How often do you exercise? That’s a common question we often heard but how effective do you exercise raises it to the level of quality and efficiency.
To all the women out there, be informed! Find out some fitness tips, exercise principles for beginners to remember and tips in getting toned muscles.
But first, let s start with what possible exercises you could do.
Best Fat Burning Exercises for Women
If you’re a busy woman who may be a mother, have a career and who still needs time left over for your partner, it’s not always easy to find time to exercise.
If you’re looking for fat burning exercises to fit that busy life, the best ones involve aerobic activity that gets the heart pumping.
Here are some great exercises to try:
Running
Even though not everyone can practice running safely (check with your doctor first), running is still one of the best ways to burn a lot of calories fast.
Try sprinting fast for twenty seconds, then jogging at a slower pace for a minute and repeat.
Wear a sports bra and supportive fitness clothing especially made for women for added safety.
Fast Walking
A safer method of burning calories fast is walking quickly. There is a lot less impact, but you won’t be able to cover as much ground.
However, the safety can’t be beat as you won’t cause any damage to your joints or internal organs with fast walking.
Swimming
If you need a super low impact form of exercise that can burn a lot of fat, try swimming. But, you can’t just do any kind of swimming.
Shoot for moves that cause you to use all of your body, your arms and your legs such as the butterfly stroke and the breast stroke, so that you can burn the most calories and fat in each movement.
Aerobics
You know the good old-fashioned dance aerobics that your momma used to do? It is popular for a reason: it works.
It’s also fun to do and you can burn an enormous amount of calories in a short period of time if you make large, exaggerated movements.
Dance
Almost any sort of dancing is a great calorie burner. If you wonder why you were skinny “back in the day,” it is probably due to going out dancing on the weekend. Dancing is fun to do.
You want to do dances that cause you to breathe hard and sweat. Don’t be shy either. you don’t even need a partner. You just need good music and a little space in your living room.
Spinning
This is a type of bike riding where the bike doesn’t actually move, and you have a leader running you through the paces in super-fast intervals with fast intervals. This is for advanced exercise veterans and not for the weak.
Jumping Jacks
The exercise you did in Physical Education during elementary years is actually an excellent fat burner.
You need to make big movements and move quickly to get the full effect. Try doing three sets of 100 reps to get your day moving.
Jump Rope
This is an excellent way to burn fat for anyone. You can move very quickly and try different types of moves from jumping, to skipping, to one leg or two. Shoot for three sets of 100 reps.
Rebounding
Made popular by astronauts, this form of exercising which requires that the exerciser jump up and down on a small trampoline has great benefits outside of fat burning.
It works every muscle in the body and burns an enormous amount of calories – twice as much as running in some cases, without the stress on the body.
Besides these exercises, ensure that you drink enough water, eat less fat, and watch your caloric intake.
However, don’t cut your calories too much to avoid the starvation effect that causes your body to shut down on its fat burning efforts.
And to effectively do your exercise programs, here are some helpful fitness tips for you.
7 Fitness Tips for Women
Would you like to be a fit woman? Or are you a fit woman but would like to be effective?
Here are 7 great tips on how to become an effective fit woman:
1. Get a program that will best suit you.
Every fitness woman is different. You may have surgical history where a program may not be suited for you.
Always consult a qualified trainer to make sure that the fitness program will not hurt you.
If the fitness program is not for you, it will only be a cause of frustration and injuries.
2. Set realistic targets.
Wouldn’t you be frustrated if you set your mind into reshaping your body in a month? Make sure that the body you prefer in a period of time is achievable and realistic.
The program should also be practical and will not give you false hopes.
It is important to be aware of the blocks you encounter in your daily living. This will help you know what program is satisfactory.
And once a program has been reached, and then you can set goals and timelines that are realistic.
3. Exercises should work on the parts of your body where muscles are.
The reason mainly is, when you develop muscles, you burn more calories and then you lessen the fats in your body.
Multi-joint exercises and weight lifting are recommended.
Learn what exercises work on certain parts of your body. Multi-joint exercises are also said to be effective but time-saving.
4. Be systematic on working on your muscles.
Your muscles should be working harder over time. Repeating the same sets of exercises and same weight without getting your muscles to work harder will not give satisfactory results.
You can record your daily results and make the progression based on your previous data. A daily log will also motivate you since you are able to track how far you have gone.
It builds confidence since there is a written proof something that was successfully accomplished.
5. Perform a set of exercises in 10 repetitions.
Every number that was accomplished is called a repetition. Try to make every repetition with less momentum as much as possible.
The lesser the momentum, the harder your muscles work. And the harder they work, the bigger they become.
To check if there is much momentum when lifting, see if the arm is floating. If the arm does float, then there is much momentum.
6. Be flexible and perform a variety of exercises.
Every exercise program should have a variety. You can change your exercises, goals, and sets every month to keep you motivated and on the go.
Doing this will help you prevent being bored and losing energy physically and mentally.
7. Be Motivated!
The best way to keep the energy levels of trainees is to allow a healthy competition and allow them to have a sense of control.
Having control is having the sense ownership where everybody gets a part in implementing a program.
To do this you also need to be consistent in demonstrating your skills.
Not all programs work for all types of people. There is no workout that is best for everyone. But you learn from experienced people.
Learn to acknowledge blocks and demonstrate self-discipline, keep yourself motivated and work harder everyday and add variety.
Doing these things, you will discover that a lot of programs will work for you.
Women’s Exercise: The 5 Rs Principle
What if there was a simple, straightforward way of taking a workout and figuring out exactly what should be in it?
There is it’s called the 5 Rs principle.
Instead of exercising mindlessly, beginners or not, take note of these 5 important principles when you are performing your exercise routines.
The 5 Rs Principle can help beginning exercisers figure out what exactly goes into an effective workout.
Each `R’ focuses on an important element of an exercise routine that forces you to look at your workouts in a holistic fashion.
RANGE of motion
The range of motion refers to how the capability of a joint to move through a prescribed set of movements.
In order for a beginner to see results, each exercise should be performed from a fully stretched position of the muscle to a fully contracted position.
An example:
A lot of beginners load up the EZ-curl bar for preacher curls and perform the exercise only lowering the bar halfway down on the eccentric portion of the exercise.
Not only can this cause injury to the bicep muscle, it also doesn’t work the muscle the best way possible and limits the results of the exercise.
You’ll hear the term `range of motion’ often in reference to joint health and mobility. This is no exception in the gym. Your joints are supported by large and small muscles.
In order to optimize your joint health, all the muscles surrounding the joints must be worked as well.
RESISTANCE
When you’re just starting to lift weights, how much weight to use is a huge issue. It’s unfortunate that many personal trainers will tell women to use a lighter weight so that they will “tone up” and not get bulky.
This is probably the biggest myth in all of the weight lifting? Women who lift heavy weights will not get bulky. Don’t believe anyone who tells you this!
Choose a weight that allows you to complete the exercise without sacrificing proper form but that is heavy enough that you cannot possibly perform another repetition at the end of your prescribed set of repetitions.
REPETITIONS
Another huge variable for beginning exercisers is how many repetitions to perform. Performing certain repetitions will indeed produce highly specific results.
In general, low repetitions (3-8) produce greater absolute strength, medium repetitions (10-20) produce anaerobic strength endurance, and high repetitions (20-40) produce aerobic strength endurance.
Now, an ideal beginner routine will probably include sets of medium repetitions, just to allow the person exercising to learn to perform the exercise correctly, with proper form and technique and to allow her to experiment with experiencing muscle fatigue at 12-15 repetitions.
As she progresses, she can experiment with different set/rep schemes customized to individual goals.
An important note is that in order to achieve the results desired from performing a certain number of repetitions are that muscular failure must be achieved within the repetition ranges above.
Muscular failure means that you can’t possibly push out one more repetition no matter how hard you’re trying to do it.
REST
In general, your body needs between two to four minutes of rest between sets to prepare itself to perform another set at maximum capacity.
Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and phosphocreatine (PC) are used by your muscle cells to contract during a weight lifting exercise.
Your body needs time to regenerate these two compounds before it is ready to go again.
Unless you’re trying to develop all-out absolute strength by performing low repetitions with very heavy weight, you’re probably not going to need to wait that long between sets.
Most beginners will be working within a medium repetition range and therefore do not need to wait that long between sets. One to two minutes is fine.
RECOVERY
You will not see faster or better results by working on the same muscle groups day after day. As important as hard work is, recovery between workouts is even more important.
Beginners should work the same muscle groups no more than two times per week, with at least forty- eight hours break between sessions.
As an exercise becomes more advanced, she will probably cut back to working on each muscle group once every seven days or so.
And to review, these principles are range of motion, resistance, repetition, rest, and recovery.
Hopefully, you get enough idea on how to get the most of your exercise, doing them efficiently and effectively for you to reap the results while living a healthy lifestyle.
Of course, do not forget to have fun and enjoy the process of exercising. Remember, you are doing this for you.