Fun Fitness Fridays #9

Happy September everyone :) I hope all you school kids are having fun in school, (it's rush week right?) and all the moms and days are enjoying having someone else babysit the little ones for a few hours. For those of you without school or kids... well... I guess we can do whatever we want ALL the time, right?

I'm glad no one spilled coffee on themselves while trying out different muscle contractions. I read those comments and thought they were great. I'm very happy so many of you so interested, it's very, very cool. So let's move forward towards what you should be doing in the gym, if you choose to lift weights, or perhaps want to get started. If you need help on rep ranges, and warm up info, just look into last week.

So you walk into the gym... and there's bright lights, some grandma in the corner wearing a headband, and a 16 year old flexing his arms in the mirror. What do you do? That's easy... do a 5 min warm up, and you get down to business. You become the Donald Trump of muscle building.

If you are new to weight lifting (which is what I'm going to assume), I would split your body training into upper and lower "splits" as we call them. So one day is an upper day, and the next is a lower day. With this approach, we can keep our workouts short and sweet, which is good for a number of reasons:

1. It's much easier to find 45-60 minutes of free time in your schedule
2. Staying focused beyond this time frame can be difficult
3. Cortisol (a stress hormone) has been shown to become mass produced after 60 minutes of intense activity (this includes weight training)

The problem with cortisol is that it has both helpful and harmful effects. Without going too much in depth (so no one goes to sleep on me :) just know that having too much can reduce you immune system response, and cause catabolism... which means burning muscle tissue for energy.

So bascially we want to keep our workouts short, intense, and fun... so we can get back home, eat some delicious food (so we can heal and recover), and get back to our awesome, party time lives. In order to do this... we need to get as much exercise bang for our buck as we can.

Wait... what do you mean? You mean like lifting money?

No, I mean like doing movements that involve a number of muscles being used at the same time. If you can do an exercise that works both the butt and quadriceps (the front of your thighs) at the same time, that saves you time, rather than doing both seperately. By stimulating the most muscle at once, we do a bunch of cool things... like release more growth hormones, cause more microtears, increase your overall heartrate and conditioning, and generally get stronger and feel better. We call these "Compound Exercises". They involve more than one muscle group.

Now, feel free to check out Bodybuilding.com... for a quick anatomy lesson if you want... just be careful that the pictures are of super big dudes and dudettes :) Don't be scared. If you are a beginner, I would maybe start with some machines, because honestly, there's less of a chance of injury and they are easier movements to perform. The reason behind this is because until you learn how, you really don't know how to contract a muscle. Some people don't know how to flex a muscle, because their brains have never made a conscious pathway to do just that. This is not a bad thing, it's just something your brain needs to learn how to do. A machine teaches this fairly easily, and from there, we can learn how to move onto more complex, more functional type movements. I'll give you some beginner and advanced exercises to try:

For Lower Body: Beginner/Advanced

-Leg Press / Barbell Squat

-Lunges / Lunges with Dumbells

-Leg Extension Machine

-Leg Curl Machine / Advanced can do these too

-Leg Adductor / Abduction Machine

For Upper Body:

-Chest Press / Dumbell Bench Press

-Lat Pulldown / Pullups

-Seated Row or Dumbell Row

-Dumbell Shoulder Press

These are just examples, and by all means, check out that site for any other exercise questions that you might have. They have videos and tons of cool tips to show you how to do exercises correctly. Remember to lift a weight in your desired range, which in most cases, would be between 8-10 repetitions... so that those last ones are really difficult, but you can still finish them. I want to stress this, because pushing EVERY set to failure may tire out your Central Nervous System, which takes a longer period of time to recover than your muscle.

Shoot for 3 sets for each exercise, and rest for about 90 seconds between each set. I like to choose 90 seconds because it keeps you focused, and if you've ever timed 90 seconds, it actually goes by very quick... it'll keep you warmed up and ready to go :) I would try and workout 3 or 4 times a week if your schedule allows, so each split is hit about twice every 7 -10 days. I think I mentioned working out MWF or TRSat (R meaning Thurs). Listen to your body, and if you feel sore, that's a sign you are healing... and take some more time off to rest.

That's going to be it for today. Let me know if you have any questions, or if you are further confused about any weight training. (Even though I hope not). I'm more than happy to field any questions you have ever heard. Next week I'll talk more about training and get into more food related stuff, including workout eats and nutrition... this IS a FOOD blog after all. Oh, and please root for the JETS this weekend... I haven't been this excited since um, last football season. Or the time I found cool blogging friends, or... actually I'm simple to amuse :)

South Park