| |
| |
|
iFit5.com Exercise Information |
|
|
|
Vital information and articles related to ExerciseMovement That Matters: Exercise With a Greater Purpose
You've seen the commercials Ive fallen and I cant get up! While this has been a topic of many jokes and late-night comedy skits, the reality is falling is a very real danger for many people. Too often falls can lead to broken bones, hospitalization, and sometimes life-threatening illnesses due to being confined to a bed while recovering. A less extreme, but still real situation is when a person lacks the leg strength to get out of a chair. Or someone who throws out their back just picking up a child or the groceries from the trunk of the car. Did you know that this is not inevitable? With consistent and effective exercise, you will maintain your daily activities without injury well into your sixties, seventies, eighties, and beyond. You may have heard the buzzwords functional training and core training mentioned in the latest fitness magazines. While these terms sound complicated, they are really terms for the most effective and exciting system of strength training being used today. Functional training strengthens your body for the everyday movements it has to perform. This could be any type of movement, whether for a sport, your job, or just picking up your kids. Most injuries occur in the course of our everyday lives. Strengthen your body for these activities and you will sustain less injury. Functional training also improves balance. This is essential for preventing falls. A combination of strength and balance will give you the confidence to move through your day with ease! Core training works on strengthening your core, your abdominal and low back muscles. Just as a house needs a foundation to build upon, so does your body. Work on the core first and every other exercise you add will be more effective and make you stronger. Many functional training exercises incorporate core training. There are also exercises that isolate the core for maximum benefit. Core training is the idea behind Pilates and is also used in yoga. You can incorporate both types of training into your regular workout with equipment such as stability balls, medicine balls, elastic tubing, slides, and dumbbells. Some exercises require no equipment at all! Several videos and guides on the market can teach you many of these exercises. You can also hire a personal trainer for a few sessions so you can learn the proper techniques. These methods are more effective than traditional gym strength training machines because more muscles are used and the body becomes more coordinated and strong as a result. Machines do play an important role, however. As a new exerciser, you may not have the strength or coordination necessary for functional training. I recommend a combination of basic core strengthening and the use of machines to develop basic strength before starting the more complex functional and core movements. One of the best and simplest functional exercises is the squat. We use this motion all day long getting up from a chair, or picking an object up from the ground, as examples. Learn to squat properly and do it consistently and you will remain strong, independent, and less prone to injury. A great core exercise for beginners is one you can do anytime, anywhere. While sitting or standing, pull your navel towards your spine. Concentrate on performing this movement without flattening your back it is important to maintain proper posture. This strengthens very deep abdominal muscles that are responsible for protecting your back. Try this exercise while driving when you stop at a red light, perform 10 repetitions. Your abdominals will thank you for it! Think about it, do you walk around during the day doing leg extensions? What about abdominals crunches on the floor? While these exercises work targeted muscles and are good accessory exercises, functional exercises create a stronger, healthier body that will be protected from injury and provide a higher quality of life. About The Author Gillian Hood-Gabrielson, MS, ACSM is the president of Flexible Fitness, a nationwide coaching practice offering health and fitness solutions for your busy lifestyle including Fitness Coaching by Phone, Intuitive Eating, and monthly motivational seminars. She can be reached at 866-618-8814 or by email at gillian@flexiblefitnessforyou.com. To receive our free report, I Hate Exercise Too! and our newsletter, please visit www.flexiblefitnessforyou.com.
MORE RESOURCES:
Exercise - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
How to Pick a Good Personal Trainer One of the major benefits of the YourBestBodyNOW Program and several other programs like it is that you can lose weight and meet your fitness and weight loss goals even if you have neither the time nor money to get a personal trainer.At the same time, if you do ultimately decide to hire trainer at some point, I want to make sure that you are going about it in a way that will bring you the absolute maximum benefit. Thirty Minutes of Exercise a Day Keeps the Doctor Away "Exercise is good for you!" If you had a dollar for every time you heard this statement uttered, you'd be rich by now, right? Well, proponents of everyday physical activity aren't just blowing smoke when they repeat this mantra. Medical research has uncovered resounding evidence to back up this "good for you" claim. Easy and Effective Home Workouts Many people think that creating a home workout gym is either too intimidating or too costly. So, often they instead invest their money in a health club membership not realizing that for the same amount of money (or even less) they can create a very effective gym right in their own home. See How Trampolines Can Be Part Of Any Exercise Program When the trampoline was invented by a young boy intrigued by the ability of aerialists to bounce in a net and perform artistic maneuvers while they did so, it literally became the "springboard" for a whole new sport.George Nissen, who was a tumbler and gymnast himself, took the sports to a whole new height by putting them on canvas strung in a metal frame. STRETCHING; Why Should I? This short article looks at some of the tips, tricks and helpful hints you can use to help prevent sports injury and do-away with stiff, aching muscles & joints. It's been put together to answer some of the more common questions we get regarding stretching and sports injury, and details a number of useful sports injury prevention techniques. Exercise and Kids: The Difference between Training Children and Adults! The greatest mistake a person can make when exercising with children is to treat them like little adults. Children are growing and developing rapidly. Exercising With Kids -- Tips For Parents Making exercise a priority is a challenge for everyone. And for parents it can be especially difficult to find time to workout because of the full plates that they often juggle. 4 Exercises That Will Help You Change Your Body Faster Than Any Other Exercises You May Have Tried 1. Lunges with a barbell. Muscle Cramps and Exercise Quite often runners and exercisers experience painful muscle cramping either during or immediately following a strenuous exercise bout and as a result, these types of cramps have become known as Exercise Associated Muscle Cramps or EAMCs. Much confusion surrounds the causes of EAMCs including dehydration to electrolyte imbalances. Physical Fitness - Is Your Workout Missing Something? Hiking along a rocky trail, two of the three friends carefully picked their way from rock to rock. But one leaped from rock to rock, bounding by the others like a gazelle running and leaping from rock to rock. Overcoming Resistance to Exercise Are You Destined to Sit on the Couch?If someone mentions exercise do you think, "I hate to exercise. There's no way I'm doing that. How to Find a Gym and Start Exercising There is hardly a week that passes without an article or study touting the benefits of exercise. Exercise to cure cancer, exercise to lose weight, feel better, livelonger, and stop dementia, the list appears endless. Exercise Program The exercise program you choose depends entirely on your fitness goals. The exercises you will be doing and the approach you take in performing these exercises will depend on whether you wish to gain muscle and strength, tone and lose weight or just stay in shape and be healthy. A 30-minute, Or Less, Full Body Workout Most people do not have the time to do biceps and back one day, then legs and shoulders the next, then triceps and abdominals the next day. So here is a short, and every effective full body weight session you can easily get done in 30 minutes or less. Weight Loss and Exercise in Tough Environmental Conditions Working out is working out, right?Wrong.Depending on the environmental conditions where youlive, there may be extra precautions that you'll want to consider when trying to lose weight by following a healthy diet and weight loss program. An Introduction to Tennis Is tennis good for you?Absolutely - tennis is a gentle way of exercising for beginners, and for more advanced players is a very thorough workout. Physical activity increases energy and also helps you to stay healthy, fending off germs and infections. Get Fit From Home-Part 2 --------------------- Using The Stairs ---------------------Not everybody has stairs in their home, but chances are you know somewhere that you can find a set. Maybe it's a set of bleachers at the high school or a set of steps at a park. Pilates Exercises - Can They Give You The Body Youve Always Wanted? Pilates exercises are a favorite fitness choice for many people including movie stars like Danny Glover and Gweneth Paltrow, professional dancers, and even some professional baseball players. Why this fascination with Pilates? What can it do that other forms of exercise can't?I began doing Pilates several years ago when I was searching for a different look for my body. Workouts That Travel A vacation can do wonders for reducing stress levels, but it can derail a healthy fitness regimen. Even some of the most die-hard exercisers find it difficult to stick with a workout program when away from home. The Importance of The Fibonacci Numbers in Fitness Training "Things do not change; we change." -Henry David ThoreauThe following article is a chapter from my new book, The Da Vinci Fitness Code.
|
|
Exercise Articles Home Page | Exercise Articles Site Map | iFit5.com Home Page | Fitness Equipment | Health News | Health Hairstyles | Fashion57.com | Beauty Holistic Health | CShroeder | Gifts | CSnet | Athletic Shoes iFit8.com - Fitness and Exercise. |
| © 2006 EZmatic.com |
