100 Reasons to Exercise

I want to share this article I read today:
100 reasons to train today:

Because it makes you feel confident
Because it helps you get stronger
Because exercise helps combat depression
Because you’ll feel proud of yourself
Because you have goals you want to reach
Because you’ll feel bad if you don’t
Because you want to move forward, not backward
Because it burns more calories than not working out
Because it improves your heart health
Because you want a great butt
Because it prevents diabetes
Because you want to be a good example to your kids
Because you want to feel good in your clothes
Because it reduces your risk of cancer
Because your body was made to move
Because you want to be an athlete
Because you want to look better
Because it lifts your mood
Because you want to stand taller
Because it reduces back pain
Because it feels good
Because it makes you feel accomplished
Because you spend most of your day on your butt
Because swimsuit season is always coming
Because strong is the new skinny
Because dieting only works so much
Because it strengthens your bones, too
Because it helps you lose weight
Because it allows you to eat more food
Because it’s the best way to spend “me” time
Because it helps you de-stress
Because it’s cheaper than therapy
Because you want a strong core
Because you want to take care for yourself Continue reading

Explanation of Tai Chi and How to Start

Tai chi in Austin, TX, is a great way to improve your health and to meditate while you are moving. Tai chi has been translated or interpreted as an all-encompassing exercise. The chi, or life force, is what provides us with energy and health. In China, many years ago, a doctor was paid for all his patients he wasn’t treating. If anyone in his jurisdiction was sick, he didn’t get paid for their portion. Chinese medicine teaches that when the chi is blocked, sickness, disease, and pain are usually the result. In these teachings is the belief that your joints are the gates that chi flows through. The deep breathing, combined with the gentle approach, the swaying movements, and the focus of the mind on what the body is doing, will relieve tension in these gate areas and open the joints so the chi can move freely through them.

Tai Chi Practice

People of all ages and in all levels of physical condition will benefit from a tai chi practice. If you have never participated in a class or group session of tai chi and don’t know anything about it, it is highly recommended that you find a qualified instructor to teach you the basics of tai chi and to get you started off on the right foot, so to speak. You can ask the instructor about their credentials and their experience. They may offer a free first class for you to try them out and see if their style is something you might be comfortable with. Besides there being many types of tai chi, there are also many styles, depending who is teaching and what type they are teaching. The key is to find an instructor who teaches a type you like and in a style that you’re comfortable with. Taking a class for tai chi in Austin, TX, will start you on the road to feeling better, developing more flexibility, healing, less pain, and a greater connection of your body to your mind and vice versa. Making tai chi a daily practice can change your life in a very positive way.

Reasons to Hire a Personal Trainer for Your Fitness Program

Every year, losing weight or becoming healthy is one of the top resolutions or goals people make. While most unfortunately forget about their goal, stop mid-way or fail, there are others who take this goal to heart and commit to taking steps to change their lifestyles and be healthier.

It is not easy to stop bad habits. Besides deciding for yourself, you need to have the discipline and motivation to continue setting good habits and accomplishing them every day. Having the right people help and motivate you is important. Sometimes having someone to be accountable for is a big push for you to stay committed. This is where personal trainers come in. People often go to the gym without any idea how to develop a fitness program that is tailored to their needs or the goals they want to accomplish. For example, wanting to have a well-chiseled body requires a different workout program than wanting to have a lean one.

Why a Fitness Trainer?

A fitness trainer is an expert who can develop a customized training program for you. Similar to one who is an expert for welding supplies, a fitness trainer is an expert for fitness.

1. He would be able to develop an exercise regimen that fits your specific goals. He would analyze where you stand now in terms of fitness and develops a fitness plan accordingly.

2. He can also teach you the exercises that will work on your problem areas and help you achieve your desired goals.

3. He could also give the tips and strategies for achieving your target. If you have a fitness trainer of your own, then there is no need for you to go to a gym and he will be there to guide you in your fitness training process. However, gyms also have in-house fitness trainers you can hire for some one-on-one time when going for your workout sessions.

Choosing Your Personal Fitness Trainer

When it comes down to choosing a trainer, you need to make sure you pick someone with whom you are comfortable working with and someone you have confidence in. He can help you to achieve your goals. A trainer should motivate and support you, give you constructive feedback, be patient and be continuously working with you to ensure your program is giving the results you desire.

Make sure your trainer has certification. When you choose your personal trainer, you should make sure that they are educated, and have gone through some kind of program and have a certification. It would be nicer if he also knows CPR or has a first aid knowledge and certification.

Check if the trainer has adequate experience, training and education in the field of physical fitness.

Your trainer should be able to give you his undivided attention and be able to prepare a program that will help you get to your goals with more focus on the areas that require great attention.

The trainer you choose should be able to track your development through various assessments. If there is no progress, then he/she would design new exercise programs, which would be beneficial in achieving your goal.

The program he designed should be cost-effective. He would work around in giving you the best results with training.

 

Workout Music

I am in a workout music downloading session the past week. I have been downloaded some mean N’ Sync and Backstreet Boys tunes all week, plus some dance tunes I’d rather not name lest they reveal my true age. I also downloaded some Script, Coldplay, Incubus and Maroon 5 discographies. When I want some angry music to keep my heart rate up, I’d rather hear strains of an epiphone les paul special at m123 guitar.

What is your workout music?

Let me leave you with three fitness truths you can do everyday:

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Get Out & Dance: Why Concerts Help With Circulation and Depression

With benefits like self-expression, burning calories and boosting your mood, dancing is a positive whole-body experience. Where better to get your groove on than at a concert?

Burn Calories and Ramp Up Your Metabolism

Dancing is an effective aerobic exercise to burn off all those extra cheeseburgers, and it brings a little fun into what can be an otherwise mundane workout. In fact, dancing is so popular as a means of burning calories there are numerous fitness DVDs and applications for game consoles based on dancing as a workout. Dancing at concerts can tone your muscles, improve your balance and even boost brain health. Aerobic exercise is the best kind of exercise for burning fat.

Maybe you’ve heard of that little show, Dancing with the Stars? Even if you’ve never watched, you’ve likely heard about the massive amounts of weight celebrities lose on the show. Kirstie Alley, for instance, lost an astonishing 38 inches during two and a half months of filming during her first stint on the show. Clearly, there’s a fitness benefit to dancing.

Socialization for Improved Emotional Health

 

Image via celesteh.com

It’s one thing to dance like wild alone in your living room, but concerts offer a whole new level of fun—with friends! Don’t be embarrassed to get your groove on in the crowd. Trust me, no one’s checking out your dance moves; they’re too worried about perfecting their own.

Concerts make a great night out with friends and family, offering an opportunity to let loose and relieve some stress. It’s better than spending the evening as a couch potato.

You Kinda Like the Music

Image by por Carla_Lopez via Arte & Fotografia

Let’s face it; you’re not going to shell out a few hundred bucks for Bruce Springsteen tickets if you don’t like his music. So assuming you’re going to see an artist you enjoy, the excitement will boost your adrenaline which is good for your heart.

The adrenaline rush motivates you to get up and move. All the while, your circulation is imporoving. All those cells in your legs, arms, feet and belly need energy to do all that moving around, so your heart picks up the pace to bring the necessary nutrients and oxygen to them. This is what makes dancing a useful and fun form of aerobic exercise.

Music Therapy: A Mood Booster

Image via Gatilho

Music is becoming a therapy tool thanks to its ability to give listeners a general feeling of well-being. Music is used therapeuticaly in senior living facilities to lift seniors’ spirits and sometimes in adolescent treatment settings to lift depression. Dancing releases endorphins, which are a natural mood enhancer.

Concerts allow the audience to feel the music in its truest form: Live. Combined with the excitement you’ll feel about the opportunity to see a favorite artist in person, the general positive vibes your favorite tunes always give you will be amplified.

If you needed a few additional reasons why it’s a good idea to check out your favorite band next time they’re in a town near you, look no further. Who can argue with an activity that makes you feel good, lifts your spirits and is good for your body and overall health?

New forms of Exercise for Weight Loss

Losing weight has been part of every person’s list of things to conquer these days. Whether the reason of losing weight would be to look good or to live a healthier lifestyle, the ways of losing weight are mainly the same. One of the most efficient ways of losing weight is to do exercises. By exercising, you will shed pounds quickly leaving you relaxed, stress-free and even happier. Studies shows that physical activity reduces the risk of heart disease thus exercise has been the major thing that most people do these days.

During the old days, there are different types of exercises that are quite popular like high impact aerobics, weight training exercises, interval training and more. For several years now, these ways of exercising have been pretty effective to most people. But of course with the emergence of the creativity of people, there are now new forms of exercises to lose weight. Here are a couple of alternative ways of exercise that you might want to try…

  1. Bikram Yoga. Bikram Yoga has been created in the 70’s but has become popular because it is set in a room heated to 105°F with a 40% humidity. Bikram’s classes run exactly 90 minutes depending on how your body can take the heat.
  2. Belly Dancing. Belly dancing is the oldest form of dance but has recently become popular because people now consider it as a form of exercise. Belly dancing is natural to a woman’s bone and muscle structure with movements emanating from the torso rather than in the legs and feet. It is not just a way to reduce tummy fat but provides for complete workout too as not only it targets the muscles in your abdomen but also the muscles along the shoulders and legs and the core muscles. An hour of belly dancing can burn up to 300 calories.
  3. Pilates. A form of exercise which emphasizes the balanced development of the body through core strength, flexibility, and awareness in order to support efficient, graceful movement. It uses different apparatus like trapeze table, ladder barrel, springs, exercise balls, bands and more for resistance training.
  4. Pole Dancing. Instead of using weights, a step or any other piece of gym equipment, pole dancing is by using pins, climbs and pole-tricks on a vertical bar. This can also be done using a pole-dancing pole. This is actually a skill because by doing this, you incorporate several skills such as gymnastics, acrobatics, dancing, flexibility and strength. It can be a powerful whole body workout as pole-dancing movements includes climbing, spinning, static poses, and more.
  5. Zumba. Zumba is another form of dance workout and it combines moves from different types of dance like salsa, samba, belly dancing and even the modern hip-hop. Zumba helps promotes flexibility and grace and can be a good form of cardio exercise. A 60-minutes Zumba session can help burn up to 500 calories. You can read more on the benefits of Zumba and dancing from this article http://www.dailychump.org/just-dance-benefits-of-shaking-your-groove-thing.
  6. Plana Forma. This is a very intense form of exercise as it combines yoga, Pilates and dance in one workout session. It is divided into three sessions: warm-up, barre exercise and floor exercise and is done in succession without taking any break in between sessions targeting one part of the body at a time for each workout. A one-hour Plana Forma workout can help burn up to 600 calories.

With these new forms of exercises, people now find exercising fun and enjoyable. You can no longer say that exercising is boring because of these options. By starting slowly and using the right technique, you may find that one of these new forms of exercise is really an effective way of building strength.