Holiday Calorie Busting Tips

You don’t have to succumb to weight gain this holiday season. Escape the time crunch excuse in three easy steps:

Step One: Schedule Your Workouts:
You’ve heard this before, and it makes so much sense. If you treat your exercise time with the importance of a work meeting then you’d never skip a workout and you’d be in amazing shape.

While the scheduling concept is brilliant in its simplicity, you have to put it into practice to reap the benefits. Pull out your calendar and a pen. Don’t laugh, I’m serious! Just do it. If you want to get into shape it starts with committing to a revised
schedule with a set exercise time.

Identify three 40-minute time slots and mark them on your calendar. That is when you’ll exercise.

Remember this: if the thought that you should exercise this week is floating around in your head, but you haven’t anchored it down to a specific time and date, then it will quickly disappear.

Step Two: Get the Most from Each Minute:
The days of endless, mind numbing cardio are over. A great workout can take place in under an hour, when done correctly. The idea is to burn more calories each minute. This is done through short, intense bursts of exercise.

Use the following three tips to bring your routine up to the next level:

1. Be Unstable: Use your entire body, and target your core, by performing exercises that engage stabilizing muscles. To do this use an exercise ball, a balance board, a balance disk, or you could simply stand on one leg.
2. Add Resistance: The more resistance that you incorporate with your routine translates into higher intensity and more calories burned. Some ideas for adding resistance include: carrying dumbbells while doing lunges, wearing a weighted vest while walking or jogging, or putting a weight between your feet while doing leg raises.
3. Use Intervals: Interval training is an amazing tool for creating short yet effective workouts. Don’t worry, it’s not complicated. Interval training is simply alternating between different short bursts of activity.

Here’s an example: Let’s say you want to focus on your legs and abs and to also get an effective cardiovascular workout. This would be a great interval routine for your goals:

  • Lunge while curling dumbbells, 15-20 repetitions
  • 30 seconds of intense cardio: sprint, jump rope, or jumping jacks
  • Squat while pressing dumbbells overhead, 15-20 repetitions
  • 30 seconds of intense cardio: sprint, jump rope, or jumping jacks
  • Crunches on an exercise ball, 15-20 repetitions
  • 30 seconds of intense cardio: sprint, jump rope, or jumping jacks
  • Leg raises off the end of an exercise bench, 15-20 repetitions

Step Three: Twice the Results in Half the Time: What if I told you that I have a proven way to deliver twice the fitness results in half the time? It’s simple really…

When you attempt to lose weight or meet a fitness goal on your own, the odds are stacked against you. Sure, you could do it over time – but it’s a long and lonely road. A road lined with detours that threaten to undermine your progress.

When you start a program with me, you suddenly have the upper hand on weight loss. You have me in your corner, coaching you each step of the way, keeping you accountable to workouts and giving you that dose of encouragement went the going gets tough.

And I’ll be the one congratulating you when your goal is met.

Cardio Vs. Strength Training at Gyms in Woodmere, Five Towns and Nassau

The SouthWest Fitness Club in Woodmere which also services the Five Towns and Nassau offers options for both cardiovascular exercise and strength training. Depending on your fitness goals, you might be inclined towards one or the other. But is cardio or strength training better for you? How can you get the best of both worlds and still achieve your most targeted fitness goals?

First, let’s see what the benefits of each are.

Benefits Of Cardiovascular Exercise

It seems as fitness and cardiovascular exercise go you either love it or hate it. Nevertheless, cardio is an important part of being fit and healthy, regardless of your workout goals. The SouthWest Fitness Club, the gym with the “Personal Touch” in Woodmere makes cardiovascular health within your reach. Here’s how everyone can benefit from cardiovascular exercise.

  • Cardiovascular exercise gets the heart pumping and increases blood circulation. It works out the heart like any other muscle and strengthens it for endurance, long life, and increased productivity.
  • Cardio is the primary calorie and (by default) fat burner, so is the primary exercise for weight loss.
  • Metabolism is increased by cardiovascular workouts, too, which translates into better calorie and fat burning when you are not working out.
  • Cardio helps regulate hormone production so that you live on a more even plain, reduce stress, live happier, and maximize hormones that contribute to good health.
  • Cardiovascular exercise helps manage metabolic diseases like diabetes by maximizing glucose use.
  • Cardio helps you recover from other, more strenuous exercises (such as strength training) by processing muscle and blood by-products.

Benefits Of Strength Training

Strength training produces a similar love/hate emotion from people. As far as gyms in Woodmere go, we can help make strength training easier. Just as cardio is essential to overall fitness, though, so too is strength training; Here’s how everyone benefits from strength training exercises.

  • Strength training also improves your metabolism and increases your ability to burn calories and fat (because muscle requires more food energy).
  • Strength training increases the amount of lean muscle in the body which increases strength but also endurance and translates into better functioning and athletic performance.
  • Strength training significantly increases bone density. Weight-bearing exercises keep bones strong and healthy and restore bone loss caused by aging and inactivity.
  • Stronger muscles help protect the body, bones, and joints from injury.
  • Stronger muscles improve and maintain balance, movement, flexibility, and stability. You will feel better and again, be less likely to become injured due to weakness, strains, and falls. Strong muscles also help heal after an injury.
  • Like cardio, strength training also helps fight off diseases like heart disease.

Reaping The Rewards Of Cardiovascular Exercise & Strength Training

Although you may gravitate more towards cardio or strength training depending on your fitness goals and preference, one is not better than the other and total fitness relies upon the two. Our Gym in Woodmere offer facilities for both kinds of training. Whether you want to run a marathon or win bodybuilding competitions, or just be healthier, you should be incorporating some cardio and strength training to maximize your program.

A personal trainer is one of the best resources to help you learn about how one type of exercise can complement the other. With the help of a personal trainer, you can outline your fitness goals and find out what exercises and what amount of each will best help get you there. A personal trainer will also help you learn how to perform the exercises so that you enjoy the total benefits of the gyms in Woodmere and enhance your fitness program. Often, people who have focused in one area—either cardio or strength training—lack experience with other, and need the extra guidance of a trainer to really benefit.

Cardiovascular and strength training are not either/or propositions for total body fitness. Every fitness plan needs elements of both, and a little education as to where your program is lacking will get you to your fitness goals. SouthWest Fitness Club in Woodmere the Gym with a “Personal Touch” can provide you with many available resources that will help make your fitness goals easier to reach.

Learn About Managing Your Diet and Metabolism with Personal Trainers in Woodmere and Five Towns

Personal trainers in Woodmere advise that you should learn about managing diet and metabolism in order to lose weight and keep it off. The metabolism is the process of burning the calories you consume. Your metabolic rate is impacted by the food you eat and the amount of exercise you get on a regular basis.

Managing Your Energy

Your body has to burn calories in order for them to become usable. This is just another way of saying your metabolism is how your body makes use of the nutrients you consume through diet. The metabolic rate is the speed at which you burn the calories and has a direct impact on your weight.

The three primary nutrients the body needs to survive are fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. Your diet is composed of a variety of foods which supply these nutrients in a certain quantity. As you live and breathe, the body uses the nutrients to create energy needed to continue functioning.

You can impact your metabolic rate by eating foods supplying the right balance of nutrients. Your physical weight is the result of a number of factors and one of those is the metabolic process which burns calories. When you eat too many calories, and you don’t expend them through physical activity and the metabolic process, you will gain weight.

When people want to lose weight, they have to reduce the amount of calories consumed to a level below the amount of calories expended. Personal trainers in Woodmere will tell you that you don’t necessarily have to count calories though many people choose to do so. What works just as well is eating a balanced diet that makes sense based on your level of physical activity.

Paying Attention to the Details

One of the important considerations when managing your diet is making sure you control everything you decide to eat or drink. You can easily consume many more calories than you think you are consuming through your choices of liquids or snack foods. A calorie is a calorie to your metabolism, and one of the simplest facts to understand about weight loss is the fact you have to burn more than you ingest. Personal trainers in Woodmere can explain more.

Your diet and your metabolism are intricately integrated. Though food alone cannot change the metabolic rate very much, you are able to increase your metabolism through exercise so you burn more calories in the food you eat. But it is important to understand a single food cannot supply the body with the nutrients it needs.

That is why fad diets seldom work well. They often exclude a major food group needed for a healthy body. You have to eat a variety of foods that are nutritionally balanced and supply your body with the energy needed to function, and that energy is obtained from a mixture of fats, carbohydrates, and proteins. Contact Personal trainers in Woodmere to find out the best diet for your goals.

Personal Trainers in Woodmere and Five Towns Report On The Spot Reduction Myth

Personal trainers in Woodmere know that you’ve seen dozens of commercials on televisions or in magazines for diet pills or exercise equipment that promise to help you lose fat in your thighs, hips, and even the part of the body that plagues millions of women, the belly…heck, they’ve seen them too! But before you pick up the phone and order, you may well want to reconsider. Personal trainers in Woodmere have shown time and time again that spot reduction is nothing more than a myth. In this article, we’ll learn what spot reduction promises to do for you, why it doesn’t work, and how personal trainers in Woodmere can help you fight fat in all areas of your body.

What is Spot Reduction?

Spot reduction is any program or equipment that promises to help you get rid of fat in one particular area of the body. The most popular devices promise to eliminate excess fat from the thighs or stomach region simply by working on the muscles in that particular area. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work for one simple reason – the fat in a particular area isn’t governed by the muscles in the same area.

Why Spot Reduction Doesn’t Work

Unfortunately, doing nothing but stomach crunches won’t reduce the amount of fat located in your stomach area, although it will certainly make your abdominal muscles stronger. This doesn’t mean, however, that the fat there will magically turn into muscle. Spot reduction doesn’t work because every person has a genetic selective pattern in which they lose weight, which is why some women may experience notable weight loss in their face first while others may experience notable weight loss in their arms or other area of the body.

The differences between men and women are also noticeable; men are more likely to gain wait in their abdominal region while women often gain weight in their gluteal region. If we could reduce fat in specific areas of the body, both men and woman would surely find it easier to reduce the fat where they need to most, but instead women particularly find it difficult to lose weight in the gluteal region.

So How Can I Lose My Tummy Fat?

The only way to work towards losing the fat in a particular area is to exercise all parts of the body with a balanced fitness routine comprising of cardio, strength training and stretching. Because of us are different, there is no way to predict where the fat we’ve gained will be eliminated first, as only our genetic selective patterns can control it. Cardio can help fight fat by raising the heart rate and the metabolism, which controls how quickly calories are burned.

In addition, strength training can also help raise the metabolism, as well as builds strong muscles, and the more muscles you have, the more calories will be burned. Stretching complements these disciplines by keeping the muscles relaxed and protects the joints. Personal trainers in Woodmere know that combining a balanced exercise routine with a healthy diet is the best way to fight off fat in any area of the body and will certainly help prevent the fat from coming back. Contact personal trainers in Woodmere to start your one-on-one fat fighting program today!

Personal Trainers in Woodmere and Five Towns Stress That Stretching is Important

News From Personal Trainers in Woodmere! You’ve managed to make time in your busy schedule for a workout session, but even so, you’re running late. In order to make up time, you’ve decided to skip over your stretching exercises and skip to the meat of the workout. After all, stretching is just a small part of the warm up anyway, right?

Personal trainers in Woodmere say…Wrong! Skipping over the stretching part of your warm up exercises or even during your cool down is not only a bad habit to start, but could also be dangerous to your body and lead to injury. Stretching is a very important part of your work out routine, whether you’re walking or preparing to lift weights. In this article, we’ll take a look at why stretching is such an important part of your workout routine and why you should always stretch both before and after a workout.

Why Stretching is Good For You

There are a whole host of reasons that stretching is good for you. Muscles that are tired are have not be in use are usually tight and constricted. Stretching helps keep the muscles flexible, not just for work out routines, but for everyday tasks. Stretching promotes good posture, helps protect your joints, and leaves you feeling relaxed and free of tension. In fact, stretching has so much going for it that even those that stretch on days that they do not work out can reap the benefits.

However, overdoing it can be just as harmful as not stretching at all. Personal trainers in Woodmere stress that stretching should never be painful! Every body is different so don’t judge yourself against the person stretching next to you. If you’ve stretched to the point of pain, back off a little and hold the new position for twenty seconds or more.

Stretching During Warm Up

It is important to remember that stretching is an important part of the warm up, but it is not all there is to warming up! Recently, personal trainers in Woodmere have started recommending that a ten minute warm up period should precede any stretching. This is because the muscles shouldn’t be stretched while they are still “cold,” or before any physical activity has taken place. The warm up period of movement helps encourage the blood to flow to the muscles, sonovial fluid to “grease” up the joints, and get the heart rate increasing. Stretching before the body has had time to warm up a little can cause strains or tears in the muscles, which is exactly what you’re trying to avoid by stretching in the first place!

Stretching During Cool Down

Personal trainers in Woodmere stress that just like during the warm up period, stretching is integral to the cool down period. All of the blood that is pumping through the muscles during the work out can pool there if the muscles are not stretched; stretching encourages the blood to return to the body’s organs. A good stretch after a work out can also discourage lactic acid from building up in the muscles, which can help promote the feeling of soreness the next day. Most importantly, stretching helps relax the body and relieve tension, which means that you’re likely to feel much better after your work out than when you started!

Woodmere and Five Towns Personal Trainers Will Help You Refocus on Fitness

Five Towns personal trainers know that refocusing on fitness after your program has been interrupted by a major life event is always important. In fact, a fitness program is the ideal way to overcome the effects of stress on your body. The worse thing you can do is tell yourself there is no longer a need to continue a fitness program, because you had to quit exercising for a while.

Fitness Is a Life Event Too

Life can have a way of ruining our plans. You can be on a fitness schedule you adhere too religiously, and suddenly a major life event causes you to veer off course.

These kinds of events are as varied as there are people, and they are all stressful. Even happy events, such as having a baby, create both physical and psychological stress. Other life happenings include losing a job, buying a new house, divorce, death in the family or even being told you are responsible for a major project at work that is due in a month.

When a major event happens in life, all too often your time schedule gets amended and your focus shifts. One of the first things to get cut is the amount of time you spend on your fitness program. Yet staying fit through a stressful event can make it much easier to cope both mentally and physically. Woodmere personal trainers can help you come up with a schedule that works for you.

The reason fitness programs are interrupted is because fitness is not seen as a life event too. It is a matter of understanding the importance of fitness to your life. People who are fit are better able to recover from a pregnancy, handle the stress associated with a family loss, are better able to cope with the mental anguish of losing a job, and are better able to handle physical challenges such as moving from one house to another.

L.I.F.E.

Life should actually be an acronym for fitness…Love It For Ever! Despite good intentions, you may have gotten off track when it comes to your fitness program. Five Towns personal trainers can help you refocus on your fitness program so that you are able to continue staying healthy no matter what life throws your way.

For example, you can learn a series of exercises you are able to do at home if you just had a baby. You can learn how to fit exercise into the business schedule with Five Towns personal trainers while insuring the time you do spend is as productive as possible. You will also get assistance with nutritional planning so when you stop at the fast food restaurant in between moving from one house to another, you stay on your nutrition plan by making good food choices.

No matter what happens in your life, staying fit should continue to be a priority. Being fit and healthy and supplying your body with the right nutrients is critical for being able to handle the stress you experience.

Five Towns personal trainers can help you Love It For Ever!

Getting Happy with Your Body With the Help of Woodmere Personal Trainers

Woodmere Personal Trainers Report! Just as some people have to come to terms with the fact that they’ll always be of short stature, a lot of us also have to come to terms with the fact that we’ll never be a size zero. Woodmere personal trainers are in the same boat! Setting unrealistic goals in our fitness or diet routines can not only set us up for failure, but also a lack of self confidence and even depression. Even before starting on the path to a healthier life, it’s helpful to get focused on what you can achieve with the body you have. In this article, we’ll explore the pitfalls of comparing yourself to others, celebrity culture, and how you can get on the right track to making the most of what you have.

Comparing Yourself to Others

It seems like it’s almost ingrained in women to compare ourselves with each other, whether it is with our friends, co-workers, and even Woodmere personal trainers. We can always find something to admire in other women, whether it be their hair or waist size. The problem is that we don’t often take time to sit down in front of a mirror and discover what it is we like about ourselves. Sure, we know what we want to change, but when do we ever take the time to complement ourselves?

The most important thing to remember is that every body is different. Sure, there are plenty of women that are naturally thin, and others that have to fight tooth and nail to retain their size. Don’t get caught in the trap of focusing your energies on anyone’s body but your own. Woodmere personal trainers can help motivate and support you, and most importantly, help you recognize your strength and improve your health! Nothing is more important than ones health!

Celebrity Culture

Celebrities are everywhere these days – of course we expect to see them in movies or on music channels, but now they’re on the covers of women’s magazines, starring in commercials, and don’t forget the thousands of internet pages dedicated to favorite stars. It’s hard not to admire them for what seems like a fantasy lifestyle, and on top of that, they often seem to be absolutely perfect.

Just like comparing yourself to your friends and others, comparing yourself to celebrities is a dangerous trap, and there are three reasons why. First of all, it truly takes a team to make a celebrity look good on the red carpet. Wardrobe consultants and hair and makeup assistants all work together to make the celebrity look her best. Second of all, it’s true that many celebrities work very hard to maintain their figures, but a lot more than we could ever have time for, sometimes as often as two or three hours a day. It’s a part of their job to look the best they can, so they can afford to take the time. Finally, there is a not so secret weapon that magazines use to make celebrities look their best – the air brush. This tool is used very often to manipulate pictures of celebrities for the cover of magazines to make them look perfect, when the reality is quite different. Do yourself a favor and keep these reasons in mind the next time you admire a celebrity on the cover of a magazine!

What Can You Do?

It’s all very well and good to say that we need to focus on our own bodies when setting out to achieve a fitness goal, but sometimes it’s beneficial to have a second opinion, and that’s where consulting Woodmere personal trainers can come in handy. A personal trainer can use his experience and training to do a full assessment of your body and help steer you towards a goal that will have you looking and feeling your best. Remember, Woodmere personal trainers live in the same celebrity culture that you do! Woodmere personal trainers can help motivate and support you, and most importantly, help you recognize your strength and beauty!

Why You Can Benefit from Woodmere Personal Trainers

With Woodmere personal trainers you can improve your life through healthier choices and fitness. Deciding where and how to begin your fitness journey are just as important as making the decision to begin in the first place. For those that have never traveled down this path before, it can be complicated and confusing. That’s why working with Woodmere personal trainers is a great choice for beginners and lifelong fitness devotees alike. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at how the personalized attention of a trainer can help you reach your goals.

You Don’t Have to Do This Alone

How many times have you started a new exercise routine and followed it faithfully for three weeks before you’ve found that your enthusiasm is long gone? Be honest – it’s easy to make excuses to avoid exercise. “I had a rough day at work,” “I’m too busy today,” “I didn’t get enough sleep last night,” the list goes on and on. But how quick would you be to make excuses if you know there was someone waiting for you at the gym?

And once you get to the gym, going through the motions alone can be equally intimidating. “How long should I do this exercise?” “Am I even doing this right?” Having Woodmere personal trainers by your side will help ensure that you can get instant feedback whenever you have a question, not to mention that they’ll monitor your progress and make sure you are working out safely and efficiently.

Focus and Motivation

Woodmere personal trainers are more than safety instructors in the gym; they can be your personal cheerleader – or even your personal drill sergeant, if you prefer – to help keep you focused on your goals and motivated to make them happen. A good personal trainer will keep track of your progress, and use this information to change or accelerate your workouts accordingly.

Before setting on your fitness path with a personal trainer, make sure that this is someone that you can see motivating you in the future. Do you feel comfortable with this person? Will you feel comfortable taking directions from this person? Being sure that you can form a good relationship with your personal trainer may mean the difference between meeting your goal and getting frustrated enough to walk away from your trainer and your goal.

Tailoring to Your Personal Needs

From the first day you meet with your personal trainer, he’s working to help you realize your fitness goals. The first meeting should include a full assessment, including your present weight, body fat index, and what you’re working towards – whether it’s losing weight or preparing for a marathon. This is also the time to let the trainer know if you have any problems such as joint or muscle injuries, are suffering from diabetes or are recovering from a heart attack. Using all of this information, the trainer will create an exercise program that is tailor fitted to your needs to help you reach your goals, and not the other way around. There is no better time than the present to hire Woodmere personal trainers to make your goals a reality!