Variety and Moderation

Why are people so scared and made uncomfortable when they are approached with the word diet? I believe this is the case because many people have convinced themselves that dieting means giving up all the foods that they love and that they will have to eat undesireable tasteless foods to see minimal gains in their goals for weight loss. Others are made uncomfortable when approached with the word diet because they have probably been on a few diets in the past and have failed miserably.
The word diet is not made to invoke fear into anyone, and is not ment to make people feel bad about themselves. It is simply a word used to show a collection of food groups that are best for a healthy food resource. There is no reason why any person can't eat whatever they want to as long as it is in variety and in moderation. That is what is most important, moderation. Too much of anything is too much. If a person wants to lose weight and decides that they want to change their diet and start eating healthier foods, this does not mean that they will never taste cake again, just assuming that cake is one of their favorite snakes. There is no reason why, in moderation ,they can eat their favorite foods, they just have too remember on a regular basis to eat healthier foods.

Getting Past Training Plateaus

Any serious strength trainer will eventually, and continuely, hit plateaus in there training growth. A plateau, in training terms, simply means when the body seems to slow down in the quick paced fashion of gaining muscle and strength. The body is a tricky machine, and many people do not give the human body as much credit as it deserves. The body continuelly gets used to workout routines and the shock princepal is gone. The shock principal is what makes the body work and grow, but once the body gets use to a workout routine, there is no more shock because it will know what to expect.
All too often you will see people in the gym working out with the same routine, on the same days, using the same weight, doing the same thing. They don't understand why they are no longer getting the results that they desire, or even once were getting. It is truely so simple to get past these plateaus, but in no way easy. If you feel like you might be in a plateau in your gains, or feel like you might be nearing one, adding simple changes to your routine might help you more than you know. Simple changes such as set numbers, number of repetitions, workouts performed, breaks between sets, how many exercises performed per body part, and even on the day an exercise is performed can all help dirastically in getting a person get through their strength training platoues.

The Incredible Edible Egg

To the average athlete, one food stands alone. The egg should truly be an athletes best friend. Eggs are the best natural source of protein that can be found. Also, they are very nutrient dense and energy dense with lots of vitamins, protein and fats. One egg contains over six grams of protein and several important nutrients, which is good. Eggs are very essential for us to eat, but this is often over shadowed by the fact that eggs are often thought of as too high in cholesterol. Unfortunately, on the other hand, one egg also contains about 212 mg of cholesterol. This bad rap that eggs get truly causes many people to stay away from them. The cholesterol is an easy to take care of. Just don't eat the yoke. All the cholesterol of an egg is located in the yoke, all the white part is protein. So I recommend, if you feel like your aren’t getting enough protein, or you just want to eat healthier foods the egg would truly be a good choice.

Sodium

When the average person hears the word sodium, they automatically think 'bad'. There are many risks in too much sodium, as well as many benefits in receiving enough. Even though sodium gets a bad rap, it isn’t completely and totally bad for you. There are many necessary functions that sodium plays a large role in. One example is that it is essential for muscle contraction. Another reason why it is helpful is that it helps to protect you from sun stroke. The unfortunately thing is that most Americans get far too much sodium and don't know when enough is enough. One of the biggest risks for getting too much sodium is high blood pressure. Don't feel as though sodium is your enemy, quite the opposite, it is essential to the physical over all health of your body. Excessive amounts of sodium, on the other hand, can be detrimental to one's health.
Some ways to cut your own sodium in take are to stay away from eating salty foods, especially snacks like chips and pretzels. Also, watch how much salt you are dowsing your food with. A good way to be more observant on this issue is to poor the salt into your hand first to see how much salt you are going to poor on your food.

Benefits of Stretching

There are many physical and health benefits to regularly stretching your body and muscles. This is one of the most over looked and under appreciated aspects of physical fitness. Flexibility is essential to living a fully rounded physically active life. Some of the reasons why stretching is so over looked is because simply, most people find it as a hassle and it is not really fun to do.
This being the case though, there are far more reasons why a person should practice regular stretching routines. Some examples of why are relief from pain, increased energy levels, increased flexibility, better range of motion of the joints, greater circulation of blood to various parts of the body, relaxation and stress relief, enhanced muscular coordination improved posture, and grants greater sense of well-being. These are a few reasons for why, if you are not, you should include stretching to your regular routine.

Muscular Strength and Muscular Endurance

Muscular strength is the ability of a muscle, or group of muscles, to sustain repeated contractions and repititions against a resistance for an extended period of time. You might recognize this term as simply just, high reps, low or lighter weight. Muscular Strength, on the other hand, is a person's ability to use muscle to generate a great deal of force in a short period of time. It can be described as simple as, high weight, low reps. You often hear people arguing over which of these two types of workouts is more perfound.
The truth is, you need both. If all you ever do is use lighter weight and do a lot of reps, you will not be able to create the power and strength gains as you would doing less reps and more weight. But on the other hand, exclusively doing strength routines can put a lot of constant stress on your muscles. The best way to go in this situation is to just swap between both routines. For example, say you go four weeks of muscular endurance, then after those for weeks you take your program and do four weeks of muscular strength. There are endless possibilities to choose from. By switching between weight and reps, you are constantly shocking your muscles. Also, this is probably the best way to get past plateaus.

The Benefits of Supersetting

There are many reasons why suppersetting weight training is beneficial. A superset, for all of you who are not familiar with the term, is basically just doing two workouts one after another back to back with no breaks in between. For example you do barbell curls and after your final repetition you go to another workout like skull crushers, then back to curls, then repete. It truely is an easy enough concept to grasp,but it can be quite difficult to preform. There are many different ways and types to do supersets.
There are many reasons why supersetting is beneficial, but I will just breifely discuss the three major points. The first reason is that it increases Lactic Acid production. This build up helps to boost Growth Hormone levels in the body. GH is a powerful fat loss and muscle building hormone. The second reason is that it is time efficiant. By doing wrkouts simultaniously back to back, you save a lot of time in your workout routine. The third reason is that different supersets hit the targeted muscle in different ways. It can help you develop certain muscles faster.
There are many reasons why supersetting is a helpful way of training. Whether you are in a hurry and can't spend a lot of time in the gym, or you are trining to mix up your training schedule, there are many reasons to try suppersetting workouts.

Simple Carbohydrates

There are basically two different types of carbohydrates, or carbs for short. These two types of carbs are known as simple and complex. Have you ever heard someone say the phrase, 'time to carb up'. I f you have, and wondered what they meant by that, it just simply means 'time to get some fuel, or energy', in blatent terms. Carbs make up a lot of humans energy source. So if you are around an athlete or just a person who is in to fitness, you may hear this phrase uttered in some kind of variation.
Simple carbs are basically made up of sugars. These are the types of carbohydrates anyone who is looking to cut a few ponds off their frame should stay away from. Of course it is alright to over induldge once in a while, but don't let simple carbs be a large part of your diet. A few examples of some food that are high in simple carbs are: bread, cake, non diet soda, syrup, candy, ice creame.
There are some foods that carry simple carbs that are also not so unhealthy. Many types of fuites such as oranges, apples, banannas, pears are all foods that are fairly high in simple carbs, but could also remain a healthy portion of someone's diet. Also, many dairy products are high in simple carbs. For one, milk. People are always surprised to find milk is not exactly as good for you as they thought. These types of simple carbs are much better for you because they have a lot more vitamins and nutrients. Basically it is more or less common sense. You should know, for the most part, of what is and what is not healthy to eat. Eating anythng, in moderation, is perfectly fine.

Why do cardio training?

This is a question that often pops up in any coversation where cardio training is being discussed. Clearly many people, if not all, hate cardio training. They might feel tht it is too much work, or it seems pointless to them. All different people have their own opinion when it comes to cardiovascular training. If you would ask a powerlifter 'how much time, in a week in your training routine, would you say that you spend doing cardio?' It would not be a shock to hear them say none to very little.
Many weightlifters seemed to have convinced themselves that if they are trying to get biggger and stronger, that they have to dismiss cardio training because it will make them smaller and weak. This is not the case, weight training in general is a form of cardio in a sense. Especially if you take fewer breaks and shorten the time between sets.
It is recommended by experts that the average person should do between a half an hour to a full hour daily of cardiovascular training. It is an important form of training for a person's over all health. Some benefits of training cardio frequently is the reduction of risk for heart disease, it helps to keep the heart strong, lowers cholesterol levels and burns excess calories among many other things. Cardiovascular training may not be the most exciting thing to do, but making the sacriffice now to do cardio, can help you down the road.

Are You Overtrainig?

Many people who lift weights are always working towards getting better. This fixed idea of what they want to be drives them. Many goals among weight lifters are fairly commom. Some goals, for example are, " I want to be the strongest person I know', or 'I want to have a great physique', or a truely commom dellusional statement of 'I want to be bigger than Arnold Shwarzenegger in his prime'. These people may work very hard in the gym to accomplish their goals. They might eat well, train relentlessly, and work hard, but still do not see the results they want and expect. When this happens many lifters convince themselves that they are not working hard enough and start training twice as hard. Remember, more is not always better.

So here's the question, 'are you over training?' Look at your weight lifting routine. How many days a week do you work out? How much time do you give between working out the same body parts? In a single workout session, how many exercises are you doing for a speciphic muscle group? According to experts, it is said that you should not workout the same muscle group anywhere from 24 to 48 hours. For example, if you workout your chest and triceps today, you can't do chest and triceps tomarrow. Your muscles need time to grow. When you are lifting weights you are not making the muscle stronger, your tearing the muscle fibers. When you rest after that workout,that is when the muscle reformes and gets stronger. The recommended exercises per muscle group workout is 3 to 8 depending on the person.

No one persone can tell you if you are overtraining or not, they can only tell you their oppinion. You have to be the one to tell yourself whether you are over training or not. If you are suspicious that you might be, than you probably are. Some simptoms of over training to look for is excessive amout of fatigue, muscle spasm, feeling weaker, little to no muscle gain, and being frequently tired. Remember, it is truely a golden rule, 'more is not always better.' If your routine is suspect, than change some things around (day's, routines, exercises, days off), get plenty of rest, and I am sure you'll start to see more results.