Alright, it's time to face it: You simply can not go to the gym without getting a complex. You'll just get too self-conscious of your excess pounds jiggling inside your spandex to fully concentrate on your routine. Besides, the bronzed bodies surrounding you will only serve as a harsh reminder that it's going to take you forever to get there.

So you go online and buy all sorts of fitness videos so you can do your workout right at home. But are exercise videos right for you?

This article aims to give you the lowdown on the pros and cons of relying on exercise videos to stay fit. By examining the advantages and disadvantages of following workouts on screen, you can then come to a sound decision whether to buy fitness videos or simply opt for a gym membership despite the wriggling of body fats under your spandex. Here goes:

Advantages of Using Exercise Videos:

1. They are very affordable. At the most, you only fork out $ 25 US for one video. Compare that to the hundreds of dollars you have to spend for gym membership and you know that in terms of cost, fitness videos are hands down, the more viable choice.

2. Choices are varied. There's virtually every video for any and every form of exercise conceived by the fertile minds of certified fitness instructors and health experts.

3. They are convenient to use. They allow you to exercise at your own time. Exercise videos are ready for use anytime of the day. Whether you have time to exercise in the morning, afternoon or even late at night, all you need is to simply put in the video in the player and voila! You can immediately begin your workout right at the comfort of your own home without driving all the way to the gym. Plus, you can keep on working out even during inclement weather.

4. Your privacy is assured. Yes! If your main concern is the jiggling body of fat under your spandex, then exercise videos will certainly give you the chance to get rid of them right in the confines of your home.

Disadvantages of Using Exercise Videos:

1. You do not have an instructor to correct bad form. If you're just beginning, a professional trainer will certainly be indispensable to guide you in the proper technique of doing certain exercises. Aside from being unable to maximize the benefits of exercise, doing them wrongly puts you at a greater risk of injury or strain.

2. No exercise video admits its flaws. This is particularly true with those marketed by celebrities who are not professionally trained and certified to lead any form of workout to begin with. In fact, there are even unscrupulous individuals who rehash old videos and market them as new using the strength of popular faces. Careful with them since they contain moves that have already been proven unsafe by modern fitness experts.

3. It takes double the willpower to stick with your regimen. Unlike in a Yoga, Pilates or aerobics class with a set schedule to follow and the pull of a group to keep you motivated, you do exercise videos on your own, follow a schedule on your own and motivate yourself on your own. It can be very challenging.

4. They can be boring. If you only have one video, then watching and doing the same routine day-in and day-out can bore the living daylights out of you. The more titles you have in your collection, the more interesting your workouts will be.

I'd like to share a cool conditioning workout that I came up with a few months ago in order to get stronger and better conditioned in a short period of time. It incorporates the concept of "Ladders" found in Pavel Tstatsouline's book "Power to the People," In this book Pavel shares the training secrets of the Soviet commandos and athletes he used to train with that allowed the Russians to dominate other countries in the Olympics . This is really popular in the Marines and SEALS, and we use this type of training to get really high pure strength and strength endurance levels while still keeping up our long distance running.

What are ladders?

Basically you will pick an exercise and start at the "bottom" of the ladder doing anywhere from 1-5 reps. You will rest the same number of seconds as reps per set. So if I start doing 2 push ups, I would rest 2 seconds, do 4 push ups, rest 4 seconds etc until I reached a specified number. You want to try to do as many reps as possible without going to failure. This is different from a pyramid set in that you stop at the top of ladder in this workout, but I a pyramid set you will go up AND down. This is great for building muscle, but not for strength or muscle definition. Ladders are an excellent tool that can be applied to almost any workout plan. I absolutely love them.

My "Special Forces" workout Finisher

You will need access to a pull-up bar. You will be doing 3 "ladder super sets" of push-ups and pull-ups. This means you will complete one push-up ladder and then immediately transition to pull-ups without rest. After this "super set" (performing 2 exercises back to back), you will take 30-60 sec rest and then repeat at least 2 more times. Focus on getting perfect reps at a medium pace and stop before you feel like you can not do anymore. If I'm getting guys ready for the Marines or SEALS we will do the push up ladders from 2 reps to 14 reps going up by 2 reps at a time, and we do pull-ups from 1 rep to 7 reps going up by 1 rep at a time, and repeat this cycle 4 times. We do this as a bad ass finisher to a long ruck march or run pretty regularly and a lot of guys can max out at least 100 push-ups and 20 pull-ups for our PT tests.

Why this type of training builds a hard and "compact" physique

I love this workout because it combines a few key training principles into a single session. The ladder principle builds strength, stamina, and conditioning since a high volume of reps is accumulated in a short period of time, but your muscles do not get "pumped" because of the rest periods. By super setting pushing with pulling exercises I took advantage of making opposing muscle groups help each other out. Basically alternating pushing with pulling gives each muscle group a rest while at the same time telling the central nervous system to start connecting the neurons that fire the individual muscle fibers. Essentially doing pull-ups will start to help doing pull-ups and vice versa. Pretty cool! The more you compress the time frame of the workout, the more you will release fat burning hormones to make it a conditioning workout as well.

How I used this training method to double my regular pull-ups and master the One arm Pull-up

After doing this workout for the past 6 months I've increased my pull-up max from 20 to 40 reps, and push ups from 100 to 135 in 2 min. I also think it helped me to achieve one arm pull-ups, which I just mastered about a week ago (and which I'll do a post on soon!). Doing this type of high volume, low rep training with perfect form has similar effects to a power-lifting cycle. In fact, a ladder workout is basically an entire power lifting cycle compressed into a few minutes! The really cool thing is that I never feel sore any more from doing burnout sets, but my strength and conditioning level is still improving.

4 important steps in a proper workout.

Step One: Start with a warm up .
Warm-up is not stretching, as what we have been taught in schools. Start with light cardio work to warm up those muscles. Take about 5 to 10 min of lighter workout at the bike or treadmill.
When you stretch when your muscles are cold, you may end up spraining it.
After the warm up cardio, you may stretch if you wish.

Step Two: Actual Workout
You may now start with more intensive cardio workout. You should not do intensive cardio for more than an hour as it will deplete the critical glycogen storage in your muscles. After cardio, you may perform a bit of weight training.

Step Three: Cool-down- (light cardio)
When you do intensive cardio or weight lifting, lactic acid may accumulate in your muscles. The only way to get rid of it from your muscles- is by movement & circulation- so, just like your warm-up, you do light cardio for 5 to 10 minutes.

Step Four- Stretching.
Experience sore muscles or stiffness after your workout? Or having to endure sore muscles for few days after workout? I strongly recommend that you incorporate stretching in your post workout. Do not underestimate the power of stretching. Incorporate stretching after your workout and you will feel great- you'll walk easier and it will lessen your muscle sprain or injury. I speak from my personal experience- this really works. For a good cool down, spend about at least 10 minutes.

Start with some leg and hamstring stretches. Do some sun salutation, triangle post, spinal twist, followed by waist and arms stretch. Or else, you can skip Step Three and Four and replace it with yoga / Pilates class. Warmed muscles work extremely well with yoga and Pilates- you will find yourself sweating like you have never been before.

Whenever bodybuilding magazine writers and other visitors to Metroflex Gym return home, they all lament the same thing in private phone conversations: they miss Metroflex's atmosphere and music! They love the fact that their lifts go up in weight whenever they visit the "Most Hardcore Gym In America" ​​as selected by Muscle & Fitness Magazine (July 2005).

Now you can take some of that atmosphere to your gym with Metroflex's suggestions for the best workout music or best workout song to help you with your weight training. Yes, these will help you even if you train in one of the "ultra-posh" gyms around the world.

For those of you who love lifting heavy weights, you know that in most commercial gyms you have to blast your MP3 player merely to drown out the terrible club music playing above the squat racks; and that assumes they even have squat racks or a power rack in the first place! Now, even if you train in one of these gyms you can make your CD player or MP3 player "hardcore" enough to help you as you train with the methods of Metroflex.

We polled the Metroflex Gym members, and the owner compiled the Top 10 requested songs which motivate the members the most. In no particular order, here they are:

o AC-DC: Thunderstruck

o 2 Pac: California Love

o Rocky IV: War (the rest of the soundtrack is liked as a whole)

o Hank Williams, Jr .: Country Boy Can Survive

o Saliva: Click Click Boom

o Metallica: Enter Sandman

o Prodigy: Smack My B *** h Up

o Ramstein: Du Hast

o DMX: I'ma Bang

o Rob Zombie: Living Dead Girl

Other favorites include:

o Metallica: Creeping Death

o Mudvayne: Dig

o AC-DC: TNT

You have a the if list of favorite songs I think you Which Comprise the best workout music please e-mail by us at Newsletters@MetroflexGymTraining.com . We will compile your suggestions for a future announcement.

It is very evident that exercising has its own benefits when it comes to human health. Be it, increasing the strength of the body and heart; use it as a weapon for weight loss, or controlling that unwanted insulin and sugar. Clearly, one suitable option in today's modern life is joining a fitness center and using the state of the art tools like treadmills and others, for an adequate cardio workout.

Exercising on treadmills puts less stress on the body than running on the roads. It also offers vigilance on certain factors like heart rate monitoring, calories burnt, blood pressure etc. This guide will help users to understand benefits of exercising and especially using treadmills.

Heart Benefits
Cardio is the most preferred work out when it comes to heart-related exercises. Users often ignore the regular exercising that allows staying away from common problems like coronary artery blockages, other cardiac issues etc and often the body may not show symptoms of heart-related issues until it is under severe stress. In fact, treadmill tests are also performed on heart-related patients to observe the symptoms of their conditions, and understanding the risks associated with the patient from the analysis.

Regular treadmill workouts improve blood circulation in the body and also helps in lowering the blood pressure. If you are considering the treadmill workout regimen and you also have a heart-related issue, then talk to your local physician and get a firm advice on how to go about it before starting on it.

Benefits for Diabetics
Treadmills work great for diabetic patients too. Research shows exercising regularly for prescribed durations (if you are not diabetic then even 20 minutes is enough) as this helps to control the insulin levels in diabetic patients. A well-defined lifestyle which includes a right kind of diet and exercising on regular basis is the best form of tackling diabetes. However, it is advisable to consult your local physician before trying the workouts as this routine may vary from individual to individual.

Overall, exercising for around or less than 20 minutes also suffices for starters. This causes the muscles to utilize the excess glucose as fuel and helping in lowering the glucose levels in the body. Using a treadmill can do these wonders for all kinds of diabetic patients and thus having one even at your home is handy if you are not fond of visiting fitness centers or a gymnasium.

Own a Treadmill
We understand that stepping out of your homes on a daily basis especially if you are heart patient or diabetic is not easy at all, and thus to come around this issue, it is even ideal to own a treadmill. They are On more affordable they 're than 10 years ago, and nowadays you get Also manual treadmills , Which help in burning more calories than the electric treadmills, color : as you power 's the belt and not the electricity. They also come a little-curved meaning the treadmills will ensure the incline is a little higher than just the flat surface.

And even better, they are foldable for use at home. So complete the exercises and keep them safely in store, under the bed etc.

Sales prospecting techniques that generate sales leads should be effective and easy to incorporate into your daily routine. The OXO routine is a tried and tested lead generator that most sales people can add to their daily actions.

This technique works best for sales people who sell a product or service which is targeted at a wide range of B2B prospects. The OXO routine is most effective when you have a good number of potential prospects close to each other. For example: When you are visiting an industrial estate or business park and what you sell could be bought by many of the businesses in the area.

We call this sales prospecting technique the OXO routine because the X is the customer you have a sales appointment with and the O's are the prospects either side of your arranged meeting. When you have completed your sales appointment you call on the two closest prospects either side. The idea is that you make the best use of your time by prospecting close to where you are. They may not be right next door to the business you are visiting, but they should be close enough to walk to or drive there in a matter of minutes.

This prospecting technique will give you many benefits as well as making good use of your selling time. It gets you into a routine of cold calling after every appointment. That means you no longer put off prospecting until the end of the week or until you really need to do it because you have run out of leads. Setting yourself the action of doing the OXO routine after every sales visit will quickly build into a habit.

Use it after every sales appointment whether you make a great sale, or come up against a really difficult prospect and come out feeling down and rejected. After a positive meeting where you have made a sale you will be on a buzzing motivational high. What a great state to be in as you cold-call the businesses either side of your new customer. You may even want to use the fact that you have a new local customer in your introduction pitch to your potential customers.

When your sales appointment has not gone so well you should still OXO the neighbours. You, like me, are only human. We feel the effects of an appointment where we do not close the sale. As you come out of a bad appointment force yourself to do the OXO. Shake off any negative feelings or self-doubt, and head for the nearest potential customers either side of where you are. Generating sales leads in this way will get you back into a positive selling state and focus your mind on achieving your targets.

Adding the OXO sales prospecting technique to your daily routine will help you to constantly bring in sales leads and keep your prospect bank topped up. It cuts down the time you have to dedicate to collecting leads and makes your time management far more effective.

A common question among women's fitness groups is whether or not it is healthy to exercise during menstruation. While many fears and beliefs about our monthly cycle have changed over the years, whether or not strenuous activity is right for every woman is probably best determined on a case by case basis.

Each woman is different both physically and mentally. Women who have a heavy flow may find that increased activity causes them to bleed even more. Other women have reported a decrease in the length of their cycle and an alleviation of cramps by exercising straight through their monthly period.

While it is never good to bleed too heavily, foregoing a whole week of exercise is unacceptable to most women who have grown accustomed to a women's workout routine. As a personal trainer, I have found that by having some light exercises to offer to the ladies gives them an alternative to just sitting out the entire week. Instead of running, a brisk walk will keep your body stay active, without jostling your uterus and aggravating your symptoms. Strength training exercises are fine and you can lessen the amount of weights, squats or other exercises that might increase your blood flow.

If you are worried about the messiness of a heavy flow, you might want to wear a tampon when you exercise during your period. Just remember to keep it changed regularly to control bacterial infection. You might want to wear a pair of bike shorts under a pair of loose fitting shorts for protection against spills.

Women have come a long way from the times of our ancestors, when women were cordoned off during their time of the month. However, we still have the blessing of a body that is engineered for childbirth and therefore from the time of puberty until menopause a woman's body will automatically ready itself for the possibility of pregnancy. Although month after month it's hard to think of this time as something wonderful, without it, we would not be much different than our male counterparts.

Keeping your body hydrated is very important to your women's fitness program but even more so during your period. A healthy diet that is low in sodium is also a must before and during your cycle. Salt tends to intensify bloating and inflammation, which trigger cramps and back pain that will make you feel worse. Exercise, especially walking helps to decrease inflammation and relieve bloating.

Intense exercise, such as those performed by professional or extreme athletes, may cause amenorrhea or the termination of your menstrual period. This is generally temporary and reverses naturally when the exercise regimen is moderated. Since there are many reasons for amenorrhea, consult your doctor if your period becomes irregular, to make sure there are not some other underlying health problems that you need to be aware of.

The important thing is to listen to your body and get to know it. If you feel you need to take it easy, then do so. Do not let your period be an excuse to get out of exercise, but do not push yourself to do something that your body is telling you not to. It's your body and your right to exercise, go out for a walk and if you feel like a slow jog, go for it.

However, if you feel you need to take a day off and rest, then by all means allow your body that time for rejuvenation. The following day, you'll probably feel better and will be ready to increase your women's workout routine.

I'd like to share a cool conditioning workout that I came up with a few months ago in order to get stronger and better conditioned in a short period of time. It incorporates the concept of "Ladders" found in Pavel Tstatsouline's book "Power to the People," In this book Pavel shares the training secrets of the Soviet commandos and athletes he used to train with that allowed the Russians to dominate other countries in the Olympics . This is really popular in the Marines and SEALS, and we use this type of training to get really high pure strength and strength endurance levels while still keeping up our long distance running.

What are ladders?

Basically you will pick an exercise and start at the "bottom" of the ladder doing anywhere from 1-5 reps. You will rest the same number of seconds as reps per set. So if I start doing 2 push ups, I would rest 2 seconds, do 4 push ups, rest 4 seconds etc until I reached a specified number. You want to try to do as many reps as possible without going to failure. This is different from a pyramid set in that you stop at the top of ladder in this workout, but I a pyramid set you will go up AND down. This is great for building muscle, but not for strength or muscle definition. Ladders are an excellent tool that can be applied to almost any workout plan. I absolutely love them.

My "Special Forces" workout Finisher

You will need access to a pull-up bar. You will be doing 3 "ladder super sets" of push-ups and pull-ups. This means you will complete one push-up ladder and then immediately transition to pull-ups without rest. After this "super set" (performing 2 exercises back to back), you will take 30-60 sec rest and then repeat at least 2 more times. Focus on getting perfect reps at a medium pace and stop before you feel like you can not do anymore. If I'm getting guys ready for the Marines or SEALS we will do the push up ladders from 2 reps to 14 reps going up by 2 reps at a time, and we do pull-ups from 1 rep to 7 reps going up by 1 rep at a time, and repeat this cycle 4 times. We do this as a bad ass finisher to a long ruck march or run pretty regularly and a lot of guys can max out at least 100 push-ups and 20 pull-ups for our PT tests.

Why this type of training builds a hard and "compact" physique

I love this workout because it combines a few key training principles into a single session. The ladder principle builds strength, stamina, and conditioning since a high volume of reps is accumulated in a short period of time, but your muscles do not get "pumped" because of the rest periods. By super setting pushing with pulling exercises I took advantage of making opposing muscle groups help each other out. Basically alternating pushing with pulling gives each muscle group a rest while at the same time telling the central nervous system to start connecting the neurons that fire the individual muscle fibers. Essentially doing pull-ups will start to help doing pull-ups and vice versa. Pretty cool! The more you compress the time frame of the workout, the more you will release fat burning hormones to make it a conditioning workout as well.

How I used this training method to double my regular pull-ups and master the One arm Pull-up

After doing this workout for the past 6 months I've increased my pull-up max from 20 to 40 reps, and push ups from 100 to 135 in 2 min. I also think it helped me to achieve one arm pull-ups, which I just mastered about a week ago (and which I'll do a post on soon!). Doing this type of high volume, low rep training with perfect form has similar effects to a power-lifting cycle. In fact, a ladder workout is basically an entire power lifting cycle compressed into a few minutes! The really cool thing is that I never feel sore any more from doing burnout sets, but my strength and conditioning level is still improving.

Perhaps one of the most rewarding fitness challenges when it comes to exercises is overcoming 'Plateau'.

We have all been there, doing the same few exercises, and convincing ourselves that it is all that we need. It gets harder as we grow older to challenge ourselves to try something more intense and new.

The truth is when we engage in these repetitive forms of exercise over a long period of time, what we are also doing, is simply telling our bodies what to expect and how to get used to it. Inevitably we will 'plateau' Our bodies will no longer respond to these same exercises, putting our fitness goals in jeopardy.

So what can we do about it?

Fitness and health professionals know that it is more rewarding for us to challenge ourselves every now and again. By introducing something new perhaps to our regimen, an increase in the weights by say a percentage every 2 to 3 weeks, or the intensity will ensure that we are on track and have valid ways by which we can measure our progress.

Likewise when we engage in a new sport, we challenge our muscles to work and respond in ways that that they may not be used to. This benefits us inadvertently using new muscle groups, introducing new exercise forms like agility and body balance to our routines

If you have been running on the treadmill, try challenging yourself by running outdoors. The incline and surface variations alone will challenge your body and heart rate to respond differently. Try switching to body weight exercises from resistance training.

Or if you want to, try something new, a new sport like swimming, tennis, rugby, or squash, the choices are many.

A typical workout plan for the gym

Starts with a gentle body warming exercise. This is usually a gentle run, cycling, or cross training for 5 minutes

Followed by a pre-exercise stretch, this will help your body to prepare for the main workout

For your main workout

Why not try a 25 minutes of cardio exercises on any cardiovascular machines such as a treadmill, cycling, cross trainer or rowing

Follow this by 2 to 3 resistance machines for your upper and lower body. The number of sets and repetitions vary.

Additional free weights and body weight exercises including some core exercises will ensure that you achieve a total body workout

Do not forget the all-important stretch at the end! – Give it at least 15 minutes.

Are you a guitar beginner? Are you an experienced guitarist that's just lost that motivation to play? Do you want some structure to your practising? Or maybe you just want to improve as a guitarist? Then this simple guide is for you. This guide contains 52 simple tips for you to try out so that you can:

Improve technique
Finger Ability
Theory knowledge
Motivation
Timing
Rhythm
Many More

Now please remember that these are just simple tips that you can do, and you will need to read into them further to boost your techniques. But this is the groundwork for this.

Motivation

1) Make a list of songs that you can already play – If you are not feeling that motivated about the guitar, then this tip can be extremely useful and give you a great sense of pride.
2) Make a list of songs that you would like to be able to play within the next; Week
3) Month
4) 6 Months
5) And Year
6) Make a list of what you would like to achieve by playing guitar? . Job? Band? Degree? Songwriting? Just for fun?
7) Set yourself a target. Like a weekly song that you are going to learn.
8) Go to your local library and get a tabulature book of your favourite band to learn. This is free and it is also a timed target, because you have to return the book at a specific date.
9) Go to your local Guitar shop, pick up a guitar and play. Or just stay in the shop long enough to see some other cool dude play. It will Inspire.
10) Watch some YouTube videos of your favourite guitarists.
11) Listen to some songs of your favourite guitarists.
12) Write down why they are your favourite guitarsists and analyse their style, and how you can mimic this.
13) Go to see a local band in your area. It will make you feel good that there are guitarists out there that are doing it, who are not a bigtime band.

Finger Exercises

14) Practice finger exercises as often as possible. If you feel any pain or discomfort the stop immediately.
15) Try the bottle neck technique for longer stretch. Get old Pepsi bottle caps and place them between your fretting fingers whilst not playing guitar. ie Whilst watching the TV
16) Practice different variations of scales, alternating between fingers. Try to start with the pentatonic as it is the easiest and most widely used.
17) Try to learn a new Barre chord shape every week. This is not only a great test and workout for the fingers but its a great way to learn a new chord a week 🙂
18) If you can afford one, buy a Gripmaster.
19) Learn Alternate picking
20) Learn Economy picking
21) Check Steve Vai's workout (although its fucking long) There are some pretty good variations of this workout on the web which are not as long.

Theory

22) Learn the guitar notes along the top string, then move on to the other string.
23) Try to learn a new chord a week
24) Try to learn a new scale a week, until you have mastered them
25) Buy a chord dictionary. This will be your Bible.
26) Learn the five positions of the pentatonic, as this is the most used scale around and a lot of riffs / solos are based on this.
27) Analyse different guitar keys by using the Roman Numeral System.
28) Look at some of your favourite songs and work out what key they are in.
29) Experiment with unusual Time Signatures.
30) Experiment with unusual tunings.
31) Learn Suspended chords
32) Make chord progressions
33) Mess around with different variations of them
34) Go into a guitar shop and try a Left -handed guitar. This should give you a great feel for the guitar and the notes. It should also show you how far you've come with your normal hand.
35) Try writing a basic chord progression
36) Then try to add Time Signature
37) And Melody
38) Key
39) Rhythm
40) Arrangement
41) Lyrics
42) Record your song if you can and revisit it at a later date to see what you could add to it.

Miscellaneous

43) Buy a metronome.
44) start practising with it at different speeds.
45) If you can afford one, buy a drum machine, if not some free one's can be found on the internet
46) Practice with different drum beats and at different tempo's. This will greatly improve your time and your ear for music.
47) Again if you can afford it buy some backing tracks, if not visit here it has a few decent backing tracks.
48) Play with some slower tracks at first and build up to faster, more challenging songs.
49) Find another guitarist to jam with.
50) Try to start rehearsing with a band even if all you do is rehearse. This will improve your improvisation, timing and rhythm.
51) Record yourself playing every 1-3 months and see how much you've improved.
52) The most important tip ever! ENJOY YOURSELF!

So there it is. My 52 tips on Guitar Practice. These were just a basis to get you going and hopefully even if you do one or two of these a week your guitar playing will be improved.