Stairmaster Stepmill Sm916 Exercise Machine Revolving Staircase with 8″ High Steps Most Closely Duplicates the Workout of Real Stairclimbing Motivating Programs Include a Nationally Recognized Fitness Test to Gauge Individual Progress and a Custom Firefighter Test
October 4, 2012 by admin
Filed under Step Machines
Functional Training: Should Women’s Exercise Programs Include It?
March 9, 2012 by admin
Filed under Bicep Exercises
Article by Flavia Del Monte
Everyone has regular activities and make repetitive movements in our daily lives. These movements can be fun activities like tennis, or a basic daily chore like squatting to pick up a book off the floor. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if we could improve these movements and increase your performance?What Is Functional Training?
Functional Training is training that helps the body perform regular daily activities. Physiotherapists originally developed this type of exercise for the purpose of rehab, and soon athletes discovered it could greatly improve their performance. But the rest of us can benefit from functional training too.
Performance: More Than Just Muscles
To understand what functional training is, we first need to understand what affects performance. Some factors that determine our performance are permanent, like genetics. And no matter what you do, or how hard you train, you’ll never be able to improve them. That doesn’t mean training is useless, however. It just means you need to set realistic goals and concentrate on improving the factors you can change.
Factors that determine performance include:
Power — If you want to increase power, you need to build strength, increase your neuromuscular efficiency, and flexibility.
Agility — Improving agility can really give your performance a boost, but the exercises you do to build your agility must be specific to your goal. So, if you want to jump higher, practice jumping from the floor, not using fancy equipment, which causes you to use slightly different muscles and movements.
Cardio — Performance relies heavily on your cardio and respiratory systems. But when you build these systems, do so by mimicking the activities you wish to improve. So, if you want to be a better tennis player, use slow and moderate cardio, with short stints of high intensity cardio.
Sport Skill — Just because something is “similar”, it doesn’t mean it’s the same or will have the same effect. So, to improve a specific movement, you need to repeat it in exactly the same way you would normally perform it. This improves the right neuromuscular pathways, instead of just the muscles and tissue.
To improve your performance, you need to work on all four factors. And to do that, you’ll need functional training. It replicates the movements made during the activity you’re training for and improves the relationship between the nervous system and the muscles. In other words, functional training improves the entire movement and the specific neuromuscular paths involved, not just the muscles and joints like traditional exercises.
If you were to use functional training to make it easier to carry bags of groceries, for example, you would never exercise while sitting or lying down. Why? You would never carry a bag of groceries while sitting or lying down; both would be done while walking or standing.
This type of training has a few other benefits as well. Functional exercises use your spinal, shoulder, hip, knee, and ankle joint stabilizers and neutralizers, as well as a strong and stable core. This promotes good posture and increases the efficiency of the movement, while lowering your risk of injury.
Pretty good reasons for women’s exercise programs to include functional training, right?
Functional Training and Total Body Balance
The movements performed in functional training are the exact same movements and positions your body uses during normal daily activities. We also know that exercises that use the most muscles and joints, like lunges or standing dumbbell presses, will make us look the best. Put the two together and we can make some serious progress in a relatively short amount of time.
Squats are a great example of a functional exercise. They use a number of muscles at once, so we’ll get maximum results. However, we perform squats in our every day life, particularly when bending over to pick something up, so they’ll help you improve your daily performance, too.
Functional movements improve your balance, stability, and coordination, while helping you perform better. The trick to functional exercise is to teach all of the muscles to work together effectively, rather than isolating them and forcing them to work on their own.
Static Training VS Functional Training
When deciding whether women’s exercise programs should include functional training, you need to understand the difference between it and static training. As mentioned before, functional training greatly improves balance, stability, and coordination, which are all important for looking and performing at our best. Static, or machine training, is quite different.
Static training places your body under constant and variable tension and resistance, while tracking proper joint function. So, for example, when you perform a dumbbell bicep curl on a Swiss ball, the biceps have no tension in the top or bottom position, but are under maximum resistance when the dumbbell is perpendicular to the floor.
When you use a machine to perform bicep curls, your biceps endure tension throughout the movement. This tension varies throughout the exercise, depending on the muscle’s strength curve. This might sound better at first, but the best women’s exercise programs shouldn’t be limited to one type of movement or exercise.
Getting the Best of Both Worlds
Some experts argue that functional training is the way to the perfect body. Others say the secret is isolated exercise and static training. In reality, both of sides of this argument are right.
You see, true functional training means avoiding machines, split routines, single-joint exercise, and bodybuilding. Those who believe you should only use functional training feel other exercises have no real purpose, aside from aesthetic ones. Functional exercises, on the other hand, increase strength, muscle mass, sport performance, and work capacity, while improving the function and integrity of your joints.
These same “purists” argue that functional exercises are natural, while isolated exercises are not. This statement is true in some respects, but it isn’t always the case. First, the only real natural training is practice — anything else done to manipulate the body and improve performance is artificial. But don’t let this scare you.
Just because exercise is technically artificial doesn’t mean it’s useless. It just means you’re improving your body on purpose. And this will greatly improve your performance, not to mention your body shape.
If you really want to look great, improve your performance, and have the most effective workout possible, you need to use a variety of the most effective exercises and movements. So, instead of looking at a movement as good or bad, choose exercises and equipment that will address your body’s unique needs and give you the results you’re looking for.
Flavia Del Monte is a Registered Nurse, Certified Physical Trainer, Certified Nutritionist and the creator of Full-Body-Licious. You can read more about her training programs, nutrition advice and workouts for women on her female fitness blog.
Outlining Best Kids Fitness Training Program – What it must include and Exclude
January 21, 2012 by admin
Filed under Fitness Training
Article by Itmaster
Increasing obesity problem in children has made it essential to develop an effective kids fitness training program. A kid can become obese at anytime during his age depending on what he consumes, way he lives and number of physical activities performed by him. Depending on all these factors, a well structured kids fitness training program must be selected by parents or fitness trainers. Since, body of children is not too tough or in other words is sensitive as compared to elders, so, it is essential to go for a training program which is not too harsh.
Keeping strict kids fitness training is difficult as these individuals are not used to follow regular exercising pattern.Despite of this however, if in case a child is in urgent need of losing excessive fat from body then it becomes necessary to outline a strict exercising pattern for couple of days or months. There are varieties of kids fitness training programs which have been designed by expert trainers. These programs can be selected depending on a child’s requirement. In addition to these exercising programs, there are ample numbers of fitness equipments also obtainable for children. These equipments are especially designed for children and can be used in order to secure larger fruitful gains from entire fitness program.
An exercise in itself is not enough for maintaining physical strength of a child. In order to maintain physical well being of children, it is essential to outline a kids fitness training program inclusive of healthy food and active lifestyle. In addition to this, it is also required to design an interesting and fun form of kids fitness training program. This is because children are too casual and not much serious about their physical well being. So, if they are made to do exercise in fun way then it becomes easy to stick them to entire program. An exercising regimen for kids must be outlined in such a way so that they are able to lose their excessive fat but secure strong muscles and bones.
Kids fitness training program can be inclusive of physical processes such as riding bike, walking or jogging long distances. They must ask for climbing stairs instead of using lifts. Parents can also make children do little household chores and other work. Even parents can plan walk or exercising routine with their children in order to make them have totally physically fit body. Strength exercises such as sit-ups, leg lifts, pushups, knee bends, heel raises and crunches can also be included in kids fitness training program outlined for children.
The kids fitness training program must involve small exercises which are not too strenuous but are good enough to reduce excessive fat from their body. It should be incorporated with easy exercises and healthy dietary regimen so that they can have totally fit and powerful physical as well as mental well being.
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