If you’re anything like me, no matter how much fat you lose it never seems to be enough. Sound like how you feel? You just want to constantly exercise and get rid of every ounce of fat on your body? Unfortunately, that’s simply not possible due to our busy schedules.

There is, however, a way to burn extra fat during your busy schedule. With a faster metabolism, you’ll burn more calories on average during your ordinary daily routine. So how do you achieve a faster metabolism? Follow these two simple tips and you can accelerate not only your metabolism, but also your fat burning fitness goals.

Tip 1: Eat lots of food! Well not in terms of quantity, but more in terms of frequency. One problem many dieters run into is the starvation effect; they here that the only way to lose weight is to maintain a calorie deficit. This is only half true. If the dieter doesn’t take in food often enough, the body goes into starvation mode and stores every last bit the dieter eats as fat. In order to achieve a faster metabolism, you need to eat 6-8 meals spread out throughout the day. If you begin to think you’re eating too much food due to the feeding frequency, count your calories. The ideal number of calories for cutting fat is 12 calories per pound you weigh per day. Find that total based on your weight and spread it throughout the day in 6-8 meals and you’re on your way to a faster metabolism!

Tip 2: Take advantage of the effects of high intensity interval training. If you’re unfamiliar with this type of training, head over to the website in my bio and learn more. This type of training speeds up your metabolism tremendously. The added stress releases excess levels of catecholamines and growth hormone, your best fight fighting friends. Clinical studies show that base levels of these hormones stay elevated far above baseline for up to 72 hours after the session. By simply doing 15 minutes of intervals, you’ll achieve a faster metabolism for the next 3 days!

How difficult is that? With a small manipulation of your diet schedule and 15 minutes of intervals every other day, you’ll be burning more calories while you’re watching TV than everyone else does while there at the gym! Use these two tips for the next month and watch your fight fighting efforts finally pay off.

You will find weight machines at every health club but some people find them really complicated. This article explains what these machines are, how they work and what their advantages are.

Weight machines are easy to operate. You start by adjusting your seat and then either push or pull a bar or a set of handles. The handles are connected to a chain, cable or lever that are connected to a stack of rectangular-shaped weights, weighing 5-50 pounds. To lift 20 pounds you simply stick a metal peg through the hole of the 30-pound weight.

Advantages

Here are some of the reasons why you should use weight machines in your workout:

• They are safe. They are ideal for beginners because if you run out of strength during an exercise you can let go without fear of a heavy weight dropping on your body.
• They require little balance or coordination. Most weight machines hold your body in the correct position unlike “free weights.” For example, if you do a shoulder press on a weight machine you just sit on a chair and push the handles up but with a barbell you have to not only push the bar up but stay steady and balanced at the same time.
• You can work on specific muscles. Traditional weight machines let you focus on one muscle, which is great if you’re trying to correct a specific weakness. An example of this is where you want to strengthen your hamstrings or rear thigh muscles. There is a weight machine that holds your body in position while you bend your legs and target your hamstrings. If you use free weights to accomplish the same task you’ll probably end up working your front-thigh and butt muscles too.
• Faster workouts. With weight machines you can set up the exercise much quicker than you can with free weights. You simply adjust the seat (if necessary) and stick the metal peg through a hole instead of removing free weights off a rack and sliding them on and off a barbell. Also, gyms and health clubs usually have weight machines grouped together, which make it quick and easy to move between them and enables you to complete a whole body workout in about 20 minutes.

Disadvantages

• Can be boring. After a while, you and your muscles will probably get bored of using machines. So, mix in some free weights after a while and learn to strengthen the same muscles with different exercises.
• Don’t fit every body. Most machines are designed for people who are between 5 feet 4 inches and 6 feet 2 inches tall. So, if you’re outside this range the machine may feel uncomfortable. If that’s the case, try another machine or choose free weights to target the same muscle group.
• Isolate each muscle group. This can be an advantage (see above) but it can be a disadvantage because it’s not how our muscles work in our daily lives. In everyday life, our muscles work in groups so it makes sense to work them in the same way in the gym.
• You can’t take them with you. If you’re going away on business or vacation you won’t be able to take weight machines with you, so take some free weights with you and you’ll have no excuse not to workout!

Hopefully, after reading this article you’re not intimidated by weight machines, are persuaded that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages and are ready to incorporate them in your workouts.

This weight loss supplement speeds the metabolism and also helps decrease appetite. Made by Iovate Health Sciences, Inc., Hydroxycut helps body builders lose weight 4.5 times faster than just diet and exercise alone.

Body builders use Hydroxycut as a natural way to kick off their weight loss which gives their metabolism a much needed boost. By combining this diet supplement along with a healthy diet and dedicated fitness program, body builders are seeing dramatic results.

Body builders are experiencing the following results due to Hydroxycut: loss of fat and weight; increase in energy (stronger workouts), regulates blood sugar levels; decreases appetite; and increases metabolism.

Body Builders Combine Weight Loss Supplements with Training Goals

Hydroxycut is comprised of herbal ingredients that help weight lifters build muscle in a natural, safe way. Its key ingredients include Hydroxagen (Hydroxycut’s unique weight loss formula): Garcinia cambogia extract, Gymnema sylvestre extract, and chromium polynicotinate. It also combines HydroxyTea (which is made up of green, oolong and white tea extracts).

These combined ingredients help to reduce fat and build muscle tone which are crucial for body builders who need to increase muscle bulk. Some of the enzymes found in Hydroxycut slow down appetite and cravings.

There are three different formulas including: Hydroxycut, Hydroxycut 24 and Caffeine-Free Hydroxycut. Hydroxycut also makes Instant Drink Packets (doesn’t contain sugar) which helps increase energy, and Instant Energy Weight-Loss Shot which helps increase metabolism.

When combined with a body building workout and healthy eating, metabolism can be increased and weight loss occurs at a faster rate for body builders. A faster metabolism also helps to build muscle which is beneficial for professional body builders.

Hydroxycut is Sold Worldwide and Supported by Health/Fitness Professionals

This weight loss supplement was created and endorsed by doctors including Jon Marshall, DO, and Marvin Heuer. It’s America’s number-one selling weight loss supplement and is being sold to over 70 countries across the world.

Fitness trainers, especially those who train body builders, are also reporting that Hydroxycut is a safe, alternative for weight loss and is one of the better weight loss supplements sold on the market.

Hydroxycut is sold in major health food stores like GNC and drugstores such as Walgreen’s and Wal-mart. It can also be found on TV advertising. Body builders can afford its reasonable prices and reap quick results–losing fat and building muscle a lot faster than just diet and exercise alone.

Autosuggestion is not some new wave mumbo jumbo, it is a psychological technique that has been used for more than a century. Autosuggestion harnesses the power of your subconscious mind in order to influence your behaviour, but is it something that can benefit you?

There is an expression that says that you are what you think, we are all products of the sum of our thoughts. We are only limited by the ceiling we set in our own mind. The way you picture and see yourself (self-image) is crucial to your long term success and happiness. Your behaviour and the habits you form are in part down to your thought patterns.

What Is Autosuggestion?

Autosuggestion works on the concept that in order to change our behaviour, traits or habits, we must first change our thinking. Autosuggestion is often used in self improvement programs to help achieve a specific goal such as:

• Losing Weight
• Quitting Smoking
• Increasing Confidence
• Attracting Wealth
• Enhancing Sporting Performance
• Curing A Phobia

Autosuggestion involves filling your subconscious mind with positive instructions on a regular basis. Your subconscious mind constantly takes in information through your senses, but a lot of it is negative. Your conscious mind acts on the information that is taken in through your subconscious mind. One way this is achieved is by using affirmations, these are positive statements that you repeat on a regular basis each day, normally when you wake and prior to bed. These statements will relate to whatever you are trying to achieve. For autosuggestion to work, you must rid your mind of any negative thoughts as soon as they appear.

Use I Am Statements

Your suggestions should relate to an outcome or goal that you desire. Positive statements that start with the words I am can be very powerful indeed. This is because you are making a statement in the present which relates directly to you, for example if your goal is to lose weight then you could use the following statements:

I am getting slimmer every day.

I am looking better than ever.

Can Autosuggestion Work For Me?

In the beginner, autosuggestion will feel very alien to you, and you may feel a little silly, but stick with it. You must also put some real conviction into your autosuggestion program and believe that it really is going to work for you. Practice autosuggestion every day and start seeing yourself how you want to be.

Autosuggestion And Weight Loss

Autosuggestion can help you lose weight, but you will also need a healthy diet and an exercise program. Start picturing yourself looking slim and healthy, intensely imagine how you will feel and what you will be wearing. Build up positive pictures in your mind, backed up with positive suggestions in the form of affirmations. It will help you to change your eating habits exercise habits.

Make your subconscious mind a place full of positivity and harness the power of autosuggestion.

The following exercise explains how you can calculate the stride length and stride frequency of a runner on a treadmill.

Consider first some definitions of terms:

Stride length: Stride Length corresponds to the horizontal distance between the location of a foot at one point in time (usually the first point of contact with the ground)to the same point of the same foot at the next occurrence of the selected position in the running cycle.

Step: A step corresponds to the horizontal distance between the location of a foot at one point in time (usually the first point of contact with the ground) to the same point of the contra-lateral foot at the next occurrence of the selected position in the running cycle. In essence two steps constitute a stride.

Stride Frequency: Stride frequency corresponds to the number of strides that are completed in a specified time period. The standard unit of measurement is the hertz (Hz) which records the number of cycles per second. Step frequency is the equivalent measure using a step (as defined above) as the core parameter.

Timecode: Time code records the passage of time via the use of a sequence of pairs of numbers separated by colons. e.g. 00:01:15:32. The first pair of numbers represents the number of hours, the second pair the number of minutes, the third pair the number of seconds and the last pair the number of hundredths of a second.

The speed of a runner can be defined as being equal to Stride Length × Stride Frequency

Given the relationship between running velocity, stride length and stride frequency plus a video record (with timecode) of a runner on a treadmill it is a straight forward matter to calculate values for the stride length and stride frequency of a runner at a known speed.

In today’s society most people use a couple of different ways to get themselves into what they call shape. In reality most people have no idea what getting fit really means. Getting fit is not driving to the gym to walk on a treadmill than doing some curls in hopes of getting bigger arms to impress the ladies.

Being fit means to be able to answer when your body is called upon. If you look around you will find person after person jogging up and down the streets in the name of fitness. Jogging takes a lot of time up and in my opinion does little other than make you a jogger.

I can give you just two exercises that if done would bring massive benefits in total body development as well as build a lean attacking type body and lower body fat.

Problem is people jog because it’s the easy way out. The easy way out never works. The two exercises’ I want to tell you about will amaze you and results will come extremely fast but at a price. The price is sweat.

Each exercise is a king of exercises in their own right, but together they make up a killer combination.

Jumping rope and pushups are a combination that will have the fittest man or woman in a pool of sweat in just a few short minutes. Both these exercises combined or alone are enough to get you into great shape without ever leaving your home.

Both the pushup and jumping rope have been used by great athletes for decades. But with the media the basics have been thrown aside for more complicated glamor type pretty boy workouts that focus on the six pack of abs.

A quick short workout using a jump rope and pushups will put you back to simpler times, times when people worked out to get into shape not to just look good.

Both exercises will work almost the entire body and with only two exercises and the speed of the results, you will become more athletic, leaner and more explosive than using the standard health club training routine put together for you by some trainer who hasn’t earned the sweat yet. Remember it’s the simple and hard work that get the results.

The workout: Jump rope as fast as possible 100 times then drop down for 25 pushups doing them as fast as possible. You will repeat this back and fourth with no rest for 10 rounds meaning you will finish off with having jumped rope 1,000 times and doing 250 pushups. See how many rounds or how many times you can do this circuit.

Trying to lose 50 pounds in 11 weeks can seem like a formidable task, but I assure you it can be done.

I’m assuming you’re not interested in using weight loss pills, appetite suppressants, surgery or any of that other junk to lose 50 pounds in 11 weeks, which is good…’cos I hate those things. Don’t get me wrong, they have their place in certain situations, but in most cases, are an unnecessarily extreme measure.

When you consider that a gastric bypass operation can cost anywhere between $25,000 to $35,000 US dollars, you have to question whether the advice given to some folks to go through with it is in their best interests or that of the surgeon and his pocket.

Trying to lose 50 pounds in 11 weeks may be a tough challenge but there are a few things you can do to make your life easier.

Here are 5 top tips you should follow when trying to lose 50 pounds in 11 weeks.

1) Believe in yourself / set goals

The first and most important thing is getting in the right frame of mind. This may sound strange since you already know you want to lose 50 pounds in 11 weeks…so what do I mean?

Well, don’t worry, I’m not gonna go all Tony Robbins on you and get you jumping up and down in a euphoric state (although there is some truth to that). Rather, I’m saying that you need a clear picture of where you want to be, and focus on it. You need to feel like you’ve already managed to lose 50 pounds in 11 weeks…think about it…how does it really feel. Are your work colleagues inspired and envious of your new body and transformation? Do you have the confidence that you were lacking to ask out that hot guy or gal you’ve had your eye on for like forever?

Only by picturing it in your mind will you be able to set goals for your success and believe that you can and will lose 50 pounds in 11 weeks. The goals will be the checkpoints on your journey, the self-belief will be the fuel that keeps you going.

2) Find a good trainer and surround yourself with good like-minded people

This is an essential and often overlooked part of trying to lose 50 pounds in 11 weeks. A lot of people don’t realise that who they surround themselves with plays a huge part in their self-belief, attitude, and overall motivation and determination. It has been said that a person is the average of the 5 or 10 people they hang around with the most, and this regards health, wealth, ambition, aspiration, relationships, family etc. This is not a hard and fast rule, but I feel there is some truth to it.

Trying to lose a lot of weight quickly will be demanding and therefore you want to surround yourself with positive folks who are rooting for you, and not people who are waiting for you to fail, so they can say “I told you so!”

Now, I’m not saying you should just give up and avoid your family and friends, but rather to seek out folks who have similar goals, and understand your situation. Finding people who have been where you are now and achieved your goals can give you a real push to do the same. Why do you think things like Weight Watchers clubs are so successful? It’s because they bring all these people together and they help each other out.

Where can you find these people? There are loads of forums online where you can find people who are trying to lose weight. Just going to Google or Yahoo and typing something like “weight loss + forum” (without the quotes) will yield all sorts of great things. There are also loads of weight loss and fitness programs online that you can follow to lose 50 pounds in 11 weeks.

The same applies to your trainer, coach, or workout program that you choose to follow. Are they supportive yet ambitious, pushing you on when things get tough? If not, find one that is.

3) Eat a healthy diet

Obviously, diet and nutrition is fundamentally important when trying to lose 50 pounds in 11 weeks. Taking on too many calories will mean you always put on weight, period. Therefore, you will need to create a caloric deficit, by taking on fewer calories than you burn, forcing your body to burn up the fat deposits and use it as energy.

Finding the right diet is important, and many folks go about it the wrong way. Starving yourself is a big no-no. You may lose a few pounds in the first few days, but it won’t last, as your body will transition into starvation mode and slow down your metabolism to burn less fat (it’s your in-built survival mechanism), making it even harder to lose 50 pounds in 11 weeks.

So what can you do? Eat more! Yes, by eating smaller meals more regularly you will maintain your metabolism at a higher rate, and this, combined with exercise, will help you lose the pounds faster.

Green fibrous vegetables like broccoli, green beans, asparagus and lettuce are great healthy foods that can actually help you to burn fat, and it’s almost impossible to overeat on them. Eating more of them in the later part of the day along with a good lean protein like chicken breast is one of the best methods of getting lean as quickly as possible, and losing 50 pounds in 11 weeks.

4) Follow a good exercise plan

Without exercise, even the best diet plan in the world will struggle to help you lose 50 pounds in 11 weeks. You need to exercise in order to get the full benefit of the caloric deficit we mentioned earlier. It will create the furnace where you burn off those unwanted pounds.

Regular exercise also aids the mind, confidence and overall health. By tightening up, toning and growing your muscle, you also help your body to burn fat faster. Did you know that muscle can actually help you burn fat? So the more muscle you have the more fat you can burn, because your metabolism will work faster with more muscle.

Find a good training and exercise plan, with a good variety of cardiovascular work for your overall fitness, endurance and toning exercises like pushups and sit-ups, and some light weight training.

5) Stick to it!

This is the most important and often the hardest thing when trying to lose 50 pounds in 11 weeks. The best diet, exercise routine, trainer, and goals, mean nothing without the small action of going and actually doing it. Things may get tough over the next 11 weeks, but sticking to it and following through will show results, and you’ll be amazed at what you achieve. Once you see a little success you’ll be hungry for more and then it’ll be so hard to stop the momentum you build up, that 50 pounds in 11 weeks will seem like a piece of cake!

Conditioning is a word that is used a lot in the fitness industry but what does it really mean to have conditioning? There are those that are ripped from strength conditioning, marathon runners have to go through a type of stamina conditioning and then there is the conditioning that is necessary for fighters and martial artists.

Conditioning can come off as this hard core concept of hard work and training to build your body up so it can perform or endure what the sport demands of it.

And it’s true.

However, that is not the whole picture of what it means to be a conditioned athlete. Building your body and it’s performance potentials is only the outcome associated to having “great conditioning”.

The other half of the definition of conditioning is more about the discipline, the standard and the values that you adopt.

“Great conditioning” is the result of adopting and integrating habits, standards and values that slowly, over time changes and transforms the conditions of the body.

Conditioning isn’t so much about building yourself up but rather more about adopting a specific way of being that will serve you in the long run which is beneficial for the performance and execution of the skills in a given sport or physical activity.

So, how do you integrate a great conditioning ritual? One that will meet your athletic needs based on the sport or physical activity of your choice?

A good place to start is by looking at where your values are placed in your sport. By looking at the components that you already have a natural inclination to favour and value, then you have a platform where you can design for yourself a discipline that you are more than likely to commit to.

If for example you naturally favour cardio, then use that as a base to develop a discipline to condition, not only great cardio but also as a way to condition better form, more strength and greater endurance doing the activity that is the source of cardio. It’s also a great way to develop secondary attributes. If, for instance you typically rely on jogging for cardio but you would like to develop another physical skill or work on some upper body, than you might consider cardio boxing. Or you might want to develop better foot co-ordination and do some skip rope.

By focusing on what you already prefer, you are much more likely to build on it and develop a discipline and from a place of discipline is where conditioning can flow from the best.

Also, using discipline is a powerful way to predispose yourself to growth and improvement in a specific skill or attribute. Once you have established a discipline on a particular practice, then it’s only a matter of pushing yourself and upping the ante in order to improve and refine that conditioning.

Let me leave with one final thought, and that is, when thinking in terms of the type of conditioning you feel you may need for whatever fitness goal that you have, think about what habits you need to adopt and how you need to be in the process of the training rather than what you need to do to reach and achieve a goal to finally arrive at. Chances are that when you arrive at that goal, in order to maintain it, you will need to sustain the conditioning by maintaining the practice that got you there in the first place.

Conditioning is a process.

Plyometric training is very important when you are an athlete. Engaging in active sports would require you to be able to move quickly and powerfully. In plyometrics, you are not only training your muscles, you are also training your brain. You see, when you are trying to extend and contact you muscles at a rapid rate, you would need you nervous system to be able to send quick signals to your brain to do just that. You get a two in one benefit when you engage in plyometrics. However, since you would be placing great stress to your muscles and tendons, it is important to know how to perform these exercises safely.

There are a lot of factors to consider if you want to engage in plyometric exercises in a safe manner. Age is a major factor. As we grow older, our bones and tendons grow more and more brittle. It is best to consult with a medical professional first before trying these out. You do not want to injure yourself in the process. Pre-adolescents should also be very careful since they are undergoing a lot of hormonal changes in their bodies.

Another factor to consider would be technique. Erroneous performance could lead to grave injuries. Make sure that you have a well-trained professional guiding you through your exercises when you first try them out. Trying them out on your own might be very dangerous. As you know, these exercises are intense and done in a quick and repetitive manner. This places great stress on your muscles and tendons. Without proper knowledge, you could easily tear something apart and might reduce you to bed rest for a few days.

It is highly recommended that you do only a maximum of one hundred repetitions a day, and this is already in the advanced level. One also should not do plyometrics daily. Your body needs to rest to repair itself. Instead, why not try doing light stretching exercises? Yoga would be a great alternative because it is not as strenuous and would even allow your body and mind to relax while you perform the positions.

Plyometrics in itself is not really dangerous. However, precautions must be observed because of the intensity that it involves. Proper knowledge and supervision is needed when trying it out for the first time. Also, muscular wasting might result from too much working out with not enough rest and nutrition. Make sure that you get enough rest and eat the right kind of food when engaging in plyometrics.

Biceps curls are the classic bodybuilding exercise used to add mass to the biceps. Furthermore, they’re used as assistance exercises by weight lifters and other strength athletes. If you spend any amount of time training for bodybuilding or athletics, odds are you’ll do some biceps curls.

The problem is that biceps curls done incorrectly can damage your elbow joint.

This happens at the bottom of the movement, when the arm is extended, and it usually takes a long, long time to heal once the pain becomes noticeable. What’s more, once you get elbow damage, you will continue to injure yourself further if you try to ‘train through the pain’ or ignore what’s happening in hopes that it will all just go away.

Three types of elbow injury caused by biceps curls

All elbow pain isn’t indicative of the same problem. There are three injuries related to curls that might cause elbow problems.

One is ligament damage. The ligaments are tough, fibrous bands of connective tissue that hold your elbow joints together, and limit you to a proper range of motion.

The second elbow injury is tendon damage or inflammation to the biceps tendon (and, less commonly, to tendons associated with muscles in the forearms).

Finally, you might experience actual elbow joint damage. But this usually only occurs when you refuse to let an injury heal. It’s more a symptom of stubbornness than it is of improper curling technique.

How to do biceps curls so you avoid elbow problems

The first sort of elbow problem — caused by ligament damage — is usually the result of hyperextension of the elbow joint during biceps curls. The weight of the barbell or dumbbell forces your joint past it’s proper range of motion when your arm is straight, causing the ligaments to stretch (or worse).

This is a common injury when people use a preacher bench without an ez-curl bar. The preacher bench makes it easy to get a full range of motion during high-intensity curls, but it also puts your elbow into a dangerous position. If you’re not experienced with the preacher curl, you are in danger of hurting your elbow. The ez curl bar keeps your elbows oriented properly, reducing (but not eliminating) the danger.

The second type of elbow pain — tendon damage — is usually a result of overtraining. But it also happens when you “cheat” during a curl. The extra weight can cause a repetitive-stress injury to the elbow tendon as you lower the weight. Again, using an ez-curl bar keeps the elbows “locked into a groove” and helps prevent this sort of injury. Young guys who are obsessed with the appearance of their biceps in a tight t-shirt often fall prey to this sort of overuse injury. Performing endless sets of high-rep biceps curls will pump up your upper arms, but it won’t build true strength and size. It’s better to stick to a sensible number of sets and make sure to keep your reps below 12.

Finally, damage to the elbow joint is caused when ligament damage is present. People who continue to work out despite having stretched-out ligaments are going to damage the joints. This is something you shouldn’t ever do. If you are so obsessed with working out that you push through elbow pain, you need the services of an exercise psychologist. Be sensible and allow it to rest and heal.