It’s all over the media, with ads promising us to loose weight, loose fat or how to get a six pack. Every turn we take, we find someone that is trying to sell us something. Their words are appealing. They try to lure you into their false promises. It’s no wonder that a lot of people try and then fail with weight loss.

The are no secret formulas to loose weight and look better, weight loss takes place through a combination of diet and exercise. If you don’t move you body, change your eating habits, any progress will not last to long. Exercise is proven to be one of the most effective methods to lose weight. It also helps to keep it off!

There are so many benefits of being at a healthy weight. So, get started today on your way to a healthy lifestyle, building muscles and doing aerobic exercise. I leave you with the following explanations, it might get the point across:

1. Think of your muscles as furnaces.
2. Your furnaces (muscles) burn coal (fat) as it is required.
3. When you do aerobic exercise, air (fire) is inhaled and burns the coal (fat).
4. Now, if you want to burn more coal (fat) you either need to increase the size of your furnaces (muscles) or increase the fire (air) inside them by doing aerobic exercise.

Working your muscles increases your muscles tissue. So, it makes perfect sense to add a full body workout into your fat loss program.

It takes time to burn fat, we are all shaped differently and our metabolism works differently, so do not get discourage that you do not see any results immediately, stay with your program, and you will soon start seeing results.

From my experience the last bits of fat that will come off your body is around your stomach, it took me months to loosen it, it seems your body keeps that fat depot to the end and other fat depot on your body is lost before. There is also fat inside your body around organs, that can not see so that take time to loose before your stomach goes. Stay with your program to get results.

Your abs take up a large area of your core. In fact a lot of people think your abs are your core. But... there's a whole other side to it. It's called your back! Here are the main muscles that make up your core.

• Rectus abdominis - This is the main muscle in your ab group. It runs down the centre of your stomach. These are the muscles that eventually turn into a six pack.
• Transverse abdominis - This is the deepest of your ab muscles. It needs to be worked to build a solid foundation for your six pack.
• Internal and external obliques - These are the muscles that wrap around your waist. They're really important for any sideways motion.
• Erector spinae - These are your main lower back muscles. Keep these strong if you want to avoid lower back pain.

I been tracking my workout’s since October 1st, 2008, using the MapMyRide website. Here is what I been able to achieve as of today.

• Total Workouts: 525
• Total Distance: 10,383.64 km.
• Total Burned: 373,967 (kcal)

Workout Summary

• Gym / Health Club: 107
• Hike: 1
• Road Cycling / Mountain Biking: 382
• Run: 3
• Sports / Activities: 10
• Swim: 21
• Walk: 1

Green Stats

• Total Workout Days: 288
• Distance Traveled: 10,383.64 km.
• Gas Saved: 1,356.88 liters
• Money Saved: $1,247.40
• Carbon Offset: 3,147.7 kg. of CO2

Primarily my workouts consist of biking to the gym near my office, were I do a 30-45 minutes strength training program 3 times a week. During winter when it is ice and snow on the road, I spend more time in the gym working on strength training. In the gym I also incorporate swim training  and working on my swim technique.

Here is a typical winter program that I use, my goal is to strengthen my core, to be able to work through a program in short time i use Circuit training that allows me to combine high-intensity aerobics and resistance training to target fat loss, muscle building and heart fitness.

* An exercise "circuit" is one completion of all exercises in the program. When one circuit is complete, one begins the first exercise again for another circuit. Traditionally, the time between exercises in circuit training is short, often with rapid movement to the next exercise.

I do two circuits during a workout – I define it as Mid Section Core Blast and Full Body blast, this is a part of my Anatomical Adoption training, which is the initial stage of strength training and prepare my muscles and tendons for the greater loads of the maximum strength training coming up in March. My focus is doing the Anatomical Adoption training around January – February time frame.

 

 

Check out my profile at MapMyRide - http://www.mapmyride.com/user_profile?u=747649637012

Building a weight training program is not that complicated, just get started!

Below is a simple 3 step guide to build your own basic weight training program. This program will give you a structure to help you progress and achieve your goals. Once you have got a bit more experience in resistance training you can adjust and improve your program as you see fit.

1. Firstly, you need to decide what your goals are. Here are the 4 basic goals that a weight training program can cater to...

Goal Types

1. Maintaining strength - This is just if you want to keep your fitness at a certain level. You won't get huge gains with this but if you're short for time then its perfect for staying on top of your fitness.

2. Muscular endurance - Do this if you want your muscles to be able to keep going for long periods of time.

3. Strength - This is if you want to develop strong muscles. Basically this means you can exert more force. Push, pull or punch harder.

4. Building muscle mass - If huge muscles are your thing then this is the way to go.

Notice that losing weight isn't on this list. If you want to lose weight you'll have to combine one of these goals with aerobic exercise and a healthy, balanced diet.

2. Next, decide on what area of your body you would like to improve. Legs, arms, core or entire body?? It's all up to you...

3. You then use the table below to design your weight training program.

If there's anything you're unsure of in the table above then have a read through these to help you understand it.

Times per week - This is how many times per week you should train a muscle group if you want to reach your goals.

Weights to use - It's pretty hard to define this. Your best bet is to use your own judgement...

• Light would be a weight that doesn't stress your muscles too much.
• Medium would be quite a difficult weight.
• Heavy would be a weight that you find really hard.
• Very heavy would be a weight that makes you feel like you're going to pop!

Note that a lot of home exercises don't use weights... Instead, find an exercise which you think corresponds to light, medium, heavy etc.

Reps - This stands for repetitions. So if you do ten pushups in a row then this is ten reps.

Sets - A set is a group of repetitions. So ten pushups in a row is counted as 1 set.

Rest time - This is the time you rest between sets. Make sure you're not resting between reps... ;) So if you had to do 3 sets of 10 reps of pushups with a rest time of 15 seconds you would: Do ten pushups rest 15 seconds, do ten pushups rest 15 seconds, do ten pushups rest 15 seconds...