I came across an interesting method of exercise, believe it or not, through a promotional ad that I got through my email. I was going to delete it, but I figured I’d open it up and see what it was all about and if it was worth any investment of time or even money if it sounded like something I might want to try. I have to admit, I’m very curious about it since it involves something that I’ve come to believe has been incredibly effective for me changing my body composition, and that is short, intense bursts of exercise.

I told you before that my husband lost around 30 pounds and I lost around 15 pounds when we started doing the short bursts of activity that were extremely intense in nature but never lasted more than 25 minutes or so, rather than slogging away at the gym for an hour or more, and what really clinched it for me was the fact that the short bursts of intense exercise that lasted about 20-25 minutes really didn’t seem to put my appetite into overdrive, like long bouts of cardio can sometimes do to me.

I remember leaving the gym at work after long periods of cardio on the elliptical (40 minutes or more) and feeling totally famished, and wanting to eat a house. Of course, I still believe that the elliptical is an amazingly effective piece of equipment, but with this new theory, you can switch between the elliptical and other intense movements for less time and still burn tons of fat.

I guess that the PACE method is very similar in thought process to this, and research has shown that people who use this PACE method of working out actually burned more fat off their bodies than those who did long cardio. Although an important point is that the long cardio group burned more calories, but not as much fat. I think the fat burning piece is more important personally, because you can always replace calories, but fat is harder to burn off.

The PACE method is never supposed to last more than 20 minutes per day, and can supposedly be as short as 12 minutes with amazing results. Does it really work? I don’t know, I haven’t tried it, but I do believe the basic theory behind it because I have seen this similar theory at work in my own experience.

I’m so thankful that I have a gym to work out at where I work. I’ve grown accustomed to it and have gotten spoiled. And I really got out of the habit of having to work out when I got home from work because I would usually try to get a workout in at work. It was perfect. I would work out on my lunch hour (and fifteen minutes to be exact), and then I wouldn’t even have to worry about venturing downstairs in to our little mini gym we have down there, or doing DVD’s, although I would occasionally throw one in and do a half hour if I didn’t work out at my job.

However, what’s really thrown me off (and about five thousand other gym members) is that they closed it down starting in November. I guess they figured the holidays would be a perfect time to do it since everyone slack off working out around the holidays, but it’s been rough not being able to work out in the facility because I’ve kind of let my five to four day a week workout routine slip and now am only working out 2-3 days during the week as opposed to those 2-3 more I was getting when the gym was open.

However, the gym is going to open back up in January, so I’m sure that everyone will be crowding in there, especially considering that they are going to have to contend with the New Years resolution people who crowd the gym in addition to the ones that were already going there and had to take a break forcibly because the gym closed.

It closed for renovations to the bathrooms and the locker rooms and showers, so hopefully it will look pretty nice and we’ll have nice new accommodations, but mostly I’m just excited to be able to work out again during my work day and blow off steam. It’s much needed now too, we are so busy at work because of increased work loads, and everyone is stressed out, so I’m sure the gym will be overcrowded for a while, but I don’t even care, I just want to get back in the swing!

I’m really glad that I’m addicted to working out, otherwise I wonder how active I’d be.

Well, adults know that there are many benefits to taking up the practice of yoga for them. From relaxation to improved immunity, focus and concentration, the practice of yoga has been a boon for many adults, helping them to transform their lives into a more peaceful haven and simultaneously tone their bodies, making them more able to get around, have better posture, and be better able to perform physical duties.  I know the benefits of yoga myself, having done it several times over the past few years, but still not able to incorporate it into my weekly exercise regimen as much as I’d like to.

Now, yoga is showing that it can have great benefits for kids too.  Parents of children who have enrolled in special yoga classes with cute catch phrases and a different curriculum have marveled at how much calmer their children seem to be, and how much yoga has helped some hyperactive young children to really channel that energy into something positive, and allowed them to be calmer and more focused on their schoolwork and other things they need to be focusing on more in their youth.

Many children, some as young as three and five years old, can find it therapeutic to do the yoga poses for an hour or so, and although some of them may get a bit restless, it’s amazing that they can stay in some of the poses for as long as they can.  Yoga definitely helps to focus the mind and calm the inner chatter that goes along with both anxiety and hyper activity in children, so it’s no wonder that this has been found to be a successful therapy for young kids.

With the popularity increasing in larger cities, this may soon find it’s way into the real mainstream, with smaller towns perhaps picking it up and running with it, or even schools perhaps adding yoga to their curriculum in gym class so that kids can be constantly moving in their day during this important time, instead of learning some sport that won’t teach them anything or exercise their bodies.  It could really help kids get through their school day better if they did that.

Of course you know that strength training helps give you a great body with lean, tone lines; great definition; and low body fat…but the benefits of strength training for women go far beyond just looking good. I am pretty confident that what I am about to reveal will motivate you even more to keep up with your workouts once you see how much you’re helping your body every time you pick up a weight.

Building happiness. Research shows that weight training can help reduce signs and symptoms of depression more effectively that conventional counseling. For many women working out is their main stress reliever. Aside from getting out pent up energy any frustrations working out also increases your “happy stuff” endorphins and dopamine.

Wear a milk mustache. Millions of women deal with weakening bones that later leads to osteopenia or even the more advanced diagnosis of osteoporosis. I don’t know about you but the idea of falling one day and ending up with a broken hip doesn’t sound appealing. That’s why you can start strengthening your bones today. Strength training for women has been proven to be effective at increasing bone density.

This isn’t the same with cardio workouts. It’s because of the weight bearing exercises that take place. The stress that you add to your body screams for the need to thicken your bones. Which helps you stay on top of your fitness game today
and years down the line.

Just how much help can you get? In just 6 months you can increase your bone density by 13%! That’s a huge difference. Lean mean calorie burning machine. There’s a big difference between fat and muscle… and its not that fat is gross and muscle is sexy. To up keep fat it doesn’t need much. It’s pretty happy just sticking to your butt, thighs, belly…. well you get it. But muscle needs energy to build, repair and maintain.

That means you burn more calories during the day by simply adding some sexy lean muscle. Just how many calories? For every pound of muscle you have you can burn up to 50 extra calories per day! Anif you’re not increasing your food intake that is extremely helpful for burning off those extra pounds of fat.

On and On…
I could go on and on with this list. The benefits of women’s strength training are practically endless. So I won’t stop yet…
-Increased libido
-Decreased risk of cancers (colon, breast)
-Decreased back pain
-Increased energy
-Better Sleep

See just how much you are helping your body? If you’re not strength training yet definitely start… these results aren’t the same if you’re running on a treadmill or basing the majority of your workout on cardio workouts. As a matter of fact, you can find out how cardio can actually be making you fat here!

Our guest writer today, Taylor Ryan is a NASM CPT, figure competitor and the co-owner of the women’s online training site The Art Of Weight Lifting. For more tips and fitness news visit her women’s workout blog LiftingRevolution.com

Winter is quickly approaching, and I’m already finding that for me, I’m already missing my weekend jogs outdoors.  It’s just been a really rainy, cold fall season for us so far here in Ohio, and those rainy, yucky days always seem to land on Fridays and on weekends, which is the only time I actually get a chance to get outside to jog instead of doing something a little more monotonous inside, like the elliptical machine or recumbent bike.  Don’t get me wrong, those are both great exercise machines, however they get old, and the smells and sights of the outdoors just really stimulate you and make you feel great, adding a great experience to your cardio workout.

So, now I’m trying to find ways to spice things up a bit indoors, and certainly I will still get outdoors whenever the weather allows me to. Hey, we should still have an indian summer coming along sometime, or so I’m told!  Oh, and it’s supposedly going to be a very cold winter here in Ohio, that’s what folks are saying, so time will tell, but it looks like we’ll all be really ready to stretch our legs and get some sun after this looong season!

Here’s what I’m doing now to help keep me from getting bored, and still getting a great, diversified and intense workout that will keep my muscles guessing and therefore help me to burn calories and build muscle more efficiently while also burning fat.  I’m essentially switching my workout every day that I do hit the gym.  At work, where we have a gym, I’m doing the recumbent bike or elliptical, then following it up with a floor routine where I alternate different types of squats, arm weights and other resistance types of exercises to keep it challenging.

At home, I’m alternating different shows on Fit TV which are always different and work your body in different ways, so that’s challenging me and keeping it fresh as well.  I’m also still alternating this with DVD’s that I’ve had that were collecting dust all summer long since I was doing other things and getting outside more.  Just doing this helps to keep your body revved up, your metabolism going strong, and your body challenged enough so you don’t get sluggish and gain weight in the winter.

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.

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.

I just got back from visiting my sister in Berkely, California. Not only did I have a great time, but I walked everywhere, which I’m not used to doing here in Ohio, where everything is pretty much a car ride away, so I use my car quite a bit, so that was a great workout in itself. Although you would get used to it if you lived there, my feet were aching for a while after I first arrived. I bet the first few days we walked about five miles a day. You know what else goes along with that, sore, contracted muscles. So when my sister suggested some hot yoga, I definitely was excited to try it out.

I’d already done Bikram yoga with her in California on one of my visits, and this one was a little different. Instead of having the temperature turned up as high as it gets in bikram, this one was just turned up into the eighties, so it made you sweat more, but it also wasn’t making you pour sweat allover the place like Bikram.

This workout was much more challenging than the Bikram I had done before, mostly due to the instructor and her challenging routine that pushed your body to stretch to lengths you weren’t sure it could, so there were some moves that I had to sit out on, which is unusual for me, but then again, I’m not a professional yogi, and I don’t practice regularly enough, so it was to be expected.

I honestly thought that it would be one of those yoga classes where I was like “that was it?” but I couldn’t have been more wrong. When the workout was over, I felt a calm sense of strength, and my muscles that had been shortened and constricted from walking were now all mellowed out and totally stretched back to their normal shape and length. She really got the backs of my legs better than any other yoga instructor I’ve had, and I also felt a lot of work in my hips, which I’m not very strong in.

She worked out the abs and core really well, but that was mostly at the end. I think that a big part of the reason I made it through this tough practice with minimum next-day soreness was the fact that the room was hot, which allowed my muscles to bend and stretch more freely without injury of hyperextension. It was at a great place called Yoga to the People, a donation based yoga studio that’s expanding greatly in the bay area due to the awesome concept of donation based participation.

I’m in love with a new buzzword in today’s modern exercise and workouts, and it’s called plyometrics. Plyometrics are the employment of fast, quick and sudden bursts that involve a lot of muscle power and a lot of stamina. A good example of a plyometric exercise is the power lunge plank, where you start out in the infamous yoga plank position, which is where you are basically positioning yourself in a push up position, and then you suddenly blast your feet backwards, lunging back like a rabbit would do (of course, only rabbits go forward when they do it), and then blasting your feet back up forward.

You use a lot of power and a lot of control when you do a plyometric move, which is why athletes use these types of moves when they are training to improve their speed and their endurance for their sport. They are an excellent exercise to integrate with your cardio blast workouts, as they continue to increase your breath rate and they also increase strength and stamina simultaneously. They also build muscle very quickly, as I have found out in the few exercise DVD’s I do on a regular basis which happen to include some plyometric moves, which attests to their popularity in the more modern exercise regimens.

What I particularly love about integrating plyometrics into my fitness routine is the power and grace that it seems to give you. It adds to your physical prowess by simultaneously increasing your muscle strength and your cardio endurance, making you feel very powerful, like you could really defend yourself if you had to. I also love the way it tones up problems areas very quickly by targeting fatty areas and also by giving your body a furnace blast of calorie burning power that you don’t get very often with many other types of regular exercise.

For this reason, it’s my opinion that plyometrics should be worked into any exercise routine to add that extra level of difficulty and also to add to the cross training aspect of any routine by incorporating moves that force the body to blast itself, willingly or unwillingly, in different directions. You do have to be careful though, you will need to make sure you do ankle rotations before hand as plyometrics are rough on the ankles, particularly for people who have a weak spot there to begin with.

I used to think that swimming was one of the biggest fat burners there was when it came to aerobic training and fat burning – aka calorie burning, but then there were challenges to that saying that cross country skiing may outweigh the fat and calorie burning capabilities of swimming because not only were you constantly moving and using all muscles – the arms and the legs, but you were also most likely trying to keep warm, which burns extra calories, because the weather outside is probably going to be pretty darn cold when you find the conditions suit cross country skiing.

That was a long time ago though. Now you have all kinds of exercises vying for that coveted “best fat burning exercise” or best calorie burning exercise title. I mean, who didn’t think that Tae Bo was the best invention ever when it came to burning fat and calories in a relatively condensed period of time and at a very intense rate. Tae Bo made you sweat, and sweat hard, and you were working the entire body again, the arms, the legs and the abs, for a super fueled workout that got you toned as well as doused in sweat and starving afterwards, which means you definitely burned some serious calories.

Not the fat and calorie burning buzzword in the world of exercise is circuit training. Circuit training, as well as training where you alternative high with lower impact, such as where you run really fast, then slow down, and follow with another fast burst of running, are the new fat and calorie burners that have everyone talking. And not just because they do make you burn up energy (aka calories), but because they are also excellent ways to condition the body to get used to more constant, higher impact workouts, and also to maximize the effectiveness of your workout, in the least amount of time possible, but also with the best results.

If you maintain a higher heart rate for at least thirty minutes, it is after that when your body really kicks into high burning mode, and your body really lets go of extra calories in the form of fat. You also do have to take in less calories if you want to lose fat though, it’s not just a matter of working out, although of course exercise is also vital to long term weight loss because it skims off a significant amount of calories form your days expenditures, which means it scales down your weight.

I think it is said that for every pound you want to lose, you should take about 300 calories out of your diet daily, and you should also do at least 45 minutes of cardio, for a grand total of a net loss of 600 calories per day, which in a weeks time alone should net you a pound of weightloss. If you can continue that for a while, you could lose significant weight in a relatively short period of time. Hey, for some extra weightloss boosting, you can try to jump in a far infrared sauna and sweat off a little extra water weight and help to rev up the metabolism and waste elimination from the body as well.