Category: Strength Training

How to Burn Fat without Losing Muscle Mass

Jumping right into a diet plan without learning how to burn fat without losing muscle can be a big mistake. The most common reason for weight loss failure is the early mistakes we make in our diet program that hurt us in the end. Following a proper diet is important for losing weight; however, a proper diet should be a healthy diet, a combination of the right types of food with the correct amount of calories. It is also necessary to combine your diet with the right amount of daily exercise, together will help us burn the extra fat accumulated in our bodies and not our muscle mass. Keeping and growing our muscle mass is important to increase our metabolism and burn more fat for a longer period of time, without even exercising or walking or even being awake.

Learning How to Burn Fat without Losing Muscle Mass

The main lesson of knowing how to burn fat without losing muscle mass is learning not to cut calories too fast from your daily diet. A lot of people start their diet program with enthusiasm and excitement but end up drastically reducing the amount of calories they consume each day. Cutting too much calories fast is very bad for your health as it forces your body to burn muscle tissues to make up for the lack of energy. It also leads to slowing down your metabolic rate, which will make losing weight even more difficult, if not plain impossible. The problem is not the amount of food, well, sometimes it is, but more often than not, is the type of food you eat throughout the day that cause our body to store fat.

Continue reading “How to Burn Fat without Losing Muscle Mass”

Kettlebell Workouts A New Approach to Strength Training

Kettle bell or kettlebell workouts are forms of strength training workouts that have their origin in Russia. These types of weight training exercises have gained popularity and momentum in the United States in the past couple of years, thanks in part to the powerful benefits that anyone can achieve when performing this kettlebell workouts. A kettlebell is a kind of cast iron made weight that looks like a small cannon ball with a handle. Kettlebell workouts for women and men help to increase your flexibility and strength of your body.

Kettlebell workout routines have certain advantages that helped increase its popularity. These weight training exercises are able to provide the experience of intense training in a short period of time. Moreover, exercising only 20 to 30 minutes is enough to obtain many of the overall health benefits that working with a kettlebell provide. Kettlebells can provide different forms of workouts for each of the different muscle groups of your body that you want to target. Another big advantage of following a kettlebell workout routine is that you can focus on specific muscle groups that you want to build-up. Because of its versatility and power, the popularity of this type of weight training workout is rapidly growing across the globe.

Everyday more and more people are joining the kettlebell workout community. Men, women, old and young, everyone is becoming a fan of this wonderful strength training exercise. Besides giving your body many benefits to improve its overall health and fitness level, doing the exercises are fun.

Continue reading “Kettlebell Workouts A New Approach to Strength Training”

Which is most Effective Exercise: Free Weights vs Machines?

Let’s try to solve an old question: what type of exercise can yield the biggest results in the shortest time: free weights vs machines. We should begin with some basic information first. Exercise should not be a chore that has to be performed on a daily basis. Rather, all of us should accept daily exercise as part of our life. We should think of it as a means to keep our body fit and healthy. Try to think about your exercise time from another perspective: is we spend at least one hour a day exercising we still have twenty-three hours remaining to complete our daily tasks.

Doing exercise is a simple way to expand our range of motion. By exercise, all of us make extra movements and put in motion more muscles than we usually do day in day out. During the initial stage, the range of motion may be limited due to our fitness level and current lifestyle but it will increase with the passage of time. The best way to get an effective workout is to challenge our body. However, one of the most common questions is what is the best way to exercise? What will be the correct way of exercising or which way will yield better results quicker? Should I use exercise machines or free weights? Well, in order to pick the best option it is necessary to take a look in more detail at both options.

Comparing Free Weights vs Machines

To better compare free weights vs machines, let us focus on the same type of exercise to best analyze both options. Exercising with free weights normally requires standing up with a pair of dumbbells in your hands. Exercisers need to move the dumbbells and raise them to the level of their shoulder. This exercise involves contracting the biceps and allows for a good range of motion mostly around your arm muscles.

To do the same exercise but this time using an exercise machine at a gym for example, we will need to do slightly different things. This time we have to go through the exercise taking a sitting position. Our hands will be either bracing on a pad or holding on to handle. The movement or range of motion will be the same as with the free weights. However, this time we might find it more difficult to lift our hands to the height of our shoulders. The reason behind this limited range of motion is nothing but the change in position. While we have a free range of motion when standing up, if we do the same exercise in a sitting position, our range of motion changes.

Exercise machines, in this case, allow us to focus on just the bicep area. If that is the only target you have in mind, then using the exercise machines will be a good idea and a great fit with your exercise routine. However, if you want to target more areas just within your arm (triceps and deltoids) you will need to perform various exercises in possibly more than one machine.

A significant benefit of exercise machines is that some of them provide great flexibility in the amount of resistance. However, the amount of resistance depends on the type of the machine. Exercise machines that use power rod technology provide more resistance than those machine that use cables.

Body builders generally laugh at the free weights vs machines controversy and prefer free weights. The majority of body builders will instantly brush off the idea of using exercise machines. However, it depends on everyone’s personal choice. If you are trying to bulk your body and have bigger muscles you must use free weights to accomplish that goal. If you are looking for a toned effect, you can easily get it by using exercise machines that provide enough resistance.

The only problem of exercising with free weights vs machines, is that or body’s momentum can be used to do the work, which in turn, decreases the effectiveness of the workout. A good point to take into consideration in the free weights vs machines dilemma is that there is little or not isolation of the target muscles and that can be good a bad depending on your goals.

Conclusion: What is best: Free Weights vs Machines

Both the free weights and the exercise machines have their own shortcomings and benefits. If you are a member of a gym or are thinking about starting your membership in one, you might be able to try both options and see which one you prefer. However, for some people who want to avoid that extra fee or want to exercise at home, free weight are an excellent starting point and much more cost-effective. Remember that the main goal is to exercise, either free weights vs machines or any other exercise will accomplish this main goal and increase your health and fitness level.