Morning or afternoon: What is the best time to do exercises?

Some people prefer to do exercises in the morning and others in the afternoon or evening, but what is the best time?

There is a generalized idea that the best time to exercise is the morning, however, it is not necessarily so. Contrary to what many people think, the afternoon is a better option. Below we explain why.

It turns out that our body is more prepared to play sports in the afternoon. This is because between 4 and 5 p.m. our body temperature is higher than in the morning. In this schedule we have approximately 5% more strength and around 4% more resistance. To this is added a more alert mental state that could even help reduce the risk of injury.

This does not mean that exercising in the morning does not have its advantages. Playing sports as soon as we wake up will fill us with energy. Many experts maintain that it is key to be more productive. Therefore, if you want to recharge yourself to be more active the rest of your day, it is a great option.

However, it must be borne in mind that at the end the appropriate time to practice sports will always depend on each person, since not all organisms are the same. So, for example, there are those who prefer to wear an evening routine because it helps them sleep better, while in other cases, exercise at the last minute prevents some people from falling asleep.

Finally, there is a rule applicable to everyone: try to always do sport at the same time, it will allow you to be more constant and favors your circadian cycle, that is, your biological clock, which will allow your body to be constant in your sleep hours , vigil, among others.

What is Tae Bo?

I see a lot of people doing Tae Bo and I actually went to such a training session. I must say I loved it, it was a little similar to my personal combination of Mixed Martial Arts and ground exercises routine. Mine was more intense in terms of muscle usage but I really tend to think that Tae Bo is a lot better when talking about aerobics, muscle tonification and loosing weight. Tae Bo is basically an aerobic exercise routine. It was invented by Billy Blanks, an individual that practiced tae kwon do and boxing. By combining elements from these two styles of fighting and music choreography Tae Bo was born. It was the original "cardio-boxing" routine and basically uses martial arts movement at rapid pace while promoting body fitness.

Tae Bo is a combination of boxing and tae kwon do and this is where the name comes from. Later a backronym was thought of: "Total Awareness Excellence Body Obedience". Belive it or not, it all started in 1989 and thanks to the fact that Billy Blanks started training some celebrities like Paula Abdul in the nineties now we have some sort of pop culture type movement in some areas. Some of the best sold training DVDs out there are Tae Bo related and many gyms offer this type of aerobic training.

Do not think you will practice Tae Bo and learn martial arts. This is not the case. There are no throws, ground moves or grappling moves here. It is all intended to make your body stronger in terms of fitness. You might learn to kick and hit better but it will not really teach you to fight. If you think about fighting and self defense maybe you should try mixed martial arts for the most similar effect to tae bo in terms of intensity. Tae Kwon Do is also a very good option. To sum it all up this high-intensity workout in Tae Bo is aiming to increase cardiovascular fitness, strength, muscular endurance and flexibility. You will not get stronger or gain muscular endurance unless you really are a beginner at training!

Who Is Joe Weider?

Josef E. "Joe" Weider was born on November 29, 1922 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. 

He is the Canadian co-founder of the International Federation of Bodybuilders (IFBB) together with his brother Ben Weider. Joe Weider also created Mr. Olympia and Ms. Olympia. 

What few people know is that Joe Weider started his empire with just $7 at the tender age of 17. He built barbells out of car axles and wheels. Later he became a manufacturer of gym exercise equipment and one of the first people ever to focus on nutrition as a part of bodybuilding. 

His line of nutritional supplements is one of the most recognized across the world.

Joe Weider introduced the mental approach to working out. He never claimed to be an innovator. He always said he took different elements from different sources and synthesized them into bodybuilding. To sum it up, Weider is one of the first that put together and introduced a series of training principles that successful bodybuilders use today:

1. Pre-Exhaustion Training
2. Pyramiding
3. Super sets
4. Muscle Priority Training
5. Set System Training
6. Instinctive Training
7. Giant Sets
8. Tri-Sets
9. Staggered Sets
10. Compound Sets

We have a lot to thank Weider. Without him bodybuilding would not have been the way we know it today!

People Still Don't Get Fat Loss

There are some things that never change and one of them is individuals that are fat and want to lose weight but simply do not understand how to do it properly. You surely saw one of them on the treadmil, walking for half an hour with his cell phone at his hear talking in the same time for half an hour. That is no workout! Leaving that aside let us talk about the subject at hand. The facts are simple: you need to burn more than you eat in order to lose weight. How hard is that to understand? People start eliminating fat from their diets thinking that will make them immediately lose weight, without even thinking about what specialists say: some fats are good for you! Others start eating more times per day, in smaller quantities because this is how you should eat to help out your body. Again, they do not understand that you need to eat properly not less. If I eat a box full of chocolates instead of a stake then I do not gain anything here. Loosing weight is 80% a proper diet, 10% workout and 10% motivation and will to learn.

A cardio workout is not effective unless combined with a diet. You can not loose weight if you consume 300 calories and drink a protein shake after your workout that brings in 500 calories. Loosing fat is easy but you can not do it by exercise alone! How long will it take till people understand this?

Quadriceps Training

Have you ever seen great bodies that simply look very good from the waste up but simply do not have legs that are as big as their upper body? I'm sure you did and these "chicken legs" are definitely not looking good from a symmetry standpoint. So many individuals think that if you start running, go for hikes or ride a bicycle they will get big and strong legs. Well, they are simply making a huge bodybuilding mistake.

The quadriceps are the muscles located right at the front of the leg. They are very important as they extend it at the knee and help to flex the hip. Four big muscles make up the quadriceps and they are all important for the body and how it looks. For a professional bodybuilder, having a perfect upper body and bad legs is just competition suicide.

Most bodybuilders use the same exercises to train the quadriceps. The Free Bar Squat is the one that actually helps out muscle growth in this area the most and it also stimulates the upper body too because in order to perform the lift part of the exercise you have to use upper body muscles as well. When keeping the bar squat on your back the upper body muscles have to hold a static contraction in order to just keep it in place. Such stress you get from this free bar squat actually stimulates hormone secretion in the biggest way possible during training. A hard squat session will not only prove to be the best exercise for your quadriceps but can also help out the entire body. Do not neglect it and always have a partner ready to help out as injuries tend to appear the most in this exercise. The reason behind it is that novice bodybuilders tend to do it wrong and a partner can point that out and help you out if something bad is about to happen.

Replacing Leg Curls

For a bodybuilder the leg curl motion is one that can not be neglected. The need of a leg curl machine is quite big if you want to have good legs. There is also a variation that I found to be very interesting. Instead of doing a leg curl on a regular leg curl machine try this approach! Use a flat bench and position yourself on it facedown. Make sure your knees are above the bottom ledge and ask a friend to help you out next. Take a dumbell and ask your partner to position it on the bottom side of the top plates, resting just on your feet. Now you can do a leg curl by holding your legs together and paying attention that the weight does not fall. The exercise will not feel like a regular leg curl but will help you out in your workout once in a while. Your calves are also involved in the movement adding more strength at the end of the session! Try it out! It is quite a nice variation!

Interview With MMA Trainer Fred George

Mixed Marial Arts (also known as MMA) is a different sport than most others because there is a lot of work that needs to be done and your body must go through intense training. I tried one simple MMA training session once and I couldn't finish it so I have to hand it to these guys for the effort they put in. I found an interview with Fred George, a MMA trainer that works in Las Vegas. He has had a lot of success in training MMA and is getting more popular each month. Fred was also given responsabilities in training some of today's top athletes with Kevin Randleman being just one of the high prospects under George's training. Even more, Fred George has been involved in two MMA matches and won both by TKO. After the matches he even says that the intensity involved in them is not even close to the training strategies he uses today as a routine. The TKOs were actually achieved in the first round, one after 54 sec and the other after 5 minutes.

In this interview I found on Bodybuilding.com Fred George answers interesting questions like:

- Exactly what is your background in the martial arts Fred? What led to your involvement?

- When you competed in MMA you were a pretty big guy. Do you still train for size, or have your goals changed?

- Do you have any big names fighting soon?

- As a trainer, what kind of style do you teach?

- What do you focus on primarily for your athletes in the weeks leading up to a fight?

- How would you go about replicating the conditions of a big fight, when training one of your athletes to face someone of say Ken Shamrock's caliber?

- How do you develop speed in your fighters?

To view the interview Click Here

Bobby Lashley Workout with Maxim

The WWE superstars seem to be very researched on the web these days, especially their workout routines. After discussing John Cena's workout yesterday let us now talk about Bobby Lashley. This individual has an incredibly great body. Actually, most WWE superstars have great bodies but Bobby Lashley stands out. He once went at a photoshoot with Maxim Magazine for an interview in the Expert Fitness column they publish. Bobby gave some advice and also showed some of his secrets. If you want to find out about a superstar's workout regime there is a big chance it will be published in a magazine, especially with somebody that has a body like Lashley. He stated :

"I’m going to give away a couple of my secrets to my successes with my body and build. "

Lashley did something nice in that shoot. He immediately built a makeshift pull up bar out of photo equipment as you can see from the picture attached and did a total of five exercise. He said that:

"We did have to rig the bar a little bit to get that exercise in; however, my back is my strong point when I work out, so a pull up is pretty easy for me. I do a lot of core work, so I work my abs a lot, so that was easier for me. For the average person it’s probably going to be more difficult to do."

Isn't it interesting how every great body out there always say that they work a lot in order to have that body? That is what you should do as well! Work out, work out hard and you WILL see results! Just in case you do not know who Bobby Lashley is maybe you should read our Great Body Bobby Lashley dedicated post some time ago.

John Cena's workout

I see that many people ask around: What is John Cena's workout? I must say that I did not know but I imagined what it should be like, with a lot of cardio and less concentration on becoming stronger during competitional fighting times. I did a search and documented myself on John Cena's workout and this is what I found out.

Cena is usually on the road 4 days a week and is also pretty active with his rap career and the launch of a movie that I think was a flop ("The Marine") although it was pretty succesful. This WWE superstar has a great body as everybody realizes and the facts stay simple: he has to get to the gym. In an interview for Men's Fitness he said that:

"I have to make it to the gym--it's the only way I'll survive in the ring. But I can't train heavy because I'm wrestling all the time or in places where I can't get good food, so it's hard to recover. Instead, I circuit-train one body part per session. If I'm working chest, I'll do six exercises--one after the other--with no rest in between. It doubles as a cardio workout, and it keeps me pumped. That allows me to stay big, but I can't really get stronger."

This is basically how all WWE and TNA superstars survive. It is not easy to be a professional wrestler and to be a succesful one is even more difficult. Cena for instance said around a year ago that he only benches around 315 pounds which is less then you would actually think he can when you take a look at his body. Genetics is a big part of John Cena's body and everybody must realize this. There is no sense in wanting arms like this wrestler and doing a research on his arm routine, adopting it and thinking you will have his arms. You need to find what is best for you, not for John Cena.

Aerobics Workout

We all know by now that aerobics are trully great and that the amount of information we can find about it online and in magazines is in a whole different quantity than it was years ago. In the past this type of workout was actually in fashion and it would have been a raised probability to meet friends or family at the gym while doing aerobics. Today this changed and thanks to the appearance of many aerobic types of workouts like Tae Bo or oriental disciplines and international workouts fewer people are doing aerobics in a gym every day.

The good news is that people still realize that the simple, classic aerobic workout is still one of the best and it is currently one of the most developed and researched types of weight loss workouts we can find. This basically means that there is a higher possibility that you will find information on how to loose weight with an aerobic workout than with any other type of weight loss workout out there. You even get info about what to wear, what to buy, what influences the quality of workouts, when to eat, what to eat and so on.

An aerobic workout is still a great way to work out your entire body and simply keeping it in shape together with loosing weight and getting discipline through a strict workout schedule. Socially speaking it is also a lot easier to make friends in a gym and finding a good workout partner is also a benefit usually achieved during aerobic workouts. This is because any bodybuilder that sees another bodybuilder paying attention to cardio workouts and aerobics in general realizes that the individual is no novice and really know what he is doing. There would only be a step till trusting him on aiding in a heavy weight lifting session.

A good aerobic workout is still a basic way to get in shape and must not be put aside.

Workout Routines for Women

Most women are always looking for a killer body and want to be more physically appealing. Out of them only few succeed because they do not realize that the real key to it all is just finding a regime that is effective and sticking with it. It does not matter if it is swimming, fitness, jogging, biking, there are many ways to suceed in this task.

The goal is always the same. It does not matter what method is used. The problem with it all is that the workout that works best for a woman is not the same one that works for a man. There is a need to adopt a different approach. Bodybuilding and weights training is usually not considered by most women. They don't even think about this although this is a wrong approach. Women always want toned legs and a flat abdomen. Only after that they think about biceps, triceps and other muscles. The approach is of course suitable but free weight training must not be ignored. In fact, such training is essential in building a great body.

Women have to build muscles in order to have a good body and you have to realize that week arms make you look unbalanced and there is no symetry there so it does not look good basically. Any trainer out there will tell you that the best workout is one that offers diversity and you need to look at the whole body and not just your belly or butt.

Be sure to include weight training exercises in your routine as they are as important as your cardio regime. If you are not sure on how to do this you can find the information online on hundreds of websites so there is no excuse in being lazy.

Bodybuilding Helps You Loose Weight

Right before I go to sleep there is one thing I want to point out here! Bodybuilding is a great way to loose weight even if you might not realize it! In such a resistance/bodybuilding workout you do burn more calories than you think and if hit with a simple and proper diet and good sleep you WILL be loosing weight in no time!

Common Mistakes in Bodybuilding

There are a lot of mistakes that one can do when working out and the list is quite big and can take months if not years until a bodybuilder can achieve the proper discipline to practice this sport. It is always a good thing to know what the most common mistakes are and should be a reality in training for novices and professionals.

First of all there is a need to talk about cardio workout. Most of us know that you can not loose waith and get a great waist without cardio. The problem is that a lof of people overdo it and this has a bad effect just as with any excess in one's life. The best way to handle this situation is analyzing your workout. If you are lean but do not look lean and cardio is not doing anything you should cut all cardio workout to 50% of what you normally do for some time. If results appear then this is your problem. A lot of people fail to understand this.

Carbs are vital to your workout. Starting a diet with small quantities of carbs can lower your metabolism because this is how the body reacts to the lack of carbohydrates. If you take on this type of a diet you have to realize that carbs are important and you should take in some shakes with high carbs as they are the ones that give you energy. If you do not have energy for your heavy workout the body can only suffer!

Many individuals (when trying to loose weight) will use lighter weights. In order to achieve your goal you have to maintain the same standard of training and using lighter weights will not help you loose pounds. Keep on training hard and work on your diet and supplements rather than lowering your workout!

The Importance of Sleep

Few people adequately understand the importance of sleep. A bodybuilder or an athlete in general must know that sleep is quite crucial in his workout. The most important two reasons why this is a fact are that the body will synthesise protein better when resting and the human mind will recharge for the following training session. Growth hormone and testosterone are also manufactured faster when the body is sleeping. The only real problem is that a bodybuilder really needs to sleep more than 8 hours each day and this means that during this time he will not be eating. An immediate effect of this is a decay in muscle because of the natural need our bodies have to consume in order to regain maximum power. Before going to bed every lifter, bodybuilder or fitness practitioner needs to eat high protein meals right before going to sleep.

Workout motivational quotes

"live to workout. Workout to live. "

"I live for pain and long for the iron to make me weak again"

" NO PAIN, NO GAIN!"

"YOU HAVE TO WORKOUT, EAT, and REST. NO CHOICE"

"Live Through the Pain or TAP OUT!"

"Get up prince of troy i will not have a rock steal my glory"

"If it wasn't painfully difficult then you didn't do it right "

"I knew I wasn't the biggest guy or the strongest.

What I did know is that I could outwork anyone in the joint with 100% "

"Yesterday I dared to struggle. Today I dare to win."

"Losers complain, winners train"

And the final one by none other than Ronnie Coleman:

"Lifting weights beside jay cutler gives me such a massive raging bonor. I just wish i could shove my blue veined throbber into his ass every time he does a deep squat and i'd say "i'll spot you jay hunny" and then we'd make out in the showers."

Weight Lifting helps women to counter Middle Age Spread

A recent study has been conducted at The University of Pennsylvania's Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics. It concluded that women that lift weights two times per week have a lower chance to get the Middle Age Spread that most women are afraid of. Kathryn H. Schmitz, one of the people responsabile with the study declared:

"This study shows that strength training can prevent increases in body fat percentage and attenuate increases in the fat depot most closely associated with heart disease. While an annual weight gain of one to two pounds doesn't sound like much, over 10 to 20 years the gain is significant."