A Faster Fat Burner

Slim and tone your entire body with one athletic move

By the Editors of Men's Health on MSN Health

When you're short on workout time, use the dumbbell alternating lunge and overhead press. It conditions your muscles from head to toe so you're able to streamline your routine to just a few challenging exercises, says David Jack, sport director of Teamworks Centers in Acton, Massachusetts.

For instance, you might sandwich the dumbbell alternating lunge and overhead press between a set of pullups and an abs exercise. Perform one movement and then immediately follow it up with another. Rest for up to a minute and then repeat the trio once (or twice if time allows).

The Benefit

The dumbbell alternating lunge and overhead press trains your legs, core, and shoulders. It also improves your coordination for sports because it requires you to keep your hips level and your core stable for balance as you perform complex movements.

How to Do It

1. Stand holding a pair of dumbbells at your shoulders.

2. Take a big step forward with your right leg and bend at the knees until that leg is parallel to the floor and your rear knee is just off the floor.

3. Press the left-hand weight overhead, lower it, and then push back to the starting position.

4. Step out with your other leg and complete the press with your opposite arm.

That's 1 rep. Do a total of 8 reps.

Our Expert's Tips

Don't allow your weight to carry you forward. Instead, think about dropping your hips straight down as you step. Keep your abs tight and your chest up, and squeeze your glutes.

The New Stretch: Hip Circuit

Your hips are the largest weight-bearing joints in your body. By performing this stretching circuit, you'll increase their range of motion. You'll also gain stability in your knees and more strength for squats and lunges.

1. Start on all fours, with your knees, toes, and palms on the floor.

2. Brace your abs and then bring your right knee forward and up toward your chest. Now move the same leg clockwise in a large semicircle (the larger the better) while allowing that leg to extend straight back behind you. Repeat the pattern for a total of 5 repetitions.

3. Return to the starting position. Ex-tend your right leg straight back and then move it forward and counterclockwise in a large semicircle. Do 5 reps.

4. Return to the starting position. Now extend your right leg straight out to the side and raise and lower it 5 times.

5. Return to the starting position and repeat with your left leg.

Keep It Simple, Keep It Off

Posted Fri, Mar 21, 2008, 12:20 pm PDT on Yahoo

Keeping is simple is the best way to not only lose weight, but keep it off, too. There are some clear-cut certainties, rules, unchanging facts and formulas regarding weight loss that really never vary. If followed, you will lose weight.

So, for just a moment let’s look only at the facts - take emotion, psychology, and personal history out of the equation, and let’s look at the simple rules of weight loss.

Just the Facts:

1. If you spend more calories than you take in, you will lose weight. Just like your bank account, if you spend more than you put in, your bank account or, in this case your body, will shrink.

2. Adding (more) exercise, and not changing your diet at all, will cause weight loss only if you are burning more calories than you are taking in (as it states in rule 1). So if you are exercising enough to push the equation over to the deficit column (where you are basically in the red with calories - spending more than you are taking in), then you will begin to lose weight.

3. Reducing your food/caloric intake and not adding exercise will result in weight loss only if you have reduced food intake enough to tip the energy balance to the negative, whereby you are taking in less than you are expending.

4. Obviously, adding exercise, and reducing your caloric intake, will make it more likely that your equation will swing over to the negative – the weight loss side. And of course, the greater the difference between intake and expenditure, the faster the weight loss (or gain, depending on which way the equation swings).

To maximize your health and weight loss benefits, add exercise and reduce food intake.

I am not belittling the difficulty of losing weight, but there is a kind of simplicity to the plain facts. Still, few of us, if any, are able to be totally objective and mathematical about weight loss.

We have managed (or our society has) to make our bodies and our weight, emotional and social and psychological subjects, making it tough to take weight off simply, and harder to keep it off. And believe me, I understand, I am no different from you.

But I do realize one thing: Whether you are agonizing over losing 2 lbs or 200 lbs, looking at weight loss as a formula can provide you with some simple, practical, and effective steps that can be taken. And just knowing that this formula is fact, and works, just looking at the black and white of it and seeing that there are absolute and realistic steps that will lead to weight loss, may help someone, maybe you, who is struggling with body issues and weight loss.

So if you can, even for a brief period of time, separate out the discomfort, frustration, personal reasoning, and self resentment from prior attempts at weight loss that have failed, you may find the objective willingness to just keep moving forward in the equation – taking out a few calories here, adding a little exercise there, and so on – until the weight starts to fall away. And it will, if you stick to the rules.

I hope this helps you stay, or get back on, your road to better fitness.

Peace and Happy Trails-
Debbie Rocker

Fitness tip

Good flexibility in the joints can help prevent injuries through all stages of life. If you want to improve your flexibility, try activities that lengthen the muscles such as swimming or basic stretching.

Look Better Naked

Six moves to a slimmer and sexier body

By Martica Heaner, M.A., M.Ed., for MSN Health & Fitness

If you’re a pajama kind of woman longing to flash some flesh, we’ve got a plan that will get you uncovered and ready for lace—or nothing at all! This body-firming routine is designed to reach all the parts your clothing won’t. But this is no average toning workout. We’ve added an extra fat blast —three-minute, calorie-burning cardio intervals between every strength move.

To expedite the transformation of your soon-to-be exposed areas, follow a nutritious, portion-controlled eating plan and include at least 30 minutes of cardio work on days that you don’t perform this routine. If you are new to exercise, listen to your body’s signals and lower the intensity or duration of your workout accordingly. By coupling firming moves for your butt, abs, legs, arms, chest, back and shoulders with calorie-burning fat blasts, you will create sexy curves. Get ready to go from flannel to fabulous!

HOW TO DO IT:

• Choose a weight that is heavy enough to challenge your target muscles, but not so heavy that your joints feel strained. Start with dumbbells that are at least 5 to 8 pounds and gradually work up to using 6 to 20 pounds, depending on the exercise.

• Wear sneakers, but do not use weights during the fat blasts. If needed, modify the high-impact movements, such as the jumps, and make them lower impact by performing the same movement without jumping. Move for three minutes (or less if you are just starting) and try not to pause between exercises. Of course, if you feel tired or out of breath, slow down.

• Start with one complete circuit: Perform each three-minute Fat Blast, followed by eight to 12 repetitions of each firming move. Move quickly when performing each strength move, but do not swing the weights—if you can swing them, your weight is too light. Once you’ve cycled through all six exercises, repeat the circuit for a total of two to three cycles.

• Do this workout two to three times a week on non-consecutive days.

• Modify this workout to match your fitness level. Follow the recommended moves, or adapt them as needed to make them easier or more challenging.

• What you need: weights and a stability ball.

Look Buff in the Bedroom

Flex your muscles and strut your stuff with these six body-building moves

By Martica Heaner, M.A., M.Ed., for MSN Health & Fitness

There’s nothing a woman loves more than a strong man to hold (and behold.) And it’s easier to impress her than you might think. You can up your flex-appeal with a few easy strength moves that target the muscles she loves to touch—in your back, shoulders, chest, arms and oh-so-squeezable butt. The exercises stimulate muscle growth. And with healthful eating (including a sufficient amount of carbs and protein), your muscles will grow bigger and stronger, helping you to look better in the bedroom.

This workout focuses on building bulk, also known as hypertrophy, and strength. Strength training is based on the principle of overload: You challenge muscle fibers to contract with slightly more force than usual. As a result, the body receives signals that it must adapt to the increasing load. During the first weeks of training, the muscles respond with neuromuscular changes that help them to become stronger by becoming more efficient in the way that the fibers contract. Over time, provided that sufficient nutrients are supplied to help fuel the anabolic growth, your muscles get stronger by growing bigger (more protein is added to the muscle fibers).

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to supplement what you eat—either by downing whole chickens at one sitting, or by using protein powders or bars. Although a novice body builder does need more protein than the recommended daily allowance of .8 grams of protein per every kilogram of a person’s body weight, the average person who eats normally already gets up to 50 percent or even double that amount in their normal diet. So it’s not necessary to add more. In fact, if you overdose on protein, you’ll simply add more calories than your body can use and it will be stored as fat. A smart muscle-building strategy that you should employ, however, is to never go into a tough workout hungry, and to eat some carbs and protein in the hour or two following your workout (yogurt and fruit, a peanut butter sandwich, or nuts, for example).

Get ready for your flexiest bedroom bod ever!

HOW TO DO IT:

• Choose a weight that is heavy enough to challenge your target muscles, but not so heavy that your joints feel strained. Start with dumbbells that are at least 8 to 15 pounds, depending on the muscle group targeted. Gradually work up to using 15 to 30 pounds.

• Start by building up a base of muscular strength and endurance by performing one to two sets of eight to 12 repetitions of each exercise, and work up to doing three sets of eight to 12 reps. Do this workout two to three times a week with a rest day in between. This initial fitness-building phase should last from six to 12 weeks.

• Once your muscles are trained, you can gradually challenge them by performing two to three sets of eight to 12 repetitions on two days a week, and, using slightly heavier weights, performing two to three sets of five to eight repetitions on one day a week. Always leave a rest day in between—recovery periods allow your muscles to repair and grow stronger.

• Modify this workout to match your fitness level. Follow the recommended moves, or adapt them as needed. If you feel any strain in your joints, do not ignore it and try to work through the pain. Instead, modify how you perform the exercise by doing fewer reps or using lighter weight, or substituting a different move.

• Warm-up first by moving through all the moves one time without weights. Then perform one set with light weights (3 to 5 pounds). Then start your workout.

• What you need: weights and a stability ball