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Exercising with weights is a simple as lifting things up and putting them down. I am not kidding yet, we as human beings tend to complicate everything. I have to chuckle when I am in the gym and I watch every day folks doing advanced training techniques they read about in a magazine or someone told them about. However, I am not laughing at them, I admire the fact that they are in the gym; working out, trying to improve their health and fitness, but I notice that in the years they have been going in they haven’t altered themselves very much.
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Exercising is not complicated. You literally do something over and over again. The biggest key is consistency. Advanced training techniques can be fun once in awhile, but they aren’t for the every day person, whose goal is to simply improve their health. For one, those that utilize the advanced techniques are athletes by profession; they are working out several hours a day and have the free time to allow themselves to recuperate from grueling workouts. Most of us have jobs and after the time we have in the gym, we have jobs to do, families to attend to and other responsibilities that take not only our time, but our energy.
But, for some reason, people think complicated is better. For endurance exercise they take various classes to keep themselves from getting bored. They will spend up to ninety minutes trying to burn off body fat, when in essence because of excess carbohydrate consumption about an hour of that time is wasted burning carbs that they should not have ingested in the first place.
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Endurance, strength and fitness are easy to build. You pick an exercise, you repeat it and most importantly; be consistent. I am not saying you should never mix it up a bit, but your core exercises should have consistency, especially for the beginner. I watch as a new person enters the gym and every six to eight weeks they are completely changing their routines. They haven’t laid the foundation of consistency, so they don’t get the resulsts they expect and you know what happens? They quit. The solution to boredom is NOT always chaning things up, the real solution is getting results. The best way to get results is to remain consistent.
In the realm of progressive resistance exercises, weight training is nothing more than lifting things up and putting them down. It is that simple. If you are morbidly obese, completely out of shape or a novice, as in my book, I recommend two months of pre-training. You need to get your body ready to actually work out. Jumping right into hardcore workouts will only result in fatigue, excessive soreness or worse; injury. Take the time to get your body ready for a workout. However, even the workouts outlined in my book, build from the pre-training phase. You want to be progressive in your resistance, but you also want to be consistent.
When it comes to endurance, as I stated above, most people waste plenty of their valuable time because of poor eating choices. If you want to burn stored body fat for energy, restrict your carbohydrate intake. Does it make sense to give your body an alternate fuel to burn when you are trying to burn something else? Also, get away from the timed exercises. I never understood that one. If you are new to working out; go outside and walk around the block a few times and yes time yourself. Not so that you walk for the same time on your next walk, but so that on your next walk you try to complete the same distance faster. Slowly increase your distance and speed until you are pushing yourself and burning body fat. Another happening in the gym, or the track or along the levy system that makes me smile is the people who spend all this time doing “cardio” all the while they are carrying on a conversation. If you can carry on a conversation, you aren’t working hard enough. The football coach at my high school would always yell; if you can talk, you aren’t working hard enough.
As always, when embarking on an exercise program get a medical check up. It is important to take care of ourselves, but we must be sure we are healthy enough not to cause more harm than good.
Keep the complexity out of your workout. Keep it simple, keep it consistent and you will get the results you are seeking.
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Chiropractor, Dr. Joe Leonardi is the author of the life changing book,A Life Beyond Weight Loss. He is available to appear on any talk radio, internet podcasting or television outlet. He has appeared onWYLN TV -35′s Storm Politics with Tiffany Cloud, WILK’s The Sue Henry Show, Magic 93′s Frankie In The Morning, WBRE’s PA Live, SSPTV’s News 13, Public Television WVIA’s State of Pennsylvania and Call the Doctor; Entercom’s Outlook on Northeast PA with Shadoe Steele, Citadel Broadcasting’s Sunday Magazine with Brian Hughes, Lisa Davis’ Your Health Radio; Jimmy Moore’s Livin’ La Vida Low Carb podcast; Hank Garner’s Podcast, Dr. Robert Su’s Carbohydrates Can Kill Podcast.
Dr. Joe Leonardi also will come and speak to your group; to learn more about his motivational speaking fees and availability contact him at docjoeleonardi@betterlifeseminars.com and check out his web site www.betterlifeseminars.com.
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************The posting that I write do not apply to those with an underlying medical or hormonal condition. I advise anyone embarking on a weight loss and fitness plan to have a thorough medical evaluation. You want to be sure that you are physically able to exercise and you don’t have any underlying medical conditions.*************
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- Go Ahead: Lift Things Up And Put Them Down (fatthenfitnow.wordpress.com)
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