Losing excess fat has been the goal of just about every man and woman at some point in their life. It seems we’re always fighting the Battle of the Bulge and looking for better and easier ways to lose fat quickly. This is never truer than it is for bodybuilders or those who simply want to look their best. Excess fat will ruin the physique of even the most active individuals. Working to shed those pounds not only makes you look better, but it can have a profound effect on your overall health as well. Let’s look at some of the ways that bodybuilders and extremely active individuals work to trim fat and get into incredibly ripped shape.

The fact is, it’s not just a simple as exercising consistently to lose all the fat that you want. While exercising can get rid of significant amounts of fat, the real keys to losing excess fat and getting into ripped bodybuilding shape is a combination of doing the RIGHT exercises and having a near perfect diet. I know that sounds scary, but it’s simply the truth. You could work out all day on an elliptical machine and not lose any fat at all or eat what you think is a healthy diet and actually gain weight. It takes knowing the right things and doing them consistently to make a difference.

First let’s start with exercise. Simply lifting weights or doing some aerobic exercise, while it will get you part of the way there, is not enough to truly get rid of fat. One of the best fat burning exercises in existence is called HIIT. This stands for High Intensity Interval Training and it is used by professional athletes of all types to get into incredible cardiovascular shape as well as get their bodies into ripped physical condition. The principle is simple, you simply exercise at intervals that consist of about two minutes of light to medium intensity aerobic exercise followed by about 30 seconds of all out intense exercise. This is the equivalent of jogging for about two minutes and then sprinting for 30 seconds. That would represent one interval and you repeat these intervals until you  complete about 6 to 8. Because of the intensity, most folks cannot handle this type of training early in their regimens. It is only after months of seriously intense aerobic exercise that you can begin these workouts. Once you do though, you will see fat fall off you more quickly than anything that you’ve tried before and your body will stay in this fat burning state for 10 hours after the exercises have been completed.

The next area is nutrition of course. Many folks try calorie and nutrient restricted diets to trim fat and end up trimming muscle instead. You see, your body is designed to use a combination of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats in such a way as to maintain proper functionality, consistent levels of energy, and consistent or increasing levels of muscle. When you take anything out of that equation it can disrupt this balance and lead you to experiencing the opposite results of which you wish to achieve. If you focus on eating a diet that is high in protein, followed by fats and carbohydrates, you can continue to have the energy you need and nutrients your muscles need to continue to grow and maintain your physique. In addition, as long as you are burning off these calories and not eating excessively then you should be able to maintain consistent fat loss.

Every day, all over the world, someone picks up a dumbbell for the first time and begins a quest to be the next Arnold Schwarzenegger. They imagine their bodies swelling up beyond belief and turning a once wiry frame into a molded piece of muscular artwork. Unfortunately, they quickly find out that the prospect is a bit harder than they first had thought. Achieving excellence in bodybuilding requires not only dedication, but intense physical exercise…A LOT of intense physical exercise. Because of this, we thought we would take some time to explain some basic principles that can help beginning bodybuilders get the RIGHT start on their new endeavor.

First of all, you should try to avoid your initial inclinations and simply start light. Most folks that start working out to build serious muscle often end up biting off more than they can chew, or in this case, lifting heavier weights than they should. It is extremely easy to go from working out to lying in the hospital with a torn muscle if you push yourself too hard. Starting off light, with weights you can handle, will allow you to make consistent and SAFE progress throughout your bodybuilding regimen.

One the next things that beginning bodybuilders do is try to build INDIVIDUAL muscles. They pick up a dumbbell and start doing arm curls until someone tells them to stop. Unfortunately, no one ever does, so more often than that, you see a nice set of guns on a puny body…come on, you know I’m right…working ONE muscle at a time is a mistake at this stage. Instead, you want to focus on COMPOUND movements, or ones that hit several large muscle groups at one time. The king of these is the squat. This exercise not only hits your entire lower body extremely effectively, it also works quite a few of the muscles in your upper body as well. No other single exercise can pack on as much quality muscle as the squat.

The next on your list of beginning bodybuilding moves is the bench press. This effective compound movement is not just for your chest, not by any means. Bench presses hit your chest, shoulders, triceps, forearms, and many of the stabilizing muscles in these areas as well. This workout can pack on muscle and make several key muscles much stronger to provide the strength needed as you further your bodybuilding endeavors.

Last on our list for beginning bodybuilding moves is the pull-up. Many folks HATE doing these, and there is a good reason…they can’t do them! Pulling off a set of 10 reps on the pull-up bar is not only impressive; it also has the ability to build some serious muscle. Cranking out rep after rep of pull-ups can do AMAZING things for your biceps, forearms, shoulders, and of course, your entire back. Once you get to the point of being able to do 25 or so, you can always add weight and continue to back on the beef. Think 25 sounds like a lot? Do pull-ups everyday and you WILL get there.

There you have it…a few basic for beginning bodybuilders that will serve your needs for years to come. Take is safe, take it slow, and follow these proven exercises to bodybuilding success.

Who can forget the physique of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie Pumping Iron as he went on to win his seventh Mr. Olympia? His combination of size and symmetry was declared by many to be the perfect body. This bodybuilding physique led many young boys to begin picking up weights and starting off on their own journey to achieve perfect bodies.

Getting into ripped and extremely muscular shape is a little harder than just picking up a dumbbell and starting to curl, however. It requires intense determination and dedication to both diet and exercise principles. Body building is perhaps as much science as it is physical exercise and diet as it requires the right combination of both to achieve maximal results. First let’s look at some of the exercises that bodybuilders do to achieve their superhuman bodies.

Of all the exercises that one can do to build muscle, none is more effective than the squat. This exercise allows you to lift an incredible amount of weight and will develop your entire lower body as well as many of the muscles in your upper body. In addition, exercises such as the bench-press, dead lift, and pull up will work most of the other groups of muscles in your body as well. Bodybuilders, as they become more experienced, incorporate different types of isolation exercises as well that are designed to hit individual muscle groups. These isolation exercises help bodybuilders develop extreme muscle density and definition that gives them their marbled statue look. Because muscle growth actually takes place during rest periods, it is important to take a day or so off of lifting weights in the middle of the week to allow your muscles time to grow. If you simply work out 6 to 7 days per week, you can easily over train and your muscles will actually shrink rather than grow.

The diet of a bodybuilder is extremely important as well. One must eat to not only provide their muscles with the proper nutrients and energy to grow, but also to not add additional fat stores to their body; this process is an extremely delicate one indeed. Most bodybuilders prefer diets that are extremely high in protein because it is the building block of muscle growth. In addition, while they do consume varying amounts of carbohydrates, they try to do so by including slow burning carbohydrates such as various fruits and vegetables versus sugary sweets that can cause insulin levels to spike in the blood and potentially cause unwanted fat gain around their midsections. Their diets may change drastically directly before competition so as to lose all possible water and fat from their body to achieve that extremely tight ripped look when hitting the stage. Now, most of us won’t ever put on a pair of bikini trunks and slather our bodies in oil to compete in pose off, but by following basic bodybuilding diet principles we can get our bodies in peak shape and turn more than a few heads at the beach.

Ever since the days of the Charles Atlas ads featuring the skinny boy who is getting sand kicked in his face, millions of young boys everywhere wanted to take up body building to try to achieve a body that would be both feared and marveled. This leads many to pick up the sport of bodybuilding in order to try to build and develop their musculature. The fact is body building requires an intense amount of both skill and commitment in order to achieve the goals that most are looking for. Simply picking up some weights at your local gym and lifting them on a daily basis will not do the trick. Let’s examine some bodybuilding basics that everyone should know before they make this rigorous exercise a mainstay of their lifestyle.

First, it is important to start slow. Many times people who start out wanting to build bigger muscles begin lifting without regard to the effect it will have on their bodies. This can lead quickly to overtraining and being sore for days at a time if not injuring themselves in such a way to see them laid up for weeks or months. Bodybuilding and weight training can be very dangerous so start with light weights and build up to heavier ones as your muscles grow and adapt.

One of the most important things you can ever keep in mind about body building is that muscular growth occurs during rest phases, not active ones. It is important that you give your body plenty of time to rest or the growth may simply never happen. Those that are new to bodybuilding often want to overdo it by training every day and this usually leads them to the opposite effect which is their muscular growth stops altogether. Getting a full night’s sleep and taking off at least a day between heavy workouts will be your key to success in bodybuilding.

If overtraining is the first mistake that new bodybuilders make, then nutrition is a close second. In their rush to gain a new physique, many new bodybuilders rush out to buy the latest supplements on the market to help them speed up their muscular growth. The fact is, the only thing you need to be focused on at this time is eating a healthy balanced diet and getting plenty of rest. If you wish to focus on eating more calories of lean proteins such as meat, chicken, and fish, that is fine but there is no need at this stage to rush out and buy the latest supplements.

Finally, those that are new to bodybuilding should do themselves a favor and seek the help and guidance of a personal trainer at least initially. This will help to make certain that your form with particular exercises is spot on and that you don’t hurt yourself before you reach your desired results. Once you have mastered many of the exercises you will be doing while creating your perfect body, you may no longer have the need for this personal trainer but starting out with one at the beginning can greatly speed up the results.

Training routines of advanced bodybuilder are greatly different from that of a beginner. The differences in the training regimens include not only the weight being used, but the frequency of the lifting and usually the diet as well. An advanced bodybuilders physique can be a thing of beauty indeed and it can only be achieved through the use of incredible discipline and muscle building workouts designed to put the athlete in peak performance shape. Before we look at some of the characteristics of these advanced bodybuilding routines let’s first define what we mean when we say advanced bodybuilder.

The definition of an advanced bodybuilder can change from one person to the next. Some simply think of it as the time that someone has been working out. In this case, someone who has put four or five years into their bodybuilding regimen could be considered advanced, but other bodybuilders strongly disagree. After all, someone who has been working out for five years but has achieved little or no visible results would not likely be a candidate to be called an advanced bodybuilder. Instead, those with T-shirt ripping shoulders and biceps that earn the respect and admiration of everyone else in the gym clearly own this moniker. Getting there was no easy feat, so the term advanced bodybuilder should be relegated to the few who have achieved significant results. Speaking of significant results, now let’s look at some of the training routines of these advanced bodybuilders.

Once someone has achieved a physique of significant size and shape, their routines will likely roof all around the shaping and defining of these muscles versus simply the building of them. In the beginning stages, or bulking faces as they are often called, the focus was on putting on muscle. Now that the muscle has been developed, it will be important to define it and give it the best overall shape and quality possible. This is done through a combination of strict dieting and isolation sets. An isolation set is a particular exercise that spotlights one individual body part versus several at once. An arm curl using a dumbbell is a perfect example of an isolation set where as the squat is a compound movement that will kick several muscle groups at once.

Another important aspect in the routines of advanced bodybuilders is the types of diets that they are on to get into peak shape. Once someone has achieved the size they desire, they will want to cut every bit of body fat they can to even further highlight the clarity of their defined muscular physique. Those bodybuilders who are approaching an actual bodybuilding contest may go to such extreme lengths as to purge all water from their system as well.

The routines of advanced bodybuilders can be intense and at times extreme. BECAUSE of their experience and skill level, most bodybuilders know the inherent risks of such things as working out every single day and going on extreme fat burning diets to get into the best shape possible and do their best to minimize any negative side effects. One thing is for sure though, this lifestyle IS risky and advanced bodybuilder routines should ONLY be practiced by advanced bodybuilders.

Are Your Workouts Boring you to Death? Pick up a Kettlebell and Have Some Fun while Getting Fit!

I don’t care what anyone says, working out can be downright boring. We all want to stay in shape, but if we get stuck in the same old rut, boredom can set in and cause our workouts to become less productive and in some cases, lead us to take longer and longer breaks between workouts. I have to admit, it has happened to me on occasion.

I would get up in the morning, hit the gym, and wait. Wait in traffic, wait for people to finish up on equipment that I wanted to use, and waiting for the gym to update the ancient equipment it DID have. Every visit was the same tired scenario. I would do a set, go get a drink, come back, do another set, hit the bathroom…you get the idea. It is not that I wasn’t serious about my workouts, it is just that the gym atmosphere, in my opinion, leads many to the same “drone like” activities.

Read the rest of this entry

3 Extremely Effective Ways to use Kettlebells to Get into Incredible Shape FAST!

If you haven’t heard of kettlebells yet, you must have been hiding under a…dumbbell. Kettlebells are one of the newest pieces of exercise equipment to hit the US and are growing rapidly in popularity because of the results they help others achieve in very little time.
For those in the know, kettlebells are new to the US, but they are not new by any means. In fact, kettlebells have been around for HUNDREDS of years. They were basically unknown in the West sans some pictures of strongmen using them in the last 1800’s and early 1900’s until exercise specialist and Russian ex-Special Forces member Pavel Tsatsouline re introduced them around 2000.

Read the rest of this entry

Who else is ready for an amazing new way to tighten and tone your body?

Discovering new ways to lose fat and get in shape is obviously big business. It seems that every day there is a new piece of equipment or a new “revolutionary workout” that is being advertised on TV or fitness magazines. Everything from incredibly complex abdominal machines, to high end home gyms that cost as much as your mortgage payment, and even, (and this is my FAVORITE), machines that actually ELECTROCUTE your muscles are being sold each and every day. With all of these choices being thrust at us all the time, how can we choose? How do we know which ones are really worth the time, effort, and expense? Well, have no fear, because I have the answer for you. I am going to tell you about one of the newest and most effective exercise tools on the market and one that will literally transform the way you think about exercise, AND will dramatically speed up the results you get.

Read the rest of this entry

I Couldn’t Believe What I Was Seeing When I Saw This Little Woman Lifting This Huge Metal Ball…

To be honest, I started laughing. I thought maybe I was witnessing a crazy person right in front of my eyes. I was taking a relaxing stroll in the park when I spotted her out of the corner of my eye. There she was, a slight woman of maybe 100 pounds or so and she was squatting down and bouncing up quickly and I saw there was a huge ball hanging from the end of her outstretched arms.

Read the rest of this entry

What the heck are kettlebells and can they really get me in shape?

If you have ever seen someone working out with a kettlebell but had no idea what one was, you might have thought they you were watching someone who went a little crazy and started swinging cannonballs over their head for no apparent reason. The fact is kettlebells are one of the most effective ways to get lean, strong, and increase cardiovascular performance in existence.

Ok, let’s go back in time a few years…maybe a few HUNDRED years to the beginning of kettlebell history. The actual exact history is a bit fuzzy, but the best info I can gather dates kettlebells back to a 1704 Russian dictionary. It seems the bells were originally used as counter weights in Russian markets. To pass the time and test each other’s strength, some of the more adventurous Russian shop owners began lifting and throwing around the weights. They would test the strength of each other to see how heavy and how many times one of the bells could be lifted. This practice graduated into Russian Kettlebells becoming an extremely popular Russian sport and their go to activity for increasing strength for sports and military training. In fact, instead of using pushups and pull-ups as a means of testing strength as the US military does, the Russian Military uses a Kettlebell Snatch test using a 53 pound bell.

So, can these “cannonballs with handles” help you get you in shape? The answer is a definite YES. The principle of just about every kettlebell lift is one of a FULL BODY movement. That means that when you are moving the kettlebell, you are using every muscle in your entire body. Recruiting more muscle means burning more calories, building more calories, and building your cardiovascular system to the max! While dumbbells can be very effective for isolation exercises such as dumbbell bicep curls, they are not designed to be effective tools for multi-planar compound movements. Kettlebells are PERFECTLY designed for these types of exercises. The round bell coupled with the handle that extends FROM the weight instead of being in the same plane such as with the dumbbell make the lifts both challenging and effective. Let’s take the kettlebell swing for instance, which is the core kettlebell movement.

The kettlebell swing is a movement that uses your entire body to swing the kettlebell through your legs and then forward and up to eye level or even high. To understand the physics involved, think about an old wooden catapult. You have this large wooden frame that uses a counter balance and a long arm to launch a heavy weight through the air. Ok, so when doing the kettlebell swing, YOU are the catapult, and the weight you are launching is the kettlebell. What about the counter balance you ask? Great question and this is the beauty of how the kettlebell can be so effective as an exercise tool. You see, the counterbalance is your CORE. The catapult is made of wood, so it can’t self stabilize itself using muscles so it must rely on extremely heavy weights to get the job done. You, on the other hand, can simply imply the techniques of core stabilization to make sure you stay in one place and can move the kettlebell through space. This one principle alone makes the kettlebell swing one of the most effective core workouts ever. Add to that fact that the motion of the swing allows the weight of the bell to be transferred throughout your entire body and you have the makings of a super workout.Fast, efficient, and FUN.

Kettlebells aren’t necessarily designed to make you BULKY, but instead, they get you ripped, lean, and extremely strong. They work with the principles of functional strength. Make sure that you employ the talents of a certified kettlebell instructor your first time or two because while the principles are fairly easy to understand, if you do it wrong, it can HURT. Good luck and happy kettlebelling!