A six pack.... and not of beer

One of the most important exercises you can do is not building bigger arms or squatting 400 pounds. The most important exercise you can do is your core. Thats right if you want to be truly fit you need to focus on those amdominal muscles. Besides girls love it when your on the beach and you can show them a 6-pack.

Your core is like the foundation of a house. Everything you build is built off of the foundation and without it you can suffer from anything like poor form, bad backs, or just a weaker body than you would expect. Abs are important to keeping your posture and also maintaining physical fitness in the long run. People with a strong core are able to build their other muscles better and usually they are also able to perform better in areas like sports and activities.

http://exercise.about.com/od/abs/ss/abexercises.htm

This website gives you 10 of the best and most effective Ab exercises known to man. It includes the crunch and the bicycle which are very popular ab routines. You can also find more ab exercises on youtube that will put your core to the test.

Jam Out While Your Pumping Iron

The other day I was about to go on a run and was looking through my mp3 player to make a playlist for my jog. I realized that all my songs were kind of dated and I didnt really have any good music to workout too. Nothing I had except for maybe a handful really stood out and made me think, hey this will pump me up and keep me going. So I did some searching on Google and found this site: http://rap.about.com/od/songs/tp/BestHipHopWorkoutSongs.htm

This site gave me a list of 25 hip hop songs that I could go an download to put on my mp3. I was extremely impressed because some of these songs I either had not heard before or they just were songs that I hadnt heard in a while that I used to like. I also found more sites with a more array of music that wasnt just a certain genre. If you google the workout songs you will find different links that will take you to the site like the one I found. Let me just say that my jog was more enjoyable because I was listening to different music and music that I liked.

Walk Into Shape

Shoe companies now are offering shoes that help keep you in shape and that actually tone your body while you walk around everyday life. I was watching tv the other day and saw this commercial for these Skechers that are called Shape-ups and they supposedly help keep you in shape by toning your legs and butt and helping your posture. Check out this video I found on youtube that shows them.



Also Reebok has a new commercial out that offers a shoe similar to the Shape-ups and the whole commercial focuses in on girls butts while they talk over it about how these shoes will give you a better looking butt and better looking legs. I thought it was interesting to see the new crave for fitness is now being done through walking tennis-shoes.

Creatine....good or bad?

Supplements have drastically made thier way into the world of workouts and because of this there is a lot descrepancy since some supplements have a bad rep of being harmful to your body. Supplements like N.O. explode and others have the stipulation of being helpful to increase gains and produce better results. You have to be careful though because supplements also have the rep of being linked with steriods.

Everyone knows that steriods are kind of taboo because of baseball and because of this supplements have been suffering. People link supplements with steriods because they do similar things for people that take them while working out. Some supplements though can be beneficial. They can help add nutrients to your body while you work out that can help with muscle growth and in turn help you get stronger faster.

On a website called http://www.vincedelmontefitness.com/blog/174/supplements-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/ this guy talks about how he thinks supplements are more harmful than good. He says that companies hype them up too much and these miraculous gains they promise is just false advertising. He has a point though, because most supplement stores and companies come out with new products all the time and sometimes these products are patent pending and havent really been fully tested to see if they are what they say they are. For the most part I believe that supplements can help if you take the right ones and are being careful with them. I do believe though that some individuals think that by taking a whole bunch of stuff they will get stronger, but taking all these different supplements may not be as good for you as you think.

Curls for the Girls

For years it has been known to men around the world that women like guys that look good. This means they like guys with big arms and if your like me big arms do not come easy. Girls are always looking for guys that can protect them and that have a solid body and arms are usually one of the first things they see.

In Men's Health there is an article that directs its attention completely to arms. Many guys can work out and work out and sometimes arms just dont come like you would like them too. The article talks about how some trainers have seen average guys do every arm workout in the book and still cannot see improvement in their arms.

The solution: Look at your other body parts like your shoulders, your core, and even your gluts (a.ka. buttox). Yes these areas need to be strengthened in order for people improve gains on thier arms. You need to improve your core because it is the base of your body and the framework for building your body. Your shoulders and butt also help put your body into a better posture and by focusing on them it puts your arms into a location that will allow them to grow muscle wise.

If your are curious you can purchase the April 2010 issue of Men's Health and it has a "Big Arms Workout" that you can try.

Being in Better Shape

So a lot of people may believe that if it has been a while since they worked out that they cannot get back into shape fast. This is not necessarily true. Let's say that you have been out of the gym for about 3-4 weeks and are planning on getting back into the gym there are ways to improve and get back in shape fast.

Some people will try to go back into the gym and do the weight that they had left off at. This is not at all what you need to do. This can actually harm and affect you in ways like injury and strains. When you get back into the gym, step back again. Do weight that you know is less but that you can handle and do high repetitions. This will condition your body back to what it is used to faster and then you can begin adding weight and improving upon from where you were at a month ago.

If you are curious as to where your body stands, a recent article I read in Men's Health Magazine talked about doing a fit test. The pushup is a universal work out method that involves your core, arms, shoulders, and back. The challenge is to set a timer for 3 minutes and do as many pushups as you can in that time maintaining good form. You can take as many breaks as you want but once the 3 minutes is up you have to stop. Then whatever number you reach there is a chart that tells you how good of shape or fit you are.

<55= below avg.
55-74= avg.
74-99= good
100-110= excellent
11 or more= extraordinary

So if you were in the lesser area you can improve your score by doing sets of push ups each week and each week you should improve some.