Growing up I didn’t like vegetables. I couldn’t be forced to eat broccoli. I would even strip my burger of the lettuce and tomato that would come on top. Broccoli was a punishment if there ever was one. I rather be spanked or sent to my room with no television or video games than eat those stinking vegetables.
Read more >>>Do You Hate Vegetables? 3 Tips That Make Eating Vegetables Easier
Newton’s first law states: An object in motion tends to stay in motion and an object at rest tends to stay at rest.
You know what I like about quick workouts like my 1 minute workouts? The fact that they are quick. In my mind I only need to do the workout for 1 minute. If I mix them up and stack them, maybe 10 minutes. This makes it easier to get moving.
When I think about the fact that I need to get up and exercise for 45 minutes to an hour, I really don’t want to. However, if I only need to get up for a few minutes, it’s a lot easier for me to get started. And there’s the kicker. If I don’t feel like doing any more then I stop, but here’s the kicker. Once I get started, I keep going– just like Newton stated.
I’ve had days when I don’t feel like working out and force myself to just do that 1 minute. And once I’m done with the minute, my heart rate is up, my joints are lubed up and I don’t want to stop. I want to keep moving. If I do keep moving, I don’t set any type of time target. Instead I keep going until I feel like stopping. Once, I even kept going for 1 hour without even realizing it. That type of thing usually only happens with some sort of strength workout since training for strength is more like intervals and the minutes tick by faster since there are resting periods built in between sets.
So in conclusion. sitting on the couch makes us want to keep sitting on the couch. But moving for just a small period of time might just make it easier to workout a little bit longer.
I see it all the time. People trying to swim but aren’t. People that want to swim, but can’t. the real reason isn’t that they can’t get the strokes down. The reasons are 1, they aren’t comfortable in the water and 2, they are trying not to sink. Let’s talk about the second one – trying not to sink. What do I mean by that?
Read more >>>Can’t Swim or Having Trouble Learning How To Swim?
I just went ahead and made Dieting Bites available for free as a PDF download and on Smashwords. It still costs $0.99 on Amazon for now, but will hopefully end up free on there as well. Included in the book is a free bonus — Burn Calories With Circuit Training & Tabata Intervals.
Head on over to https://fsefitness.com/free to download it now.
Enjoy!
Fred
If you’re reading this because you want to do a one legged squat ask yourself why. Have you heard that bodyweight exercises are good for you? Have you heard that if you have most of your weight on one leg it’s like lifting that much? Is it because you’ve heard that it makes your legs stronger really fast? I asked myself those same questions and here’s why I started doing them sporadically.
I had a slight agitation that surfaced when trying to perform ass to calf bodyweight squats. Not one legged, but two legged. My right knee actually felt like it was getting weaker. Whenever I would squat to sit down, it felt as if the ligaments were stretching way too much.
I’ve tried different reps and set schemes, but when it comes to strength training, I keep coming back to exercising frequently and performing low reps. I also remove any sort of cardio type activity from the strength workout; no heavy breathing for me.
So what do I mean by frequently? At least three times a week. And low reps? How about 3 reps. I also don’t go crazy heavy. My goal is to work out with a moderately heavy weight and stay fresh. I stay away from fatigue and exhaustion. This allows me to workout more often due to my muscles and central nervous system not being knocked into oblivion.
So I did the 100 pushup challenge and I must say I didn’t like it. I know now why my nephew stopped doing it too- it’s hard. The three times a week required was way too much for me. At one point I even switched to an easier level in the table. The number of reps required caused me to feel sore after every workout and fatigued the next day.
Now-a-days, I believe that whatever I did today I should be able to do tomorrow and have done yesterday. I didn’t feel fully recovered at each workout and it hindered all my other exercises. Maybe if I did only pushups it would have been different, but for all my troubles I only increased twenty pushups.
So that’s a total of 55 pushups. I wasn’t happy with that number, especially when I know I can get there without all the fatigue and soreness, my way.
What’s my way? I like to perform high sets of low reps. Things like 10 sets of 10, or pyramids, or 20 sets of 5 with little rest between the sets and even static holds. All of these options work better for me and I can do them everyday if I wanted to, so that’s what I’ll stick to. It’s what works for me and plenty of others too. Just ask the military.
My answer to that is yes, depending on where you are on the pushup scale. On one end, there is strength and on the other there is endurance. Can you perform at least 20 pushups? If so, then you are working endurance, focusing more on mastering the weight than getting stronger.
Can you only perform 5 pushups total? Then the pushups are focusing more on creating strength. Personally I like to use pushups as a cardio exercise most days. How’s that you ask? Well, what is cardio really? I define cardio as high reps of an easier exercise- more or less. So if I can do lots of reps, then the exercise is cardio.
I discuss using four bodyweight exercises as a cardio workout in my bonus report: What’s a better way to do cardio?
This report is also included as a bonus in 1 Minute Cardio 2.0
I’ve been curious about the 100 pushup program and some of my buddy’s have been too. Even one of my young nephews was trying the program. Unfortunately he got bored with it and stopped. So I decided to take on the challenge.
The first thing I did was to exile push-ups and any other chest exercises. I haven’t done them in three months. I performed a max test and wow, I could only do 35. I learned a long time ago that endurance work gets lost pretty easily when I stop doing it. High reps of push-ups is usually considered muscular endurance work and now that I’ve lost my muscular endurance it’s time to get it back.
Me and a friend went to the park to walk around and catch up. We walked along the trail and came up to the push-up area. Along the trail are different workout stations like push-ups, parallel bars and pull-up bars. We knocked out a few sets of ten and then headed over to the pull-up bars. I did a few pull-ups and some static holds with my elbows bent at ninety degrees. My buddy knocked out a few chin ups and commented on how he needed to work on those more.
Read more >>>When it comes to exercise, sometimes less is more