Easy Workday Walking Workout
Sometimes in a busy day there just isn’t time to do a full workout or get to the gym.
But you CAN do something.
Just a few minutes here and there can make the difference between maintaining your fitness and losing it.
And in any case, you’ll feel so much better about yourself if you do the best you can and don’t give up your fitness efforts entirely on those busy days we all have.
Here’s all the you have to do
- At the start of the day, climb 5 sets of stairs - they can be 5 flights at work or mean going up and down stairs at home 5 times. (Alternative: step on and off one step for 5 - 10 minutes)
- At morning break, take a 10 minute walk (or do your stair routine again)
- After lunch, another 10 minutes (take a longer walk if you can then)
- After dinner, 10 or more minutes walk (or more stairs).
There - that means you’ve fitted in 30 - 40 minutes exercise without taking up much of your day at all and you’ll find the mini breaks from your work do you good too.
And if even that is too much then try my whole body fitness course Fitness in No Time which involves only 10 minutes exercise 3 times a week!
Tags: exercise, Fitness, gym, routine, stairs, walk, workoutHow to Choose a Gym
It’s not that easy choosing a gym.
Even though I don’t go to the gym any more, I was once a member of a great gym which had a spa attached. It was just round the corner from my office - handy for fitting in a session at lunchtime or after work (even before work when I was really keen).
And when you walked through the door you could smell the aromatherapy oils from the spa and feel like you were entering a new world. Solid wood lockers, fluffy towels and a calm atmosphere. A little bit of luxury as a reward for working on YOU.
If that gym had been crowded and chaotic, dirty and unfriendly there’s no way I would have gone so often (if at all). With this gym, I only stopped going because I left work and it was too far to get across town.
So if you want to join a gym, it’s important to make the right choice.
1. Don’t Go Only on Price
Although you have to weigh up the monthly cost against your budget, if you never actually go to a cheap gym because the whole experience is unpleasant, it’s not a bargain offer. Be sure and check the joining fee and additional costs for classes and so on when considering your budget but also think about whether you’ll get value for money by wanting to go there three or more times a week.
2. Make Sure it’s Convenient
Choose a gym which is close to your home or office - that way you’re not going to waste an hour (or spend a small fortune in gas) getting there and back every time you go.
3. Look at the Equipment
Does the gym have plenty of the type of equipment you prefer? Is the equipment clean and well maintained? Is there plenty of space between each machine? (There’s nothing worse than heavy breathing right in your ear from the machine next to you).
Also, are you paying for facilities you will never use? My gym had a great pool which I NEVER used (swimming is not my thing). Others cost more because they have tennis or squash facilities attached - worth it only if you like these sports and will play regularly.
Some facilities such as air-conditioning and water coolers are essential. Others make going to the gym a pleasure (or less of a chore). Can you watch your favorite show while you work out? Check that you are able to choose what you view if the gym offers this and that all TVs are not fixed to a few channels - the ones the instructors like…
4. Consider the Classes
Are fitness classes included in the membership? Does it have a range of classes to suit you? What is the system for booking (and cancelling if you have an ever-changing schedule)? Are they oversubscribed/crowded?
5. Visit at Peak Times
Many gyms which are an oasis of calm during the day get hectic in the peak hours after work. Visit the gym during the times you will use it to get an idea of what YOU will experience as a member.
6. Look at the Opening Hours
Make sure that your gym is open when you want to use it. Some gyms close at weekends. Others may not stay open as late as you need or open early to fit in a session before work (if that’s when you like to work out).
7. Check out the Changing Rooms
Are they clean and well-maintained? Are there enough lockers and showers? Are there facilities for drying hair etc?
8. Ask about the Instructors
Are there plenty of instructors around? Are they qualified? Find out how the gym helps new members get to know the equipment. At my gym every new member had an initial 1-to-1 session with a personal trainer to create a tailored program and teach them how to use the equipment. And a session every month or two to update their program.
9. Consider the Atmosphere
While you’re checking everything out on your visit, you’ll get a feel for whether you’re comfortable in a gym. Are you happy enough with the people, the place, and the atmosphere enough to want to go?
Some gyms are geared more towards bodybuilders, some towards casual exercisers, some towards women. At some you will feel comfortable in your old sweats. At others you have to wear the latest gear to avoid being looked down on. Will you fit in? This is also where small details like flowers in reception, good music or friendly staff can mean a lot in making your visit a pleasure.
10. Do A Trial Run
Never sign up for a long commitment without giving your chosen gym a proper try for at least a day (Buy a day pass if they don’t allow a free trial). Then, if possible, sign up for 1 to 3 months and give the gym a true test. If you are still enjoying your visits after that time you have found a good gym for you.
Try and make your choice without being pushed into anything. I know that many gyms employ pushy sales reps to try and get you to commit before you’re ready and to push you to buy additional services. Forewarned is forearmed.
Here are a couple of articles about this by the Consumerist
Pushy Gym Sales Reps - A Golds Gym Story
How to Negotiate Your Gym Membership Like a Diva
Tags: choosing a gym, gym, how to choose a gym, what to look for in a gym5 Ways to Make Exercise Easier on Yourself
1. Plan Ahead
Always have your exercise kit ready and available. Have enough workout clothing so you can get a fresh kit together right after your workout while you’re still feeling good about having gone out for a run or to the gym. And keep it in a handy place at home ready to grab and go or store it in your car trunk so it’s always with you.
2. Follow a Program
Follow a work out program which is suitable for whatever stage of fitness you have reached. If you follow a pre-designed program you never have to think about what to do today - it’s all worked out in advance. If you are more experienced, you can create your own workout plan making sure that you don’t go too far too fast to avoid injury and over-training.
3. Get the Intensity Right
Use a heart rate monitor in conjunction with your program to ensure you are working at the right cardio intensity. You will also be able to follow your progress by seeing a reduction in your resting heart rate and the rate for any particular cardio exercise as you get fitter.
4. Schedule Your Exercise
Make an appointment with yourself as if you had a personal trainer turning up and expecting you to be ready to work out. Write it in your diary and schedule the rest of your life around your exercise sessions so that you make time for them.
5. Stay Healthy
Good food, plenty of sleep, proper hydration and avoiding cigarettes and too much alcohol and will make the job of keeping fit a lot easier than if your life is filled with late night booze sessions and junk food. If you do feel ill, give yourself a break from exercise and don’t force your body to work when it needs rest and recuperation. You’ll get back to full strength a lot faster.
Tags: exercise, Fitness, get fit, gym, heart rate, program, workout7 Ways to Get More Fun from Your Fitness Program
Have more fun working out so that you’ll be motivated to get out there and do it more regularly!
1. Choose a Sport or Activity you Love
Why go to the gym if you hate the gym? Choose an activity which appeals to you and give it a go. When you’re ice-dancing or rock climbing, skiing or playing tennis exercise just happens and doesn’t seem like a chore.
2. Make Exercise Part of Your Social Life
Find a workout partner you enjoy spending time with so that you look forward to getting together for a run or gym session. Just don’t get so carried away and chat so much that you forget to work out! If you usually get together with friends for a meal or drinks see if you can persuade them to do something active instead. Baseball anyone?
3. Enjoy Nature
Exercise is often the only time we adults get fresh air. Make the most of your work out time by taking yourself off to the great outdoors. Find a local beach, park, lake or hill where you can work out and enjoy the wonders of nature at the the same time.
4. Feel the Movement
While you exercise, focus on your body as it moves through the air - sometimes you can feel yourself almost gliding. Feel the pleasure of the movement itself - your muscles working in a co-ordinated way, the efficiency of your body’s cooling systems, how you heart and lungs work together to send oxygen to your muscles. Imagine you had been confined to a tiny cell for weeks on end or hospitalized in a full body cast and feel the joy of now being able to move your whole body.
5. Look the Part
Treat yourself to some new workout clothes you look forward to wearing. You’ll be more comfortable and enjoy working out more in gear that is made for your sport.
6. Entertainment
An ipod filled with your favorite music can make the difference between a boring workout and one you enjoy. Talking books are another alternative. If you exercise at home or at the gym choose a time when you can watch a show you love on TV whilre you work out. You’ll never notice the time.
7. Set Yourself a Challenge
Don’t see exercise as a chore but as a challenge. Always log your workouts and set goals for yourself every week, every workout. Don’t push yourself so far that you risk injury but make sure that you are always progressing and moving one step ahead.
Tags: exercise, fun with fitness, gym, ipod, muscle, workoutPush Ups for Everyone
Push ups image by Urban Mixer
Push ups are a great exercise because they use your own weight to build strength. You can do them anywhere - whether you’re stuck at home with the kids or out on the road travelling - you don’t need a gym or any equipment.
And they strengthen and tone your whole body engaging muscles in your chest, hands, arms, shoulders, back, stomach, legs and feet - and probably a few other places as well.
But the classic push up everyone is familiar with is not an easy exercise to do correctly.
You have to build up to that.
Wth that in mind, fitness trainer Funk Roberts has created a push up challenge page to teach everyone to master the perfect push up without props or problems.
He has every stage of push up perfection covered from beginners who push against a wall to intermediate exercisers who use a modified form of push up (the knee push up) to a more advanced level ready for the perfect push up.
You just have to find the right place to start for you and not go too fast too soon.
Funk’s blog post lays out a push up training program to take you from beginner to 10 perfect push ups in 8 weeks. This should be possble but your results may vary 
In any case you’ll get there by progressing through the stages one at a time.
If you ever wanted to be able to show off perfect push-ups, Funk’s page is a great place to start.
Tags: Fitness, Funk Roberts, gym, home exercise, muscle, program, push-upsNo Time to Get Fit?
I read in the local newspaper yesterday that the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gets up at 4am to go to the gym.
No wonder she looks so good at 53.
It’s not that she is any different to anyone else. As she says
“Like everybody, I get up some mornings and think “I can’t do it” and then I think “Sure you can, because you won’t feel alert if you don’t”"
Although you might think being featured regularly in the media might give you the motivation to stay in shape, (and I’m sure that would work well for me - vanity prevails) the same can’t be said of some stars who get in and out of shape with alarming regularity. Don’t they care when a million people see their flab over breakfast? I sure would.
If you know getting up at 4am is not an option, yet you’re so busy it’s the only time you can see free in your schedule, why not take a look at my Fitness in No time program because 10 minutes, three times a week and a simple home routine is all you really need to get in shape.
Maybe Condoleezza should try it for those days when matters of State get in the way?
Tags: Fitness, gym, motivation, program, routineMake Fitness a Lifetime Goal
Photo by Thowra_uk
A lot of people start all guns blazing on a fitness program, put in a lot of hard work, get pretty fit and then give up until the next time they get the desire to do something about their condition.
I have done something similar myself with running (though I usually do at least something to keep fit all year round).
It’s such a waste of effort to let fitness go once you have achieved it.
I’ve just been thinking why so many of us do this and the answer keeps coming back to me that we try and get fit with activities we just don’t like enough.
And I’ve also come to the conclusion that there’s no point even starting something if we KNOW we’re not going to keep it up for more than a brief period.
Now, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try new stuff - after all you don’t know whether you’ll absolutely fall in love with circuit training or yoga or horse riding until you’ve got over the initial few weeks training - the awkward stage.
I just mean that if you know yourself well enough to be pretty certain you’ll never visit the gym regularly for the rest of your life BEFORE you sign up for membership, you are just kidding yourself when you hand over your hard earned-cash.
You see paying for something never made you fit - only doing it on a regular basis does that.
Try activities that you will look forward to doing, that you’d like to learn, that you think you could enjoy forever given half a chance.
Try loads of different things until you find something you will stick at - simply for the pure pleasure of doing it.
Even if you’re not that enthusiastic about an activity to begin with, give everything a fair chance and you’re more likely to uncover the pursuits that will keep you fit and having fun for the rest of your life.
Tags: Fitness, fitness program, get fit, gymUsing Exercise to Lose Weight
You have to be pretty dedicated to lose weight through exercise alone.
I remember how astonished I was when I first worked out that at 3500 calories a pound you have to run more than a marathon to lose a single pound of fat!
That’s why going to the gym and then rewarding yourself with a snack is counter-productive - you will probably eat more calories than you use up.
Yet, exercise is still good for weight loss for many reasons :-
- every calorie counts whether it’s 10 or 1000 - better to use them than not use them
- it helps build muscle and muscles burn calories even when you are at rest - your metabolism (the rate at which you burn calories) increases
- it improves your mood and general sense of well-being - so you are better able to avoid comfort eating
- it keeps you occupied and away from the fridge
- if you exercise enough, you can eat just a little more and still lose weight. This helps to prevent a sense of deprivation
- you will keep your muscles and skin in better condition as you lose weight and are less likely to lose muscle tissue and tone
The best way to lose weight is to combine exercise with healthy eating so that you exercise a bit more (say 250 calories worth of exercise a day) and eat a bit less than you need at your normal (non-exercise) level of activity (say 250 calories) - that way you’ll steadily lose about 1lb a week without too much hardship.
Tags: calories, exercise, gym, lose weight, metabolism, muscleMore on the Myth of the Fat Burning Zone
A little while ago I wrote about the myth of the fat burning zone - the idea that moderate exercise is the best way to burn fat.
This myth led to every piece of cardio equipment at the gym being given a misleading fat burning program or fat burning zone workout.
You think you’re doing well - 30 minutes “burning fat” - when really you’d be better getting on your treadmill and doing interval training for the same period (and you’d continue burning fat after your workout).
The myth arose because you burn proportionately more fat when you exercise at a moderate pace than you do when your workout is more intense - so a bigger percentage of the calories used come from fat.
You just tend to forget that you use fewer calories overall!
Anyway, I read today in Personal Trainer Cliff Lathams‘ newsletter something even more interesting about fat burning. He says
“I have news for you. You burn a higher ratio of fat to carbohydrate during complete rest. Therefore, sleeping would burn the most fat off your body. And you don’t really think that sleeping in on Saturday morning helps you reach your goals do you?”
Mmmh - think about that next time you step on your treadmill and choose your workout program.
Tags: burn fat, calories, exercise, fat burning zone, Fitness, gym, program, workoutLadies : 12 Ways to Look Good Naked
The TV show “How to Look Good Naked” has been a raging success and with good reason - it tackles women’s insecurities about their bodies and makes them feel good about themselves - a sure-fire winner.
For a show about how to look good naked an awful lot of attention is focused on how to look good in clothes. I guess the confidence you get from looking good out and about (and the admiring glances you receive) translates to you feeling altogether better whether you’re wearing clothes or not.
Although the show has to be applauded for attempting to make women feel good about themselves without trying to change their shape, it does go against the grain a bit for me because I am all about helping people to improve their bodies and their health.
Let’s Face it - Your Mirror Doesn’t Lie
When you take your clothes off to get in your shower or to make love to your partner, you no doubt want to look good naked and when you look into your mirror . . . it tells you the truth, whether you want to ‘hear it’ or not. For many people, the mirror is the only time they ever see their toes . . . their excess flab, their love handles and every other bit hang without support - which means ‘how to look good naked’ is more than looking good in clothes.
And I believe the best way for you to look good naked is for you to actually work on your body so it’s the best it can be.
Nevertheless you can do a lot without making yourself feel bad about your body and feeling you are less than perfect because you can’t manage 2 hours a day in the gym.
So what can you do WITHOUT too much effort?
1. Good Fuel
Looking good naked is not about losing weight - most of the women in the show would have liked to be lighter but sexy does not have to mean twig-like. In fact it’s easier to be sexy with a few womanly pounds of flesh here and there than with a bony too-skinny look. Looking good naked DOES mean caring for your body with the right foods to make you feel great - good food and plenty of water to keep you nourished, hydrated and full of energy. And quite often the right foods will result in a slimmer body anyway.
2. Avoid the Pregnant Look
No one is going to look good naked with a stomach stuffed full of pasta. (Just look how you get a 5 months pregnant look next time you go into carb overload). If you want to look good naked, make sure you eat in moderation before you take off your clothes! And if the pregnant look is a constant feature of your body (and you haven’t stuffed yourself with carbs for ages) sign up for the FREE 5 Easy Ways to Flat Abs course here on this site and do something about it in just a couple of minutes a day.
3. Firm Not Flabby
It’s not only our stomachs which look better toned. We all look better - excess flesh or no excess flesh - if we have great underlying muscle tone. Just a few minutes a few times a week spent firming, toning and strengthening your butt, thighs, chest and arms will go a long way to making you look great without your clothes.
4. Pampered Soft Skin
The ladies on the Look Good Naked show have plenty of pampering beauty treatments to make sure that their skin is soft, hair-free and smooth. Flaking, rough skin, goose bumps and hairy legs are not the look you are aiming for…
5. Beautiful Color
If you’re pale, an even and subtle fake tan always makes flesh more attractive in and out of your clothes and helps cover a multitude of sins (fat and cellulite…to name but two).
6. Hair Update
Your hair is the only fashion statement you’ll be wearing so it needs to look current, soft, healthy and touchable (give the hairspray and sticky gel a miss). Most important of all you need a cut which suits the shape of your face and is in proportion to the size of your body. Find a good hairdresser and visit often for a regular trim and occasional restyle.
7. Don’t Forget Your Extremities
Make sure your hands and feet are beautiful with a professional manicure and pedicure or learn to do it yourself. Chipped nail polish, rough hands and jagged nails are not going to win any prizes in the Look Good Naked stakes.
8. A Bit of Makeup
You don’t want your face paint to come off on the bed clothes but a bit on subtle makeup can work wonders to accentuate your good points and camouflage the points you’re less than happy with. And you can also use a bit of body makeup to cover up flaws such as spider veins.
9. Smile
Don’t forget your teeth. If they don’t enhance your look and they make you want to hide your smile it’s time to save up, get over any fear you have of the dentist and get them sorted out.
10. Let Your Eyes Sparkle!
When your smile reaches your eyes you want them to sparkle not show the effects of too many nights burning the candle at both ends. Get plenty of beauty sleep before a big night or as a last resort for a special occasion, use those brightening eye drops.
11. Smell Good
Don’t overpower the world with too much fragrance or use a whole selection of competing products - differently perfumed shampoo, deodorant, soap and body lotion can be a toxic combination. Lightly layered perfume from matching bath products and no more than a light spray of fragrance from the same range will leave you smelling good as well as looking good.
12. Lighting
Remember that none of us looks our best under bright fluorescent light - soft lighting or candle light will improve the mood of the moment AND your body.
If all else fails, you’ve eaten too much pasta, your jeans have popped the first 2 buttons, you’re bleary eyed, your make-up is smudged and you never did do your toning exercises, bear in mind - the person you are getting naked with probably couldn’t care less - especially if you are going to get jiggy with it!
Tags: exercise, Fitness, gym, How to Look Good Naked
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