle without using any fancy gym equipment — in fact, standard bodyweight exercises like pushups can be used to build muscle up the old-fashioned way.

It’s understandable that you might not realize how effective the grand-daddy of exercise moves is at building your chest and arms. At a glance, pushups are simple and repetitive. And that’s true to an extent. But what you might not realize is that there are nearly endless opportunities for pushup variations that you never learned in high school gym class.

There is a wide variety of pushups that you can perform to isolate different muscle groups, but we’re going to focus on five types in this article. These will not be the best five for all people, but they should open your eyes to the variety possible in simple bodyweight exercises.

Wide pushups: traditionally, pushups are performed with your hands being placed at shoulder width. Wide push ups, sometimes called “wide-stance pushups”, require you to extend your hands beyond the width of your shoulders. Wide-stance pushups work your chest muscles more heavily than military-style pushups, so if chest definition is what you are looking for — wide pushups are one exercise that will help you meet your goals.

Fist pushups: Sometimes referred to as “knuckle” pushups, require the use of your fists, instead of the palms of your hands, to bear your body weight during the pushup. Fist pushups are beneficial because they target different areas of your body than traditional pushups, and may actually increase the effectiveness of your workout.

Yogi pushups: also referred to as “divebombers,” you start the pushup in the yoga downward dog position, which is similar to a pike. On the down rep, you transition into the upward dog position in a motion that is similar to sliding under a fence, reversing this movement on the up rep. These pushups are brutal and really work your shoulders.

Incline pushups: Incline pushups are the exact opposite of decline pushups — instead of placing your feet higher than your head, your head should be higher than your feet for this exercise. Any sturdy surface that will allow you to perform the pushups unencumbered can be used. Incline pushups work your lower pectoral muscles.

Deep pushups: If you are working out at home, you can perform raised pushups with the help of three sturdy chairs. By placing each of your hands on an opposite chair, and your feet on the third chair, you can increase the depth of your pushup and thereby increase the effectiveness of your workout routine. A similar, but less intense, movement can be performed with pushup stands. The “Perfect Pushup” bars work wonders.

Here is a more comprehensive list of pushup styles to achieve muscle weight gain: wide, fly, diamond, military, yogi, fist, decline, incline, stacked, deep, prison cell, and inchworm pushups.

Tips to increase the effectiveness of your pushup workouts: remember to add some weight once the pushups begin to get easy. You don’t want to push out 50 easy repetitions. Rather, struggle with 20 or 30. Also be sure to add variety by varying your hand position for each of the above types of pushups.

Push ups are a great way to strengthen your upper body and exercise, build muscle at the same time. If you keep it interesting by mixing up your hand positions and trying a few different styles of pushups you can increase the effectiveness of your at-home exercising and relieve the boredom!

There are countless oridinary men and women that regularly go to a gym in order to increase lean body mass. They strive for a much improved body shape but all too seldom they do not accomplish their goals.

As the weeks pass by they become increasingly annoyed with their shortage of mass gains.

This can be a regular problem for anyone expessing a desire to improve their body shape, which is why many people quit, thinking that they are by some means unable to add body mass.

So why does this occur to so many people and what can you do to resolve it?

From my knowledge, those of us who do not make good muscle gains in the gym make the same mistakes time after time.

Read on below to see if you are making these everyday mistakes, with solutions for every problem.

Some people choose the completely wrong workout program to achieve their aims, often following professional workouts from bodybuilding books.

This is no use for the typical guy or girl, and in particular for hardgainers.

In order to increase muscle mass you should train for around 45 mins with heavy weights, doing 2-3 sets per exercise. Keep your sets at between 8-15 sets per weight training session.

It does nothing to benefit you by doing 20 or more sets and sacrificing many hours at the gym.

Doing the same bodybuilding program month after month, even though they haven’t made any evident body mass gains.

In order to encourage muscle growth you must change your workout every 8-12 weeks. Our body’s have a kind of muscle memory so it quickly gets used to the same weight workout you repeat each week.

You must shock your muscles by altering your body building workouts routinely.

Not having days off from weight training.

I take 1 week off in the middle of each bodybuilding training program.

This gives my muscles time off to recuperate and revitalize. In the past, before I took regular time off I often experienced muscle strains and tendon injuries.

Another benefit is that I often experience increased strength after I’ve taken time off.

Bodybuilding training on successive days.

Doing bodybuilding programs that involve lifting heavy weights puts a lot of load on your muscles. It can even take up to 24 hours to restore your glycogen reserves. Therefore, ensure you train no more than 2 consecutive days. This will make sure your body can re-nourish itself, resulting in optimum energy reserves when you train at the gym.

You depend on muscle building supplements to compensate for a poor diet.

Most body building supplements are not anything more than costly marketing scams. They empty your pockets of hard earned money and do nothing to build mass. If you spent $50 a week on bodybuilding supplements, it will make no more than 10% difference to your muscle mass gains.

All workout routines should be structured around a stable dietary plan.

You have got to ensure that you nourish your body with the nutrients it requires in order to produce lean body mass.

What to do next

In order to build muscle more quickly than you have ever achieved previously, you must ignore the traditional bodybuilding methods that you have picked up in the past from professional bodybuilders in muscle books and magazines.

Hard gainers in particular can adjust their bodybuilding workouts and stop repeating the frequent mistakes I’ve outlined above. Do this and could see some remarkable results!

Many people get caught up in the fad diets jumping from one diet program to the next hoping for weight loss results. Most are often disappointed which leads them to move on to the next miracle diet. Thus, one of the biggest hurdle that people encounter when trying to lose weight is getting started in the right manner. Let me share some tips with you to help you get going to successfully lose weight no matter whether you want to lose ten or hundred pounds.

The first step to successful weight loss is to set some goals. Goals should be used in the same way as milestones are used on highways. Without any milestone, you will have no idea of where you are going. As such, you do not have any idea what you will need to do to lose those unwanted pounds if you do not have weight loss goals.

Ask yourself some questions when setting your goals:

1. How much weight you want to lose?

2. By when you expect to lose all the weight?

Write the answers to these questions down on paper. This is important. Actually writing your goals is one of the surefire ways of making sure that you never forget them! So, write your weight loss goals on a piece of paper, make copies of that paper, and stick each paper on every place you can see them.

Make sure you don’t forget to stick this paper on your refrigerator and kitchen, since it is in these places that the demon called temptation tries to ruin your weight loss efforts!

Lastly, it is very critical that your goals be achievable. By this, I mean that they must be REALISTIC goals. Setting a goal to lose sixty pounds in a couple of weeks will not be accomplished and will only nullify the very powerful effect of goal setting in the first place.

Unrealistic goals will result in failure and you will just end up disappointed and frustrated with yourself and your weight loss efforts.

Ideally, no matter what you do, you would be able to lose no more than 3-4 pounds per week. So create your goals accordingly. If you want to lose sixty pounds, it will take you at least five months to achieve!

Set small and achievable goals for yourself so that when you achieve them, you will feel more confident to move forward. This is the biggest secret of successful weight loss!

Crash weight loss plans and fad diets are an unreasonable alternative to permanent healthy eating habits, according to the American Heart Association.

Many of these fad diets, such as the notorious and outright silly Cabbage Soup Diet, will undermine your health, cause physical discomfort (abdominal discomfort and flatulence (gas) ) and lead to the yo-yo effect of gaining weight soon after losing it. In other words the risks aren’t worth the rewards.

Quick-weight-loss diets generally put far too much emphasis on one particular food or type of food. They violate the first principle of good nutrition which is to eat a balanced diet including a variety of foods.

If you are able to stay on such a diet for more than a few weeks, you may develop nutritional deficiencies, because no one type of food has all the nutrients a human being needs for good health. One such diet is the Cabbage Soup Diet. The myth of this diet is that cabbage soup is some sort of weight loss potion.

People supposedly lost 10-17 pounds in only a week, eating mostly cabbage soup. On top of not working to lose weight, this diet lacks essential nutrients and can cause serious health issues. Pixies, elves and fairies, or even cabbages, can’t provide magical weight loss. That’s why you should eat moderate amounts from each of the food groups rather than cutting out everything but a cabbage and water.

The second principle of good nutrition is that eating should be enjoyable. You think eating only cabbages every day is enjoyable?. These diets are so monotonous and bland that it’s almost impossible to stay on them for long periods. Imagine eating cabbage soup, nothing but cabbage soup, for even a few days much less for a whole week.

By mid week crawling bugs would look good. They’d cart you off in a straight jacket by week’s end.

There are many other ways fad diets aren’t good for you. Many don’t encourage exercise, for example, walking 30 minutes most or all days of the week. Physical activity helps maintain weight loss, while physical inactivity is a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke. When a diet includes no need for a workout, run the other way.

Quick weight loss is possible. Just don’t fall for tricks or gimmicks that might end up ruining your health.

Swimming is a great way to exercise. The whole body gets a workout in a gentle manner, and you have fun while exercising. You get both types of exercise - resistance and cardiovascular workout at the same time. There is little chance of your hurting yourself in this form of exercise.

The simple objection to swimming as an exercise is the inconvenience. You just come home from work, all bushed out. Then your spouse reminds you that you have to go to the swimming pool for your prescribed exercise. Groan! Even if the pool were in the neighborhood, you know how it feels to go out at all? And woe betide if it’s storming or snowing! If only you had a swimming pool at home!

Well, now you can have a swimming pool at home. That too at just a fraction of the cost of a regular pool! It’s called a stationary lap pool, and it simulates a stream flowing past you. You get in and swim against the flow. So although you’re swimming, the action of the current keeps you there in one place as though you were stationary. Hence the name.

A lap pool comes ready built in a variety of style and models. About 4 feet wide and 6 feet long, it can be located almost anywhere, even indoors! What can be more convenient? They can be installed above ground to avoid any digging, or in the ground - the choice is yours. The savings in cost and space is tremendous, and the convenience is priceless!

The basic concept of a stationary lap pool is to move the water, not the swimmer! So the swimmer swims in place against the flow of water that is circulated around the stationary lap pool. As mentioned at the outset of this article, swimming gives the swimmer both resistance exercise as well as cardiovascular exercise.

Stationary lap pools range from the basic model to super luxury models. In the very basic model you can adjust the speed and force of the water flowing against the swimmer. In higher end models you can control the temperature of the water as well, or have a Jacuzzi effect with pulsating jets of water massaging you down with alternate streams of hot and cold water.

A stationary lap pool is the ideal system to get your resistance exercise and cardiovascular exercise at the same time, in a very enjoyable way. Compact enough to fit inside your house, cheap enough to be generally affordable, the stationary lap pool gives you so many conveniences and advantages that you’ll have no hesitation in buying one for yourself, or in recommending it to others.

In conclusion, a stationary lap pool is your best bet to a form of exercise which is deeply relaxing and pleasurable. All this is yours, at an extremely attractive price. If you like swimming, then just head out and get yourself a stationary lap pool!