Some people will avoid walking the steps like the plague. Why though? Walking steps is one of the greatest ways to get a quick blast of heart pumping cardio work into your day. I personally try to take the stairs whenever I can at home and at work. At work, I only take the elevator if I’ve already worked out for the day and I’m just tired, or if I have a tons of bags I have to carry up and going up the steps is just too hard on my back.

Stairs are way harder than walking on normal, even ground. This is because your heart has to push blood to all of your major muscles, especially the biggest muscle in your legs, your quadriceps, in order to get them to force your body weight up the steps. This is excellent cardio work. It’s exactly the reason why you see people gasping for breath after even a few flights of stairs. Shoot, sometimes you even see totally healthy workout fiends out of breath after walking a few flights of steps, so you know that it’s a good workout.

I like having steps in my home anyways. It offers my husband and I a little more space from one another, and to feel more like we can get away into our own areas of our home when we are at eachothers throats or just feel like we need our own personal space. I personally would hate to have a one level home now that I’m so used to having two!

I remember when I was in high school Track, how we used to run the bleachers. I dreaded it because it was the hardest type of working out that our coach made us do. Even back then, in probably the best shape because of my age and my young heart, it made me feel like I was going to pass out from the exertion.

Stairs are hard because they don’t stop. You keep going, and your body is being pushed to propel you up, defying gravity, which is very difficult for your body to do. It’s using all these muscles in unison, which requires a lot more oxygen, and a lot more blood to be available to the muscles that supply the oomph behind movement. Steps are one of the best workouts you can have!

This has been something I’ve struggled with for the last year. Ever since I heard, about a year ago, the first murmurings from friends that liked to work out like me, that static stretching was actually found to do more harm than good before a workout, it blew my mindset that had been present for years.

My mindset since I started working out at the age of 16 (now 19 years ago), was that you needed to stretch your muscles in a static fashion before every workout, or you not only risked injury, but you also risked great cramping and discomfort after your workout. Now, experts are saying that static stretching is a no-no before working out, and instead you should do dynamic stretching.

Dynamic just means you are moving around, but at a slower pace than you would be if you were working out vigorously. It usually can consist of a slow, paced job if you are warming up for running, or side to side steps if you are warming up for some sort of aerobic workout that required lots of jumping around.

It can be anything that gets your heart pumping and gets the body actually physically warmed up, the circulation going, so that the body’s temperature elevates and the muscles warm up as well. The goal is to get the heart pumping blood to all the muscles, and the get the circulation going so that your muscles aren’t deprive of oxygen and blood when they are being worked out.

Experts say that warming up with static stretches actually over exerts your muscles, and can make them more prone to injury because we often push them too hard and over stretch them. It is dangerous because your body is not physically warmed up yet, and it is like stretching a cold muscle with no blood running to it yet.

You are note “primed” to stretch your muscles to this extent because you haven’t done any dynamic stretching, so this often can cause the muscles to over burden themselves and be even more prone to tearing, over stretching and lactic acid buildup which leads to soreness the next day. Start off with a very light jog before you work out. Jog in place or down the road, and see how this works out for you.

Just don’t make the activity heavy. The idea is that you are warming up the body to begin a more rigorous workout.

It seems that more and more women are taking to the pole these days. No, I’m not talking about that women who lost their day jobs and resorted to stripping at night to make (probably much better) money in the mean time. I’m talking about the growing fitness craze that involves donning those high spiked heels (or none at all sometimes), and dancing on the pole. It’s the exotic dance workout, and you may have seen some of these hot DVD’s online or in stores.

Carmen Electra sort of started the craze with her Fit to Strip line of DVD workouts, which I’ve actually tried and like fine, but it just wasn’t for me. I felt like a total cheeseball, and just not convincingly sexy enough because I was trying too hard or something .I guess you gotta be a full on sex pot who lives and breathes this stuff to actually not look like a stiff robot trying to look sexy, but it just wasn’t for me.

I personally think you have to have a bit more of a theatrical personality to do it and do it well. It’s great exercise though – have you seen what some of the girls can do on those poles? They can put themselves in an inverted position, and slide down them, that’s pretty talented!

What these types of exotic dance workouts tend to emphasize is growing more confident in yourself while also working your core, your butt and your thighs and stretching the muscles simultaneously as well. It’s similar to other more erotic sorts of workouts like the salsa or shimmy dance workouts, or the latin mamba types of dance workouts that really emphasize sexuality and having fun a lot more than actually targeting specific areas.

I think you can tell that my opinion of these types of workouts is that they are fun, and they are usually a fad. But do they actually provide meaningful workouts? I do believe so, however, I think you should just sprinkle them in with your other workouts that actually give you a full body workout or target specific areas for muscle definition, since these types of exotic dancing ones usually are just a bunch of un=targeted cardio types of moves.

In a move that I think will have a lot of unlicensed martial arts and yoga instructors relieved, NY has decided to allow unlicensed practitioners to keep practicing without threats of fines of closing down, something that hampered a lot of very talented people from continuing their business and helping people learn their trade, get healthy exercise and intense, or relaxing physical activity and empower themselves.

They are looking to treat martial arts and yoga as something like what it is, which is a self improvement measure. It’s not rocket science, and it doesn’t require a degree. Some people have been doing these trades their whole lives, and their experience and passion alone make up for any lack of a silly license of formal education in the matter.

I’ve been to good and bad instructors in the past, and let me tell you, either you have the God given talent to passionately teach people how to empower themselves through physical activity modalities, or you don’t. Some people just have that gift to teach others their passion and talent for some sort of practice. Martial arts has been around forever, and people take these sorts of classes for everything from self defense to physical exercise and learning how to empower themselves and feel strong.

Many times, yoga and martial arts can have the same effects of building one’s self esteem, and both are really seen as both a form of exercise, and a means for self improvement and learning self discipline and self respect. For whatever reason, being able to command our bodies in these ways is extremely fulfilling, and both of these practices really should be as openly available to everyone as they possibly can be.

The bill to take the restrictions away and allow for health freedom is being sent for passing this week and no one is expecting anyone to object to it, which is great news for those in the health and self improvement industry, setting the bar for further freedoms when it comes to your personal choices and health decisions.

I’ve probably talked at nauseum about the benefits of interval, or circuit training. Why? Because I truly believe you get the exact same benefits out of intense, shorter workouts that you get for an hour to an hour and a half just going through the motions at the gym or at home on you treadmill or elliptical machine. I’ve seen the benefits of interval training for myself many times, both in helping me to shed weight quickly, and to help me get on the path to a more toned and less body fatted physique.

Here’s why interval training is so great. You get the heart rate way up, then you follow it with these sort of little “rest” periods, but you’re not really resting, you’re just moving slower or moving at a less intense rate than you were before. The key is, you’re still moving, keeping that heart rate up, and preparing for your next intense set of jumps, plyometrics, or whatever else it is that you’re doing that’s pounding that heart rate up higher and higher.

Some exercise specialists even say that interval training is up to twice as effective as regular exercise. So, you may be getting significant more impact for that intense thirty minute interval session than you were getting out of a whole hour or more of moderate, ho hum, chugging along on the hamster wheel exercise in other words. I still wholeheartedly believe in these machines too though, and you can even incorporate them into an intense circuit training routine.

What do I mean by that? Well, you can alternate short bursts of highly energized running on the treadmill with some pushups or something like that. As a matter of fact, pushups are a great interval training exercise, because they get the upper body moving and the heart pumping really fast.

Why is this form of training so effective at cutting body fat and building muscle so effectively, and so quickly? Because your body actually requires short bursts of extremely taxing activity to effectively build muscle. I see this principle at work in my own body. I know that when I start my really tough interval training, that’s when my arm muscles actually get built up better, and I start to see the fat come right off my body very quickly, revealing more muscle.

When I’m just doing my average workout without the bursts of hard activity, I don’t notice this stripping off of fat and the building of muscle quickly happening, it takes more time, or it doesn’t happen at all and I just maintain somewhat of a tone, but not that “cut”.

This piece of info really came as no surprise to me. Look, I’ve been working out literally since I was about 14 years old. Don’t ask me how that happened. I remember reading a book called Fit for Life, that I picked up for ten cents at a local book sale when I was with my grandma and grandpa in Cleveland, and ever since then, I became a sort of somewhat obsessive health nut – at a very young age.

My healthiness, while it started off as genuinely healthy, eating right, exercising and the whole shebang, quickly deteriorated into a full blown eating disorder, which I have battled my whole life, but gotten under control now for several years. However, one thing I did learn is that when I exercise regularly, I love what it does for my brain.

I swear, I actually FEEL smarter when I’m working out regularly, and conversely, I also feel dumber when I’m not getting the right amount of physical activity in my daily routine. It may have something to do with the fact that anxiety levels are highly associated with lack of exercise, and your focus is just much better when you are working out consistently, but for me, I have always been smarter, more of a producer and achiever, when I’m working out.

This is a huge part of the reason I’ve become addicted to working out. What started off as a pure vanity thing for me, to stay thin and trim and toned, has now morphed for me (I’m now in my mid thirties) as an empowerment for me. I can think more on my feet, focus better, and actually become ten times more productive when I’m getting my workouts in.

Studies actually tie physical fitness and academic and business success to one another. It’s no wonder that the two are closely related either. Your body, when it’s in better shape, just works better on all levels. Your organs function better, your brain becomes more efficient and your whole body processes oxygen at a faster rate, and also rids itself of toxins and chemicals and hormones that build up and cause everything from obesity to acne. It’s no wonder exercise can be addictive, it makes you into the Super YOU.

Well, us women really have it crappy in this department, among others. I mean, not only do we get periods and unfortunate accompanying fluctuations in our hormones that make us feel like we’ve gone temporarily insane from time to time. We also now supposedly have to get about one hour of moderate exercise per day to keep the average pounds that tend to creep up with age from being added to our frames.

Apparently women are a little more prone than men to put on weight simply due to our age and the changes that come with aging, than men are. Sheesh, and we thought the changes that come with and after pregnancy were bad!

This is especially important for women who are middle aged, as they are extremely susceptible to putting on those middle aged pounds in their belly areas and their thighs and upper arms, and we all know how dangerous visceral (belly) fat can be to our health, so it’s a real concern. Most women (including myself) though, scoff at getting an hour’s worth of solid exercise in a day.

This is exactly the reason that I have found such solace in shorter, more intense workouts like Jillian’s Michael’s intense workouts. I feel like I still get the same amount of good cardio blasting workout and muscle building activity, only it’s not taking an hour out of each of my already jam packed days.

We are already waging a very hefty (no pun intended) war on obesity, and we have instituted many programs to educate people on the importance of exercise, and this is just another one of those random statistics that’s thrown at us that makes the point even more dire. Exercise is an absolute must if we both do not want to get fat and threaten our life with diseases associated with obesity, and also that we must be active in order to live a longer, healthier and more enjoyable life.

Exercising translates into a higher quality life, that’s all there is to it. After all, who wants to go on vacations where they can’t even enjoy seeing the scenery because they can’t get around with ease? Little things like that are the reason that exercising should be a healthy, consistent part of everyone’s daily routine. Or at least 4-5 days a week. Hey, I’ll admit I can’t get to it every single day!

This P90X workout series really blew in like a blustery sandstorm, didn’t it? One minute I had never even heard of the workout DVD series, the next, everyone I knew was talking about it. I guess that’s how these mini exercise phenomenon occur though, right? This one is a series of DVD’s that are designed to really rip and tear your muscles and build them to new levels. Also, the trainer who has designed the DVD’s put together a special nutrition plan that some people follow as well, which is supposed to really make you more cut and reduce even more body fat.

As if the ripping exercises he puts you through aren’t enough! I know a few people who have done this program, and let me tell you, if they have been doing it for a few weeks, and consistently, then there are significant improvements in their physique that are amazing to watch occur.

People literally peel off the fat and add solid, lean muscle mass. If you are a woman who doesn’t want to get too ripped, you may actually want to scale it back a bit because some of the pics of women who are on the program are almost too ripped looking, but that’s just my own personal taste. I saw an infomercial on for these DVD’s again the other day when my sister was in town from California.

My sister happens to be quite a fitness buff herself, and she seemed interested in them too. The commercial slashed the price down to something like $140 I want to say, which is cheaper than the original P90X price of about $200 if I remember correctly. From what I’ve seen it’s well worth it. I believe the workouts are a little over an hour.

You do them almost every day, except you do take one day off, probably just to give your body a little R&R before you start tearing your muscle tissue and building it up again. There is even a lot of yoga and stretching. The guy who does the videos is older, and he still looks like he’s in his twenties, if that’s any testament to what these exercises might be able to do for you.

I know for us women, sometimes we want to keep our biceps toned down a bit. We want definition, but we usually don’t want to look like we’ve been taking steroids. We want to look feminine, yet strong, and we want to definitely get the lean definition that so many women envy in arms – like the arms of Sarah Jessica Parker for example. But guys are a little different. First of all, men’s biceps are one of the easiest spots to firm up and bulk up because they are just very easily targeted in workouts.

However, like us women, they find their triceps and other little sinews of the arm muscles a bit tougher to bulk up and lean down. There are actually ways that you can maximize the burn and the bulking up of your biceps if you’re a guy – or a woman, who wants to get this area toned and ripped.

Many times you’ll hear trainers recommend that you alternate very heavy, slow lifting, with lighter lifting and more repetition to help burn the fat layers off to reveal the muscle and to also help bulk up the muscle quickly. This is still a good way to not only get that chiseled look, but also to burn fat off the body in general very quickly, and this of course translates to burning more calories off more quickly, so it’s a win/win situation.

Weight machines are excellent, the kind you find at most gyms, to help vary the weight you’re working with, and the positions in which you are working the muscles, so getting to the gym is a good idea if you’re really wanting to target and blast certain areas. However if you have a great home gym with the right equipment that always works too. It’s all about variation and