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Training using a heart rate monitor is a wise idea. You can accurately determine the fat burning and fitness building zones to train in. You know when you’re overdoing it, or when you need to ramp it up, and you can easily measure your improvements along the way. The heart never lies isn’t that what they say! The same goes during your workout, even if you feel like you’re dying but your heart rate shows you’re ok, keep going!!

Training with a heart rate monitor watch and strap is the easiest way to measure your heart rate, but simply taking your pulse and counting the beats works fine too. Count the beats over a six second period and add a zero to get your beats per minute. Why don’t you try it right now in front of the computer? Find your pulse in your wrist or your neck. Count how many beats you have in 6 seconds. Lets say you had 6 beats in 6 seconds. Add a zero and that means you have a resting heart rate of 60 beats per minute (bpm). You would do the same thing in a workout.

To calculate your correct training zones, there are 2 methods, the easy method and the hard method!

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Tagged As: Beats per minute, Heart, Heart rate, Heart rate monitor, Minute, Physical exercise, Training, VO2 max

This is part 2 of a 4 part series on the benefits of improving your core stability, and how you can improve yours.

Ok, so you’ve mastered Part 1, diaphragmatic breathing and you’re ready to progress to the next stage. This stage is all about maintaining spinal neutral while we move. To see how good you are at using your core muscles, try this test. You will need a piece of string tied around your waist. Tie this string along the line of your belly button. Have the tension so when you are relaxed, it gently digs into your belly, but when you draw your belly button in, it becomes loose. If you forced your tummy out, it would get really tight.

Lay on your back with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor. There should be just enough arch so you can slide your hand under your lower back, but no more. This is spinal neutral. You should feel relaxed here.

Draw your belly button into your spine and gently apply pressure onto your hand. The string around your waist should remain loose. If it gets tight, you have recruited your six pack muscles, rectus abdominus. This is a no-no. Stop, relax and try again. The muscles you are wanting to recruit are located like a corset around your abdomen, the transverse abdominals (tva). You may be able to feel a ridge and inch either side of your belly button.

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Tagged As: Adipose tissue, core strength, fitness, Health, Human abdomen, Navel, Physical exercise, Rectus abdominis muscle, Weight loss

This is part 1 of a 4 part series on the benefits of improving your core stability, and how you can improve yours.

Do you suffer from back pain? 80% of people suffer from chronic neck or back pain at some point in their lives, with the majority being posture related and preventable. You’ve probably seen people doing absurd things on giant balls, or performing what looks like a DUI test police would conduct. If you ask what on earth they are doing, they answer simply… ‘oh it’s my core stability program.’ Does this core stability stuff work, or could it be putting our body at risk?

The answer: Core stability exercises are one of the best ways to strengthen and retrain the body’s postural muscles to work effectively. They are excellent when you progress at the right speed, and bad for you if performed incorrectly. There is a fine line between these exercises helping or hurting your back. There are about 5 stages, and the key is to progress only when you have mastered one stage, no matter how long it takes to learn.

Stage #1: Diaphragmatic Breathing Test

This is the hardest stage to master! Whilst you are reading this begin to observe your breathing style. Don’t change anything, just observe. Place one hand on your sternum, in the middle of your chest. Place the other hand over your belly button. Now look down (or go stand in front of the mirror) and observe which hand moves more when you breathe in, top or bottom hand?

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Tagged As: back pain, Breathing, core stability, core strength, Diaphragmatic breathing, Navel, Physical exercise

This guest article is by Joey Sheather, high performance personal trainer and author of Global Weight Training.

How you can shock your body into new levels of growth when you are short on time.

This might sound like a cliche, but we do live in a fast-paced, high-stress world where time is a valued commodity in short supply. There is nothing worse than rushing off to the gym, skipping parts of your workout and leaving feeling like you haven’t trained properly and have wasted your time.

I believe that you should have a specific goal to be achieved from every single workout and in pursuit of that goal you give nothing less than 100 percent effort. If you fall short of that level of focus and intensity on a regular basis you are wasting your time and taking a longer path to where you want to be. Make the most of the time you have been given. This, of course, applies to the rest of your life but today we are only talking about training. (Which, of course, is the most important part of your life – ha ha).

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Tagged As: Bodybuilding, fitness, Health, Muscle, Muscle Building, Personal trainer, Physical exercise, Weight training