QUESTION: I wanted to ask if there is a natural way, through diet or exercise to rid the body of cellulite? Are there particular foods to eat or avoid and possibly particular exercises that would help to work this problem out? I try to exercise between full time work and part-time school, mostly the treadmill at home appx 2 miles – 4/5 x’s a week, and 1-3 times at gym on weights, depending on my schedule.

ANSWER: Cellulite is a word that was popularized by marketers of “cures.” Some promised cellulite reduction by using herbal body wraps. Others promised pills and capsules would do the trick. Still others sold creams and massagers. Not a single one of these products worked . . . despite a sometimes very aggressive marketing campaign with claims that “research had proven” some cellulite reduction. Even large companies such as Rexall tapped into the “get-rid-of-cellulite” market by releasing over the counter supplements such as Cellasene. The claims they made were unsubstantiated and in 2000 the FTC filed a lawsuit against Rexall Sundown. As one gets shut down, however, new offerings emerge, all promising to be the solution. What they all failed to tell consumers was . . . body wraps, pills, massagers, etc. do not rid the body of fat . . . and cellulite is nothing other than fat. The reason cellulite looks “different” than most subcutaneous fat when viewed through the skin is because in the thighs that adipose material (fat) might get caught between pockets of connective tissue. Each pocket becomes enlarged as long as the fat remains in place. I wish I had some better news for you, but all I have is honesty . . . the honesty cellulite cure sellers won’t share. The only natural way to get rid of fat . . . including cellulite, is through supportive nutrition and a combination of resistance training and moderate aerobic exercise. I know you’re already attempting this, but it’s important that the exercise program and the eating plan match the goals. You mention that you do “mostly” the treadmill. Aerobic exercise alone may actually feed off of muscle tissue, especially if it’s not supported by the adequate protein and protein-sparing carbohydrates and essential fats. Weight training 1-3 times per week is barely enough assuming the 3 times is more common. If you are more frequently leaning toward once per week, you will be disappointed in the results.

You might look into one of my programs as they all outline the path to putting the body in a state where it is willing to release fat . . . cellulite included. Cellulite may appear to be “stubborn” but as systemic fat is decreased . . . it will go!

For more fitness truths go to Phil Kaplan

So quick question…do you want abs like these…

If so, I’ve got a unique variation of the Plank exercise that can help you get them (of course, it goes without saying that you have to lose any extra fat you’ve got to be able to SEE that you’ve got abs like these!).

It’s going to develop a rock-solid core as well tightening up your entire midsection and waist…and dare I say flatten your belly…

Now the regular Plank is a simple exercise and a very effective one for developing core strength and stability (and I’m not talking about the plank you see on the Internet where people just lie facedown on top something…I’m referring to a REAL plank where you support yourself on your forearms, keeping your body stiff and straight).

The regular Plank is an exercise I start even complete beginners off with because of the tremendous core-focused benefits you can get from it.

This version of the plank cranks the difficulty up a LOT…it’s definitely not a beginner version. You should be able to do at least 2 to 3 minutes of a normal plank before attempting this one.

You’re going to be doing the plank with one arm instead of two. The arm you’re bracing on will be set perpendicular to your body, which is the reason I call this one a “hammer” plank (it mimics the hammer curl and you’ll be exerting force against the ground with your fist, like a hammer).

And instead of setting the forearm in line with body and tilting so you’re doing a side plank, you will instead be keeping your shoulders parallel with the ground, using your arm position to brace the core.

It’s a VERY tough position and targets the obliques and deep muscles of the core strongly (the transverse abdominus, for example) by focusing on anti-rotation tension.

What that means is that you’ll be exerting force to PREVENT rotation of the spine. This is a much safer way to target “rotational” msucles without actually rotating the spine.

When doing this one, you have two options…legs together or separated (I just did the legs-together version in the demo). Keeping your legs together will increase that torsion through the core. Setting the feet wide will make the exercise easier as part of the work that the abs should be doing will be done with leg stabilization.

Here’s the position you will be in for the One-Arm Hammer Plank.

Notice how the arm is set and how my shoulders are kept square to the ground. This is the MOST important thing to note for the exercise…because if your body tilts up on it’s side, it turns it into a Side Plank, which is a whole difference exercise. Don’t make it easy on yourself .

In order to maintain that shoulders-square position, you must exert force with your fist against the ground, which carries through the arm and into the core.

Hold until your position starts to break then set your other forearm down and switch arms.

For more instructional article from Nick Nilsson GO HERE

Don’t make the following mistakes if you want to burn fat and lose weight permanently:

1) Too much aerobic exercise
2) Performing aerobic exercise before before lifting weights
3) Eating the wrong foods at the wrong time
4) Focusing on the exercise/machine instead of the muscle
5) Not challenging muscle beyond comfort zone

Here’s a sample:

Q: I’m a 42 year old woman with two children. I do aerobics every day, alternating between the treadmill, step classes and calinetics. I’ve lost weight, and I look OK in clothing, but I’ve still got flab in the back of my arms and around my hips and thighs. How do I tighten it up? 

A: You can’t. Wait….don’t get discouraged. You can reshape your entire body, and get both the back of the arms and the hips and thighs lean and sexy. You just can’t tighten up flab. Flab doesn’t tighten! 

Women often cringe when I use the word “muscle.” They have visions of their heads on Arnold Schwarznegger’s body. You should first understand that women, because of their high proportion of estrogen to testosterone, can not develop manly muscle without chemical enhancement. If you’ve seen those masculine female bodybuilders on ESPN, and been led to believe that lifting weights creates such monsters, you’ve been misled. Although it’s not commonly presented to the general public, female bodybuilders often depend on anabolic steroids to obtain huge muscle. Muscle is valuable to you, especially if you want to reshape your body, and a slight accumulation of lean body mass will not only keep you feminine, it will likely enhance your femininity! 

Women appear to be more comfortable using the word “toned” than “muscular. “Toned” simply means, reducing fat and either adding or maintaining muscle in a given area. 

Many women make the mistake of undereating and over-aerobicizing! If you exercise aerobically, beyond your body’s ability to provide regular fuel, the body reaches into muscle tissue and as you lose weight, you lose muscle! 

 

People who get started on my program begin by performing only 12 minutes of aerobic exercise per day….and they lose fat! The reason is twofold. Firstly, they develop a nutritional concern for supplying the material for muscle maintenance, and secondly, their aerobic exercise is customized so it keeps them within their fat burning limits. 

By losing muscle through aerobic exercise, you then become dependent on that exercise just to maintain the condition you’re in. Take a break from the aerobics and your body will rapidly accumulate new fat stores. 

In addition to keeping aerobic exercise moderate, and providing adequate nutrition for optimal fat reduction and muscle maintenance, it is also important to provide some resistance training to stimulate muscle development. End result…..a lean, toned body! 

Those “trouble areas” you mentioned will develop as you concern yourself with the body as a whole. Spot reduction can not take place since the body loses fat proportionately from all over. Develop muscle, however, and you can soon begin to “shape” your body much as a sculptor shapes clay. As you improve, customization of your program will allow you to specialize on any areas you choose.

 

For more fitness truth article from Phil Kaplan go here

Want to spice your fitness program? The video you’re about watch features some the coolest exercises you can add to your fitness training using a sledgehammer. A sledgehammer is a heavy, one-sided tool and relatively cheap, easy way to get an effective workout. With this sledgehammer workout you’re exercising the whole body from head to toe leaving no parts untouched.

This workout is for any one looking to optimize energy, increase metabolism and burn fat.

Give it shot!

The calf muscle is one of the most stubborn muscle to develop do to the fact that they’re always active. Think about it, you’re always using your calf muscle. You use the calf muscle when you stand, walk, twist, bend, run, etc. With all that use the calf muscle gets very good at adapting to the activities of daily life.

To get diamond-shape calf muscle  you can’t approach calf training as an afterthought like most people do..You Must regularly challenge the calf muscle beyond their comfort zone mixing different intensity like heavy weights, pyramids, super-sets, drop sets, fast sets, etc… You gotta put the “husle in the muscle.”

The Best Calf Machine

Tired of small, weak or disproportion calves, you should consider getting The Extreme Calf Machine!! With patented pivoting pedal, gives calves greater stretch and contraction than just a regular calf block or machine, which is the key to diamond-shape calf development in a short time. Use with pivoting pedal backwards for maximum stretch and use with pivoting pedal forward for maximum contraction!!

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Want legs and glutes that are compliment-magnet? Add the lunge to your arsenal of exercises. Since the lunge is a unilateral movement, it stretches the anterior and posterior muscles at the same time, thus encouraging their activation as well as preserving functional range of motion (joint health). Try several variations of it to ensure progressive and constant results.

The barbell walking lunge is the best choice if you are looking for fat burning, since it recruits the glutes to a further extent and, moving the body through space, stimulates the metabolism; however, it’s probably better to learn the exercise with no weight first. Unfortunately, very few people perform lunges correctly and go way too fast when performing the exercise. Here’s how it should be done:

Starting position: If using a barbell, the bar is held below the seventh cervical vertebrae (the pointy one at the base of the neck), the chest is open, and the head is held straight. If using no weight, simply place the hands above the hips.

Execution: Take a very large step forward while putting the emphasis on maintaining the weight on the heel of the front foot. Bend at the knee with the other leg as much as possible and slowly descend in a straight line to the low position without letting that knee touch the ground. Pause for a second at the low position before pushing straight back up over the front foot in one movement while still pushing with the heel. Take note that the back leg isn’t helping to push, only balance!

Pointers: Make sure you don’t push the knee and/or bend too far forward when doing the exercise. If you want to work your glutes efficiently, you need to emphasize the eccentric part of the exercise and keep the tension on the muscles (allowing your body to incline will put more tension on your lower back). A big mistake I see all the time is letting the abdominals stick out and having too much curve in the lower back. The abdominal girdle should remain tight and the back should be held straight at all times while performing the exercise.

Not happy with the way your body looks and feels? I found an extensive guide to fitness to help you live in the body you’ve always wanted.This is by far the most extensive and detailed infographic I have come across when it comes to working out, eating right and exercising effectively.

The guide, in the form of an infographic, is brought to my attention by Reddit and, as said, is massively informative. The tips and tricks just go on forever,and I am sure that if you really want to get back in shape, this guide is totally the way to go. It covers everything from eating habits to beginner work out procedures. There is an in depth amount of information in each section. If you ever wanted a complete guide to get in shape, this thing is totally what you need. I will try and print this out and place it on the wall to get some motivation and guidance. It’s time people. It’s time to take that promise of a healthier year to the moon and back.

This is so amazing it defeats logic!!! A British teenager raised awareness for flood victims in London’s Lake District by riding his bicycle on a lake 75-feet deep.

Matt Whitehurst, 17, boast the pictures are real but won’t reveal how he managed to perch his bicycle atop the waters of England’s Lake Buttermere. He performed the stunt to promote an upcoming cycling event that will raise money to build bridges destroyed in 2009 flooding.

“I can’t and won’t say how I did it, but plenty of people saw me and they’ll confirm it wasn’t a camera trick,” he said. ”The photos are real.”

I’m sure the photos are very much real. So is the platform in the water on which Whitehurst’s bike is likely standing.

The wheels aren’t moving. If they were you wouldn’t be able to see all the spokes individually. Also there would be much more water splashing around the wheels. If this was so amazing why did no one take a video of it?

’ll be straight with you…REAL quality leg training is TOUGH. It hurts and it’s uncomfortable.

And if you want great legs, you MUST put in the time using challenging exercises such as squats, lunges and variations of the two (leg press is ok and optional). The following is a “killer” leg routine by fitness professional Nick Nilsson

I’ve got a deadly variation of the Walking Lunge exercise that will push your legs to the EDGE…I call it a Bar-In-Front Walking Lunge.

And the reason I call it that is because that’s what it is…you’ll be doing a standard Walking Lunge exercise holding the barbell in front of you rather than putting it on your back or holding dumbells.

This use of the barbell has several advantages…

First, you don’t need a rack or a spotter to get the bar in position on your back for a barbell lunge.

Second, if you train at home and your dumbells don’t go heavy enough (or if you don’t have any) and if you don’t have that squat rack or spotter, then this is a GREAT exercise for targeting the legs. When you train at home with limited equipment, it can tough to find exercises that you can do without safety equipment (like a rack) that really challenge the legs. This exercise is it.

Third, holding the long Olympic bar is good for balance when doing the exercise. If you’ve ever seen a tightrope walker holding a giant pole while walking, it’s a similar concept.

So first, load a barbell with a weight you pick up and carry fairly easily. I’ve got 135 lbs on the bar. Grip with a moderately wide grip…I used pinkies on the smooth ring of the bar. A narrower grip will give you less control over the bar while too wide will have your grip giving out before your legs are fully worked.

Stand up with it.

Now take a step forward, coming down into the lunge position. At this point, the bar will be resting on your thigh, as close in to your body as you can set it.

Now stand up pushing up and forward, bring the bar up with you.

When doing a Walking Lunge, you can either pause at the point and stand on two feet and get your balance before stepping forward again or you can just take another straight forward without setting your other foot down. That’s the way I like to do it – definitely more challenging.

When doing a Walking Lunge, you can either pause at the point and stand on two feet and get your balance before stepping forward again or you can just take another straight forward without setting your other foot down. That’s the way I like to do it – definitely more challenging.

When you’ve gone as far as you can in one direction, set the bar down, step over to the other side of it then pick it up and go back.

In this view, it’s easier to see where the bar is set…right up close to the body. The arms are bent as you come down.

Keep going until you’re back to the original start position.

Then turn around and go again, if you have it in you! This will depend on how much weight you’re using, your leg endurance and your grip strength.

I can promise your legs will be a quivering mess by the time you’re done and you will breathing extremely heavily…Walking Lunges are extremely good for the legs and for the lungs.

You can use this exercise as a finishing exercise for your leg workout (you won’t be keen to do much more for legs after a few rounds of it) or as a mainstay of your leg training, especially if you train with limited safety equipment.

I like to go for distance-reps on this one, doing 4 times back and forth, for example.

FOR MORE GREAT EXERCISE FROM THIS AUTHOR GO HERE