Plyometrics seem to be becoming all the rage when it comes to really kicking your fitness to the next level.  If you’ve done any of the shorter, more intense workout DVD’s, then you’ve probably noticed that they include some form of plyometric exercise.  Why? Because these are the best way to really blast away the calories and get the heart pumping fast. They’re hard, plain and simple, because they are short, focused bursts of energy that require a lot of muscle power.

Not only do they build muscle quickly by forcing your body out of it’s comfort zone in short bursts, but they also burn the calories like no one’s business, and that’s why they are so useful in the new crop of shorter, but  more intense workouts that have come up on DVD that really give you the best workout in the shortest amount of time.  Gilad and Jillian have used these principles in their latest DVD’s to help women build that muscle and also to burn the calories they want to so they can downsize.

It works like a charm for men as well to blast away fat, however, men still also have to do a little weight lifting if they want to really pump up their arms and their chests as well.  The only complaint that I have as a woman, and this is because this area of my body bulks up incredibly fast on me individually anyways, is that they do tend to inflate the quads, but this is because the short, powerful bursts of activity usually utilize this, one of the largest muscles on your body, to launch you into the air, and so that muscle burns fat like crazy because you are using so much energy to get yourself off the ground, and this muscle has to form all kinds of complex contractions to launch you like that.

All in all, plyometrics are a great way to work in mega calorie burning moves into your workout, and keep things hard, especially when they are done intermittently in your workout to get that heart rate up high for a few minutes, and then bring it down a little with some cardio or simple muscle moves.  It’s a great way to really challenge your body, and if you’re trying to lose weight, it’s a great method to blast away additional calories – sometimes up to double depending on the intensity and the amount you do.

I’m very much undecided on this question, whether you should continue to work out with intensity during those periods when you are really trying to lose weight.  I know that you should always at least moderately exercise when losing weight, but I question whether doing those back breaking, high intensity cardio workouts when you are on a serious calorie cutting phase of losing weight is a good idea.  Here’s why.

When you work out very intensely, it can really make you ravenous.  I’ve noticed sometimes that working out to vigorously actually sabotages my weight loss goals at times, because it makes me so hungry because it burned so many calories, that I end up almost bingeing out of desperation to regain those calories back and stabilize my blood sugar so that I actually feel human again.

It’s ok if you have the self control of an ox, but for those of us that can’t stand feeling hungry and shaky, working out too hard may be the kiss of death for our calorie restriction goals. Also, not to mention, you don’t want to be burning off everything that you ate thus far that day, or putting too much stress on the body, which often results in a fight or flight response and the body just shuts down .

You also don’t want to over do and get so sore that you can’t work out for the several days afterward.  I think that during weight loss, moderate aerobic activity is good, but there should probably be more focus on the muscle workouts, so that you can not burn so many crazy calories but still be toning up and sculpting, as well as creating lean muscle mass that helps to burn off excess fat and calories when your body is where you want it to be again, weight wise.

If you search in any body building site or blog, body builders, who are professionals at manipulating their bodies muscle and weight, will tell you that you shouldn’t over do it on the cardio during weight loss phase, it’s more of something you should do when you’re at your ideal weight and you’re just trying to maintain that weight from here on out.  They say that it does tend to sabotage calorie cutting too often by over doing it on increasing the appetite.

If you read the news at all, you’ve seen the unfortunate and terribly tragic news about two deaths that resulted from and extended stay in a sweat lodge, which is a sauna-like contraption that is usually hand built.  This particular one was in the Sedona, Arizona area, and was part of a several day long retreat that was designed to refocus, rejuvenate and re-energize people, make them more aware of their goals, and help them to cleanse their souls, and their bodies.

It was all part of the burgeoning and ever growing movement in Arizona where people are moving to become more spiritually aware.  It actually sounds like something I’d be drawn to do, it sounds interesting and definitely like it could be the experience of a lifetime.  And for such an unfortunate tragedy to occur out of all of this innocent stuff is really just horrible, because it now may make people irrationally fear sweat lodges and even saunas for no good reason.

When investigating, and the little I’ve heard about the investigation so far, it appears that this particular sweat lodge may have had way too many people in it at one time, and it may have also gotten too hot, as some clients were treated with burns on their bodies.  The likely accomplice of the deaths were severe dehydration, but of course, autopsies are going to be performed on the two people who were reported not breathing at the scene and were pronounced dead at the hospital.

It is not clear whether everyone suddenly fell ill at the same time, or whether everyone got sick at different times, but some say that if you have too many people in these things, since they are like tents and are somewhat airtight, the oxygen could have been used up and the could have accounted for people feeling so ill.  However, you add the burns treatment to the picture, and the actual temperature in the sweat lodge may have played a part as well in both the illnesses and the deaths that occurred.

One things for sure, with my infrared sauna, I sure do make sure that I get out when I  know I’ve had enough, but it is a great rejuvenation tool that I use often in the winter, and I don’t know what I’d do without it to be honest.  It’s sad that tragedies like this give otherwise healthy recreation a bad name, but tragedies do happen, they happen all the time.  My heart goes out to those poor people and their families. Who could have foreseen such a thing…..

Some people use the excuse that they don’t exercise because they don’t like how it increases their appetite.  Well, that’s a shame, because even though exercising does tend to increase your appetite somewhat, there are so many other numerous health benefits that you are missing out on by skipping the exercise that you might as well cash in some of the benefits it offers for longevity, depression and anxiety relief, and the multiple health benefits it offers for so many other aspects and facets of a happy, healthy existence.

I also happen to believe that while exercise may very temporarily increase your appetite in the short term, it may actually help to dramatically decrease and control and regulate your appetite on more of a constant basis when you start doing it more often.  An example is if you’ve been running and weight lifting for several months, you should start to notice that your constant appetite simply isn’t what it used to be, and you actually may even start craving more of the “right” foods versus the wrong ones, because exercise triggers something mentally that makes you want to eat better, at least for me, on both a conscious and subconscious level.

For that reason alone, along with the numerous other benefits that exercise offers for your life, like increased energy levels, increased mood elevation, and eventual appetite control, exercise is truly still one of the best things you can do for your mind, body and soul.

There are little ways that you can keep your metabolism burning on high all day. One of them is frequently getting up and doing short bursts of activity, like jumping jacks or a quick sprint around the house for example.

You can also eat small amounts of food throughout the day, which helps keep the metabolism from stalling and going into hibernation.  Instead, this keeps the metabolism going all day long, and makes it so that you are constantly burning off calories all day since your body always has something that it is working on and something that is fueling it. Of course, this doesn’t mean to just eat junk all day long, oh no, far from it.

But fueling your body all day on things like almonds, light popcorn, fruits that are high in fiber, veggies, and whole grains that really are whole grains and not just white flour products disguised as whole grain that are only partially whole grain, are a surefire way to keep your metabolism revved up.  You can’t overeat though, you need to eat just to the point of satiety, and let yourself draw back, for maximum effectiveness.  Another way to keep the burn going all day long is to walk around with weights around your ankles and/or your arms.

This actually puts a bit more stress on the body, and forces your body to adapt to the extra weight it is carrying around.  This of course won’t, in and of itself, give you bulging biceps or majestic looking triceps or anything like that, but it will definitely help your body to force itself to adapt to more of a burden by forcing more calorie burn into your daily routine.

It’s sort of like the concept of wearing ankle and wrist weights during a workout, you are just adding another facet of difficulty to the workout, which inches up the intensity and breaks the calorie burning barriers.  You’ve seen those workouts where it says for beginners to not use any weights or in other words just use the resistance of their body weight, and then to move up in the world, you have to start using weights, and from there you can use heavier and heavier weights to keep breaking the resistance point.

This is the same idea, only it is putting a slight bit more pressure on your body to adapt to normal, every day activities, which makes them into a calorie burning activity.

Have you ever worked out, where your feet are hitting a hard surface, over and over again, like on a treadmill, or running outdoors, or some other relatively high impact aerobic activity, in bad shoes?  I have, and let me tell you, I was pretty much laid up, unable to work out much less do any vigorous activity at all for a week because I had the shin splints really bad.  The bottom line is that our feet and lower legs are very sensitive, and when they don’t have the proper cushion and support, we tend to get injured and sore much more easily.

You also can get vericose veins and broken small veins much more easily as well, so if comfort and well being don’t make you get comfy, more expensive and cushioned shoes, then vanity may certainly be a motivator (I know that’s part of my motivation!)  One of the instances that comes to mind, is when I was in high school, and had my first exposure to real, hard working out when I joined the track team.  I wasn’t really a great runner.  I had asthma, but this was my way of joining up with some friends and getting out of my shy exterior for a bit to try to get fit and socialize a bit more.

I remember that I wasn’t able to get a good pair of tennis shoes in time for our first practice, so I literally ran in Keds.  Remember Keds? Yeah, those rubber soled, thin canvas shoes that had zero support or padding on the bottom of the shoe?  Well, I ran on hard tiled floors in our high school for about an hour on those.  Not only were my feet on fire at the end of practice, and I was too embarrassed to stop, but I also had shin splints very badly to the next two weeks.  My feet were so swollen that I couldnt’ even run for those next two weeks, and I could barely walk comfortably.

That was my first lesson in the importance of comfortable, supportive gym shoes to work out in, especially when you are bouncing around a lot of putting a lot of stress on the joints.  If you don’t adequately soften the blow, your body quickly responds with a fighting response, which is swelling and white blood cells to the rescue, as well as inflammation, and that’s where the real pain comes in.  So make sure you’re spending a little money on those shoes, and you will definitely enjoy your workouts more, instead of feeling like you’re being tortured.

If you know anything about the WWE, or World Wrestling Entertainment network, then you have heard of the WWE “Diva” Trish Stratus.  She’s the buxom blonde babe who fought her way to the top over and over again, winning “championships” several times over (although we all know it’s fixed, still she was the biggest face on WWE since China pretty much), and left the WWE a few years ago. I’ve actually seen some matches since my fiance watches the stuff from time to time, and she was one of the more talented and entertaining girls to watch in the ring because she knew what she was doing, whereas some of these girls screw up their moves constantly or just look sloppy out there.

After she left the WWE, apparently she opened a yoga studio called Stratusphere, where several different types of yoga classes were taught.  I even looked her up and she’s very good at yoga, getting into the most ridiculous poses that I could never even hope to put my body into.  You can tell that the practices has totally transformed her body too. When she was a regular on the WWE, she was more stocky and muscular looking, whereas now, she is longer and leaner, and I must say looks much better and healthier in the ring.  She came back to do a guest appearance on the WWE just a few weeks ago, so I saw that.

Now the enterprising Ms. Stratus is coming out with a Wii game that involves the yoga practice, and I may even get it since I love a good challenging yoga class, and have yet to find a video that challenges me to the extent that I can be challenged in an actual live yoga class.  For example, my sister and I went to a hot yoga class in California that pushed my boundaries as far as positions and length of time held, and I felt great after that class.

None of the yoga shows or DVD’s I’ve tried do that for me though, including the Yoga show on Fit TV, which I really like, but honestly it’s just not challenging enough sometimes for me, and I don’t break enough of a sweat to consider it a real “workout”.  However, hopefully the Wii game Trish has is going to contain several levels of difficulty and really works the body so that it can really change the body after a little bit of time.  I’ll let you know if I get it and you know you’ll be getting a review!

There are a lot of things that regular exercise helps me with, but one of them, which is clearly related to it’s ability to dissipate anxiety and stress, is the ability to help me to breathe much easier and not be short of breath of breathing irregularly. I actually have asthma, and so my breathing is really hinged on my levels of anxiety.  For example, if I feel really stressed out or have a lot of anxiety about an upcoming event, I tend to feel like I have large rubber bands around my lungs. It feels like I can’t properly inflate and deflate my lungs.  It’s like I can’t get a normal breathing rhythm going or something.

When I’m working out regularly, I notice this breathing difficulty less and less.  I can breathe much more easily and evenly, and I don’t have as much of that feeling of having a vice around my lungs when I’m at rest.  I can feel this way, short of breath, right up until I work out, and working out almost instantly makes it go away. I think that a lot of people with asthma would benefit immensely from working out, especially from cardio and circuit training.

Too many people with breathing problems tend to think that exercise actually makes it worse, but in fact, inactivity over time makes it harder for your lungs to adjust to even the slightest bit of stress (meaning physical activity).  There are of course some people that are not recommended to exercise very much by their doctors, but these are people who are diagnosed with very serious diseases, and it’s rare that a doctor would actually want someone to consistenly limit their physical activity.

Exercise is so beneficial for your breathing, most people don’t realize it until they’ve been working out for a while that it actually helps you breathe much easier.  In fact, over time, it can help you to eradicate and/or dramatically lessen common breathing problems like asthma.  I’ve been working out since I was like 14 years old, and I could never imagine not doing it at all or not making it a part of my lifestyle.  It’s so vital to not only your breathing but your mental and physical well being that it should be like brushing your teeth every day.

Mix kickboxing and yoga, and what do you get? KOGA! Yep, it’s yet another crazy mix of two fairly popular exercise regimens that’s hit the scene as a great cardio and stretching workout. You’ve got kickboxing on one hand, that’s a pretty intense, cardio intense workout that leaves most people breathless, and let’s face it, just about ready to black out at the end (I’m thinking of Tae Bo, which inevitably leaves me feeling like I’m gonna die at the end, it’s so taxing, but great exercise of course).

Then you have yoga, which is a great method for relaxation and stretching those tense, shortened muscles out. It’s also excellent for helping one to breathe correctly, and to breathe through their stressful points in life, which is excellent for controlling anxiety. I’ve often used yogic breathing priciples when I’m working and a really stressful situation presents itself that I’m not sure how to resolve right away.

These two don’t really seem like the most logical combination, since one is a kick but, get your heart pumping, hard on the muscles and the heart type of workout and the other is basically it’s polar opposite, but it can definitely have multiple benefits for thsoe that put it into practice.

Shoot, one of the best things about Koga is the weight loss that you can experience from doing this on a regular basis, since it can burn up to 800 calories per routine. That’s a lot of calories, that’s really like burning more than a whole meal off for the day, so it could definitely help boost your weight loss goals.

People love it because basically you do everything in sets of 4’s. This makes the intensity seem totally bearable and the whole workout seems shorter and more fast paced with less likelihood for boredom or frustration since each move only goes for four counts. This also means that if you totally suck at one of the moves, you know you only have to do it up to a count of four, and then you’re onto the next move.

I love workouts like this, because they make it seems easier than it really is. In the end, you’re still burning massive calories. It’s sort of like my recent experience with hot yoga, it was a fast moving yoga, so you weren’t holding one pose for an unbearable amount of time, but it was just long enough to create that heat in the body and make you aware that you were definitely burning some serious calories.

We all want those flat, toned looking abdominal muscles that signify health and fitness at the sight of them, but not all of us are able to achieve that level of fitness in the ab area because of our genetics or because of other factors, like having had children or c sections or other surgeries that may affect the flatness of your abdominal area. However, there are exercises that help the abs shape up more than your regular, average run of the mill crunches.

Crunches are still good, but too many people do not do them correctly and actually put too much strain on the neck and not enough of the right emphasis on the ab muscles that need to be targeted for them to be truly effective.

There are little devices that can help you do abs correctly that you will see on infomercials on tv, but there are ways you can do your own exercises in your own home to get those trimmed midsections you’ve always wanted. The key is to really do exercises the combine the upper and lower body, not just the upper body. When you are moving, for example, one of your legs, and your abs and upper body at the same time, you are better targeting those ab muscles that hold everything in like a girdle than you are just doing straight traditional crunches.

One of my favorite ab moves is where you put your hands behind your head, like you’re doing a crunch but very lightly, and never pushing on the neck, then have one of your legs bent up to support the lower body, on the floor, and the other leg straight out so the tow is pointing to the opposite wall, and move your upper and lower body at the same time. This is wonderful for isolating those side ab muscles and the lower abs, since it forces the lower abdominal muscles to contract because both your legs and your upper and middle body are all moving at the same time.

I also love the pilates move where you make little circles with your legs straight up in the air. It may not look like it’s doing anything, but it is targeting those middle and lower abs like nothing else, and you will notice a smoothing out of that area when you do these types of exercises on a regular basis, and when you do them correctly.