Winston Salem Fitness

For women workout is the solution to improve their health and fitness. Have you ever felt that you are overweight or obese? If yes then there is no need to feel inferior to others as there are several women who have the similar crisis concerned to their weight. Several choose on diets to come in shape but they fail to remember that they are required to work on strength as well. There are several women who struggle with a variety of diets without attempting any exercise, and then these women speculate why they are yet unhealthy and can’t appear to reduce any calories. It is significant that one understands that at the moment is the exact time to start functioning on your health and fitness and also keep in mind that it doesn’t have to be a tough one.

No issue how weighty you are there are various ways that one can start doing out workout. While one may not be able to walk a complete mile right away but she can begin out by merely walking a shorter mile. Some amount of work out is healthier than not doing work out at all. So start consulting your general practitioner and let him realize that you are really sincere about improving health and want to be back in shape as soon as possible.

Your general practitioner can help direct you to the right routine and exercises for you. He can also present you with a number of diet suggestion as well as motivation that will help improving you with your eating lifestyle. However, as an alternative of just distressing about your diet, you really need to concentrate on getting healthy and fit. This is one of the most vital decisions that a women will ever make when it comes to her health and fitness.

If a woman after consulting the trainer can come up with a good quality exercise program and if she strictly follows the program for at least 4 months, she will without doubt see some immense improvements in her general health and fitness. Further by changing her eating habits or diet she can also perk up her health as well. If one works on scheduled work out for at least three hours each week and plan to eat only when badly hungry, she will find out that her cholesterol and her blood pressure levels will both get better.

The lack of exercise among Americans is one of the leading causes of high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, and many other diseases and afflictions that shorten our lifespan and diminishes our quality of life. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

The benefits of exercise are many: Exercise improves your overall physical health. It improves your overall mental health. It helps you to control your weight. It extends your lifespan. There are just so many well known benefits to exercising your body that the real question is – why is it so hard to stay on an exercise program?

Well – one very real reason is that it’s boring. Exercising is like going to work except that you don’t get paid.

The key to finding an exercise program that you will keep to and won’t drop is to find something that you really like doing. Some activity that requires some sort of physical activity and that will give you a workout as a side benefit. Activities such as:

Dancing – Whether hip-hop or ballroom, dancing is one of the best and most fun exercises you can do. Plus you can do it alone, in pairs, or with a group. Dancing is a great aerobic exercise. It gets the blood pumping, the endorphins flowing and helps to build the bone strength and density in your hips and legs. It’s also a great excuse to listen to some of your favorite dance tunes again and again. And it’s a fantastic way to make new friends.

Birdwatching – Do you like nature and being outdoors? If so birding may be the perfect hobby and fun exercise for you. This is a hobby that will get you outdoors. You’ll be hiking through beautiful forest and nature settings. Maybe you’ll go on camping trips so you’ll be able to witness the early birds getting the worms and feeding their hatchlings. Birdwatching or birding is also something that the entire family can do together, helping to bring everyone closer to each other. Birdwatching is one of the most popular hobbies in the United States with clubs in every state.

Cycling – This is one of the best aerobic exercises around. It’s as good as running but without the constant wear and tear on the feet, ankles, and joints. If you are not far from work and you choose to bicycle to work, cycling has the additional benefit of letting you exercise your body in the normal course of you daily schedule. And with the price of gasoline these days, cycling can save you hundreds of dollars a year. Some people get so into cycling that when they can’t do it they go through withdrawal symptoms.

Snowboarding – Don’t be a victim of cabin fever in the winter. Snowboarding is not only a great exercise, it’s cool. It’s the coolest winter sport around. Don’t know how to snowboard? These days that is not a problem. Nearly all resorts that provide ski classes also have snowboarding classes. With the right instructor, you’ll be banking turns, executing blindsides, and tweaking with style with the best of them. It might be a while, however, before you’re executing halfpipes

Shopping – This is a hobby that you can literally do year round. If shopping is too expensive, stick to window shopping. If you are walking and not driving, spending a couple of hours shopping is really good exercise. Walking is an exercise that nearly everyone can do. It stretches and strengthens your leg muscles and is a very good cardiovascular exercise.

Obviously there are many more fun activities that you can do that will provide physical activity for you. You just have to find one or more that you feel will give you pleasure. The key is to get off of your butt, drop your excuses, and begin today to improve the day-to-day and future quality of your life.

Every one has a busy schedule and we don’t have time to workout. The first step in improving your health is finding the time to exercise. Doing the same workout over and over can get boring and are unlikely to see the improvements.

Here some of the ways to maximize your workout:

1. Be consistent:

Maintain consistent time for the exercise workout. Studies have shown that 60 minutes of workout is best. You can do at least 30 minutes of exercise to experience any benefits of weight loss in the beginning. Slowly you can increase the workout time if you become convenient with 30 minutes.

2. Maintain proper posture:

Maintain the proper posture during the workout to burn out the calories. Bad posture may lead to injuries and muscle pain. More importantly, bad posture prevents you from burning calories.

3. Be cautious:

If you are exercising for weight loss, consider weight bearing exercise. Non-weight bearing exercises like swimming and bicycling are not as efficient for weight loss.

4. Emphasize breathing:

During a cardio workout, check your breathing. During this workout, full breaths will deliver as much oxygen as possible to the working muscles, making them more efficient. When strength training, take full breaths during each exercise, exhaling on the exertion and inhaling as you release. You should never workout so hard that you can’t talk or begin to faint.

5. Increase your intensity:

Starting with low intensity, you have to increase the intensity of workout regularly. If you are doing workouts with weights, add weights to your cardio routine and you can see the results in three to four weeks. You should feel difficult to talk to the person next to you, if you are doing with the ideal intensity.

This prevents you from measuring your pulse or heart-rate monitor. If you can talk to the person next to you comfortably, then it means you are not working hard enough. But you should not go beyond the limit in increasing the intensity of workout.

6. Start with walking if you are overweight:

If you are overweight, start your workout with walking as it is an excellent choice. Once you are fit with walking, you have to increase the intensity of walking.

7. Do not exercise on empty stomach:

You should not exercise with empty stomach. Your body will not workout efficiently with empty stomach as you may feel tired.

8. Listen to music:

Music is a great reliever. Music can make workout more fun and listening to music gives extra burst of energy to workout hardest.

9. Swimming:

Swimming is one of the best exercises working all the major muscles. But it exposes you to large amounts of chlorine which is present in most swimming pools. Select fresh water to swim.

10. Listen to your body:

If exercise worsens symptoms, change your workout program or if needed; stop doing. As your health and energy improve, you will be able to tolerate larger amounts of aerobic exercise.

11. Stretches:

Apart from the aerobic exercises and other exercises, stretching is important for getting more out of your workout. Stretching assists in muscle recovery from strenuous workouts and can prevent pain and discomfort. Your entire body feels more comfortable when you have strong and flexible muscles.

12. Exercise at right time:

Exercise when you have the most energy rather than working at a time when you are exhausted completely. Work with your body’s natural energy levels.

13. Drink plenty of water:

Water helps you lose weight. It helps fill your stomach to stop your hunger. Your entire body slows down and works less efficiently when your body becomes dehydrated. It is important to replace the lost water after a workout as working out causes dehydration.

Every one run short on time these days but by following one or more of these simple ways, you can maximize your workout time.

Do you suffer from any kind of back pain, knee, hip, ankle, shoulder or neck pain? Do you suffer from low energy or persistent headaches? Do you want to look, feel and perform better in you life? If you are one of these people, a corrective exercise programme is around the corner waiting to change your life!

Corrective exercise is the precise training method that will keep your body in balance by addressing exactly what the body needs. Through resistance training, stretching, breathing and movement coaching you will discover what it really is like to feel physically good!

Unfortunately we live in a society that encourages various habits and lifestyles that create muscle imbalances. These imbalances pull our posture and joints out of position and leave our bodies open to aches and pains. Our faulty body positions and subsequent movements lead to a number of problems including:

- Altered breathing patterns
- Impeded blood flow
- Compression of nerves and muscles
- Inflammation and pain

Corrective exercise training addresses these imbalances. It counteracts your daily movements and bad habits that are causing your body harm by stretching out the overworked muscles and strengthening the weak under-used ones to bring physical balance back to your life.

Benefits of corrective exercise include:

- Ideal posture
- Stronger muscles
- Increased energy & fitness
- Improved blood flow
- Greater sense of well-being

There are no generalisations when it comes to corrective exercise training. Each body is unique and tells a different story. We therefore each require a different training routine to bring the balance back.

Corrective exercise can benefit everybody, simply because very few people in the world are in perfect physical balance. The majority of us that perform jobs where sitting for long periods is required are some of the most in need for corrective exercise, but others can benefit too. Examples include:

- Athletes often develop muscle imbalances through training patterns & movements that emphasise particular muscle groups.
- Manual workers that perform repetitive movements every day will often complain of aches and pains.

Pain is not a necessary presence in our lives. It is something that can and should be eradicated through Corrective Exercise Training. Go ahead and change your life today!

By discovering how your body really should work you will become more balanced, have improved posture, improved health as a result and become pain free. Your body wants to be healthy, happy and able to respond to any challenge you put in front of it. Give it the chance to do that!

Self motivation is a skill you can learn. Here is one way you may be able to increase your ability to stick with an exercise plan. This approach could supplement rather than replace other self motivation strategies you already use.

Before you begin, read a few articles on the benefits of exercise. Many can be found on the Internet. Then write down your specific exercise goals for the next six months. Include in the goals how you will excerise, how long, where, and when. You may want to include a plan to gradually increase your level of exercise. Don’t be afraid to be optimistic, but make sure your goals are not overwhelming. They should be doable. Check with your doctor to make sure they are realistic and beneficial. Think about the ways regular exercise can improve your life.

Print a copy of this article so you can follow the directions as you go through the activity below. Repeat this activity as often as you want. Vary it to meet your needs.

To begin this self motivation activity, set aside about twenty minutes of uninterrupted time. Disconnect your phone and turn off your cell phone so you won’t be interrupted. If you want to listen to music while you do this, choose something relaxing. Arrange two comfortable chairs so they are facing each other about five feet apart. In this activity you will be moving back and forth between them. Place a copy of your exercise goals by one of the chairs. You may wish to have a friend guide you through this so you can focus on exercise motivation.

Sit down in the chair by the copy of your exercise goals. Review your goals and recall the benefits you will receive from exercising. Take a few deep breaths and just relax. Look at the other chair. Imagine that you see your future self six months from now sitting there. Your future self has met your goals — has succeeded at exercising regularly for six months. Try to guess how that self feels about the success. Ask your future self (either outloud or in your mind) each of the following questions and any others that you feel may be helpful.

1. As you look back over the past six months, how do you feel about your exercise success?
2. What obstacles did you face to reaching the exercise goals?
3. How did you meet and overcome those obstacles?
4. How did you make sure that you remembered the goals?
5. What did you say to yourself and what did you visualize on days when you just didn’t feel like exercising?
6. How did you restart when you had to stop (e.g., because of illness)?

Relax, take a deep breath and give your future self a minute or two to think about your questions. Then move to the opposite chair, sit down, and relax again.

Now that you are in the opposite chair, be your future self. Get into the part — play the role. Let the impact of the last six months of success sink deep into your system. Enjoy the feeling. Look across to the opposite chair and imagine you see yourself six months ago. Your previous self in the opposite chair is seeking the motivation that empowered you to succeed. To get that motivation, your previous self has asked you some questions. If you answer them enthusiastically and in detail, you can encourage your previous self to achieve the success that you now enjoy. Answer the questions one at a time. Specifically, talk to your previous self about:

1. How good it feels to have succeeded and why
2. Each of the obstacles you encountered and why they had to be faced
3. What you did to meet and overcome those obstacles
4. How you were able to remember your exercise goals
5. What you said to your self and what you visualized when you needed extra motivation
6. How you restarted your exercise after times when you had to stop (e.g., because of illness)

When you have finished answering the questions, give your previous self a pep talk. Say whatever you feel may help your previous self have the desire and determination to exercise.

Relax, take a deep breath and give your previous self a minute or two to process what you have shared.

Then move to the opposite chair, sit down, and relax again. You are back to being your present self, but you probably have a greater awareness of what success will feel like and how to achieve it. Thank your future self for the encouragement. Look at your exercise goals. Honestly assess how likely you are to actually exercise at the next planned time. If the liklihood is greater but still less than 100% you may wish to repeat this activity.

You know you need to exercise. Maybe your doctor has told you, “You must start exercising!” You know how important it is, yet every time you try, you hurt. Maybe you hurt for a little while or maybe you hurt for days and you get discouraged from exercising at all. Exercise does help people in pain, but it needs to be the right kind and the right amount of exercise.

Some important things to remember:

1. Start slowly. If you exercise too much, too hard or too fast you will feel worse and it will be harder to make yourself exercise the next time. If your body is in pain, fatigued or weak, it will respond best to a gentle, slow approach.

2. Believe in your ability to get better. Wherever you are in terms of fitness level, you can increase balance, strength, muscle tone, endurance and range of motion if you work with your body rather than against it.

3. Treat your body like a good friend. this means exercising in a kind, enjoyable way. No bullying or forcing yourself!

4. Little bits count! Start exercising in short segments, maybe even three to five minutes, and very gradually add time. When I was very sick with chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia, I had to rest after walking up a flight of steps. Exercising at first for me meant walking slowly around my yard. Today, I climb mountains, hike, dance, lift weights and lead a vibrantly active life.

5. Just notice. Trust what you notice.Let your inner noticing, and your trust of yourself, guide you toward your best exercise.

You are the one who lives in your body. You are the one who can notice from the inside. When you notice and trust what you notice you become your own best teacher.

* Which activities and types of exercise make you feel better and which make you feel worse?

* What are the voices inside your head saying about exercising? Which voices are helpful and which ones are not?

6. Breathe!

* Move with the breath flowing freely in and out. No need to push the breath–just relax around it and give it room to flow all through the body.

* Breathe through the nostrils, not the mouth, whenever possible. (This calms the mind and prevents strain on the body.)

* Let your breath remind you when you are doing too much. When you are gasping and out of breath, slow down a bit so that you can work within your breath, As you gain stamina and lung capacity you will be able to exercise more and more vigorously while breathing easily and without strain.

* Let each exhale be a Letting-Go-Breath. Release tension, strain and discomfort as you breathe out: ahhhhh…

7. Work within your range of motion. Gradually this will extend and you will do more with ease. If you force muscles beyond their range of motion they will contract in fear and self protection.

8. Practice Relaxation-in-Action. Notice muscles that are unnecessarily tight and let them relax. How easy can you let each action be? Cats are fabulous movement teachers. Watch a cat move and imagine your own body: sleek relaxed, supple and powerful, moving with no extra tension exerted. 10. Avoid repetitive movements: especially when there is weight or pressure on the joints.

9. Have fun! Find a type of exercise that feels like fun to you. Use the buddy system and regularly walk with friends, meet friends at the pool, sign up for a class with a friend or make new friends in a class. How can you help exercising be more fun for you?

10. Choose an exercise class or DVD that has a gentle, therapeutic focus.

11. Go at your own speed. Sometimes in a group, or even watching an exercise DVD, you may be tempted to over-ride your own body wisdom to keep up or compete. When you are recovering from illness or dealing with chronic pain, it is vital that you listen to your body and work gently.

12. Use your powerful imagination wisely. Imagination can work for you or against you. Use yours to work for you by imagining what you want (strength, muscle tone, balance, energy and beauty) and by imagining yourself gradually gaining the ability to exercise more fully and more easily.

13. Warm your muscles. Warm muscles exercise more happily than cold muscles. Exercise in a comfortably warm room. Wear layers so you can adjust your body temperature. Use a heating pad on sore muscles before or while stretching them. Stretch gently in a warm bath or shower.

Remember– your body is made to move! So, get moving- gently and kindly.

Start where you are right now; soon you will see improvement.

Don’t give up! There are forms of exercise that can be helpful and enjoyable for you!

You will feel better with regular, gentle, intelligent exercise.

What is the best love handles exercise?

That was a question a client recently asked.

His heart was in the right place. He wants to get rid of his gut and love handles, and wanted to know the best love handles exercise.

I don’t know if he liked my answer at first, but once I explained it, he got the point and was pretty satisfied, at least I think he was.

When it comes to love handles exercise, there really is no such thing as “the best” love handles exercise.

There are lots of exercises that work the area of the love handles, but even they don’t delier much benefit as it directly pertains to losing the fat that makes up the love handles.

Sure you could do some oblique crunches, twists, etc. as a love handles exercise, but to be quite honest, they won’t do that much when it comes to actually losing your love handles.

You need to focus on a couple things.

First, you need to switch your mentality from “the best love handles exercise” to doing full body abs exercises and full body fat loss workouts.

That doesn’t mean you need to spend all your free time in the gym. Actually, it means quite the opposite.

Because when you work your entire body in your fat loss workouts and do full body abs exercises, you are able to drastically cut down on the total time you need to spend exercising.

So, when it comes to a love handles exercise, I would have you doing exercises like push-up variations including spiderman push-ups, “T” push-ups, medicine ball push-ups, etc.

I would also have you doing full body abs exercises like mountain climbers, or you could do cross body mountain climbers as they put a little bit more emphasis on the love handle area and actually count as a love handles exercise.

I would also have you doing exercises like overhead squats and lunges. Doing those variations of squats and lunges, put extra emphasis on the “core” which includes the love handles, so you not only work your legs and shoulders, you’re also working your abs, core and love handles, making those two leg exercises very good love handle exercises.

One thing that usually gets overlooked when it comes to love handles exercise and losing stomach fat is nutrition.

Most people just don’t want to worry about their nutrition as it pertains to losing fat. They would rather “out exercise a bad diet”, but that really is impossible.

If you want to lose fat, more specifically, if you want to lose your love handles, you need to spend some time cleaning up your diet.

You should totally eliminate all processed grains. So things like white bread, crackers, chips, white pasta, white rice, etc. are out.

Focus instead on getting your carbohydrates from fruits and vegetables and whole grains. Bring some fruit with you to work to have as a snack, or leave an apple in your car to have on the drive home.

Eat at least 1 vegetable with every meal…and don’t ruin it by loading it up with some sort of dressing.

You should also make sure you eat breakfast every morning. Start your day off right with a fat burning smoothie, or an omelet with vegetables in it and whole wheat toast and real fruit juice. Or if you’re a cereal person, just make sure it’s a high fiber cereal that doesn’t include a lot of processed grains.

And when it comes to cardio as a form of love handles exercise, stick with interval training rather than boring, moderate-intensity cardio.

Interval training, when done properly, keeps you burning fat for hours upon hours after you’re done while the fat burning from steady-state cardio pretty much stops when you stop. Plus it’s very boring and takes way too long to complete.

Interval training will have you done with your cardio workout in around 15-20 minutes and only needs to be don a few times a week.

It’s an excellent love handles exercise that you should incorporate today.

If you follow even 2 of the 3 love handles exercise tips I gave you, you will be well on your way to losing stomach fat, and more importantly, the love handles within weeks.

Don’t wait. Start right now.

Some of the causes of lower back pain are significantly more sinister and complex than others, however a universal constant is the need for an effective regime of specific exercise to strengthen support for the spine. A non-specific exercise program can never expect to achieve the level of support required.

Within 72 hours in a healthy body, muscles can begin to lose strength, and in so doing can reduce their ability to support and mobilise the spine. This is the case in a relatively healthy body, and sooner in the not-so-healthy. Fortunately, the restoration of necessary specific spinal support strength, generally speaking, is a relatively simple and attainable task for most back pain sufferers, provided the task is approached in a systematic and incrementally organised manner.

The lengthening of muscle fibres is achieved by performing appropriate stretching, and so by combining the two activities of specific exercises AND corresponding appropriate stretches, all done in a proper, routine and regular manner, will result in the vital elasticity necessary for a healthy and efficiently functioning spine. As a general rule, most resistance exercises predominantly achieve the shortening of muscle fibres only. Yet the restoration of specific strength represents only one half of the formula for essential elasticity within the soft tissue that supports the spine.

The sequence of the activities is also critical. The essential sequence is to first gently warm up in a non-load-bearing and non-impacting manner; next, to do appropriate stretches. This is then followed by the exercise regime. The sequence concludes by a warm-down [if necessary] and finally with a repeat of the stretching.

Because there are three movement functions of the spine, it is impossible to do only one stretch in order to involve all of the muscles. The series of stretches must include all of the muscles that directly or indirectly relate to the mechanical support of the spine. It is essential therefore to do at least THREE effective stretches both before and after the specific exercise/s.

Stretching not only assists in the restoration of elasticity, but also helps to rid the muscle of waste products, and assists in the restoration of the body’s naturally occurring symmetry. During the specific exercise/s, dependent on the duration and severity of the exercise/s, a build-up of deposited waste product may remain within the muscles/s. Failure to stretch effectively invariably produces an asymmetrical [non-symmetrical] body pattern.

The maintenance of specific spinal support strength will better enable the spine to be less vulnerable to potentially degenerative compression. Having said that, it is crucial to embrace the fact that even a healthy, non-painful spine requires systematic and routine de-compression in order to remain pain-free. As a consequence of this knowledge, specific spinal support strength exercises will better equip the human spine to cope with various weight-bearing activities.

By combining the principles of restoration of elasticity, symmetry and de-compression, the spine invariably possesses the capacity to recover however without respecting these principles, no amount of lower back pain exercises can expect to achieve anything more than temporary pain relief, at best.

Although walking will benefit almost anyone, someone with high levels of fitness probably wouldn’t gain that much. In fact you only need to walk for as little as 30 minutes every day to start seeing health benefits. Walking fast can be quite tiring though so it is a good idea to take a break or slow down every so often to relax the muscles and joints.

Try walking in different settings, alternating walking with dance on different days, and of course including a partner can be much more interesting than going at it alone. If you are someone who attends the gym regularly, there are machines which give you the opportunity to walk or run on them which can be an efficient use of exercise time.

For anyone that does little physical activity then regular walking would be about the best type of exercise you could carry out. Weight-bearing activities, like walking and golfing, which involve lifting or pushing your own body weight is also excellent as two exercises are combined.

So there are many benefits to walking as an exercise, there is little cost involved; it doesn’t impact on your joints nor do you generally need to buy equipment unless you are looking to set up a home gym and include a treadmill. To start, it is best to limit your walking to just five minutes a day at first and then gradually increase this in stages to that magic thirty minutes pre day.

If you want to improve your general health and keep fit, or if you want to reduce your weight, walking is a good place to start and has a multitude of health benefits for everyone. Although if you are looking for fitness equipment that will maximize your walking efforts, then a treadmill is the obvious choice.

Treadmills are still the most popular exercise machine out there, but not everyone can use a treadmill safely, especially when it is to be used for running because of the often high impact exercise that is required. A treadmill works because it utilizes a belt that rotates at various speeds and can be raised at one end to simulate a hill; this give the equipment the ability to be used to help improve the heart, lungs and circulation of the user and increasing their stamina.

The heart of your exercise treadmill is its motor and it is this plus the treadmill’s ramp size that are the most important aspects to look for. The treadmill works for a lot of people who like to work out in the privacy of their own home.

Some people like the fact that they just spend an odd ten minutes here or there on it whenever it suits them but however you carry out your walking exercise it doesn’t matter just as long as you do.

Strength training programs now come in all shapes and sizes. You can usually find a training program for athletes at most high schools, and even some middle schools. There are a countless number of fitness centers and smaller training studios that offer personal or small group weight training. Some of you may be participating in them right now.

Most of these programs continue to follow a bodybuilding-style format. 3 sets of 8 repetitions, push yourself to the edge, do what it takes to lift large amounts of weights. No real thought on the effect of rest times, or how fast the bar or dumbbell moves during the lift.

In this series of training articles I will attempt to provide some general knowledge on how each variable within a strength training program can affect your long-term results. Today we will cover proper weight choice, and the speed in which the weight is lifted. Parts 2 and 3 will cover rest times, how to determine the number of sets and repetitions, and why proper technique is so important.

Choosing the right weights

We’ll start here because this is the topic that can save you from serious injury, or on the flip side, dedicating months and years to training without ever making significant improvements. Beginner weightlifters often have no clear strategy for picking the right weights, and will often just use what someone else around them does. No two people are alike, however, and each individual should follow a simple plan that suits their own needs.

A weight that is too heavy can obviously cause some major damage, like crushing you for example, but even if you can move it there are still potential problems. Any weight that causes you to move it with poor technique is too much. If you need a spotter to assist you, that is also a sign the weight is too heavy.

Going lighter will overcome these issues, but then you will not sufficiently challenge your body to adapt, or change, to the stress you put on it. Your body is an incredible machine, and it is perceptive enough to know that if it can already perform a task without any potential danger, it won’t change a thing. You will need to challenge yourself a little in order to make progress.

So where does this leave you? Kind of like the old Three Bears fairytale, you need to find weights that are not too heavy, not too light, but just right.

This means being able to do every repetition you were supposed to using the heaviest weight possible, but with excellent form and no help. In addition, you should have been able to do 1 or 2 more repetitions with that weight, even though you will not actually complete them. That is the perfect weight.

You will notice that I am not recommending squeezing every last ounce of effort into each set, more like 90%. Many of the push to failure techniques, or partner assisted extra reps are not only unnecessary for all but the most elite athletes, they are counterproductive. They burn way too much energy for what you will get out of them.

By holding back those last one or two reps, you will be able train more often, and with greater effort in the long run. And a funny thing will start to happen…you will start making gains like you’ve never experienced before in your life!

To find your perfect weight on each exercise, start conservatively. Pick a weight that you absolutely know you can handle, and complete the set. Be observant, pay attention to how easy it actually was, and make a logical increase on your next set. Continue this until you reach that perfect weight.

Performing exercises at the proper speed

This is an overlooked aspect to training, yet it can make a real difference in your results from any program. There is definitely a right pace to raising and lowering a weight if you are training for sports.

Any time you are using a barbell or dumbbell, the exercise is in its “eccentric” phase when you are lowering it. Eccentric as a strength training term refers to when a muscle is being lengthened under the tension of carrying an extra load (the dumbbells, the bar, or any other form of resistance). The “concentric” phase is when the resistance is moving up, or when you have to apply a force to get the weights to move against gravity
(the third phase of a lift, the “isometric” phase, occurs when the weight is not moving at all, and will not be a focus of this discussion). Your muscles will shorten, or contract, in the concentric part of the lift.

The eccentric and concentric phases should be thought of separately, because they develop two different athletic skills. The eccentric phase improves your ability to absorb force. The concentric phase improves your ability to produce force.

One simple example of absorbing force occurs every time your foot hits the ground on a running stride. The muscles in your legs need to lengthen slightly to absorb the forces of gravity before pushing off. An inability to absorb force can lead to slower movements and reaction times, while also increasing your chance for injury.

Producing force is the more obvious part of sport movements. Kicking a soccer ball, throwing a baseball, or taking a slap shot in hockey are just a few examples of force production. The more force you can produce, the faster and more powerful your sports skills will be.

Strength training is a great way to develop force absorption and force production at the same time, but the speed in which the weights move is critical. The eccentric phase needs to be a slow and controlled movement in order to build your capacity to absorb greater stresses. The concentric phase, however, should be done in a much faster and powerful fashion. Within a single repetition, you have two different goals, and because of this the two phases need to be done at different speeds.

In general, the eccentric phase should take anywhere from 2 to 4 seconds to complete on every repetition. The greater your need to improve your force absorption ability, the closer this should be to the 4 second time. For the concentric phase, you should always look to complete it as fast as possible. Most of the time this will be under 1 second, but on the last repetition of a heavy set this may take a little longer. That’s OK, as long as you are trying to move the weight in a fast and powerful fashion.