Workout Magazine

Sit-ups, for the most part, is like counting cash in your wallet. In a way, they both feel good. But counting your money does not help you earn more money. Banging out a bunch of ab-burning sit-ups also but does not mean when you stand up you will have a six-pack. Your core, which refers to the muscles in your abdomen and torso, function to stabilize the torso and to transfer force from your lower body to your upper body. This happens through the core’s ability to resist extension and rotation, as opposed to the movement of the spine, which produces extension and rotation. RELATED: The Tell-All Guide To Six-Pack Abs The problem though, with most core exercises is that they encourage spinal movement instead of spinal stabilization. Let’s fix that. Replace your existing crunch and sit-up routine with the following program: 1. 90/90 Breathing If you’re reading this article right now, chances are you’re breathing (if you’re not, please take a second to resume d...

What’s the first thing you want in the morning? A cup of coffee? Food? A warm shower? Sure, we all want those things. But before any of that, there’s usually one thing that trumps it all: Five more minutes. And so we hit the snooze button. Maybe we hit it twice. Maybe we turn the damn thing off and wake up 20 minutes later than we’re supposed to, brush our teeth while we’re taking a shower. Then get dressed while we’re making coffee and zip out the door like a tornado, hoping that you didn’t forget to turn the lights off and surely forgetting to eat something. RELATED : Nine Morning Rituals That Will Change Your Life For most successful people though, the morning is the most critical time of the day. In fact, it’s the time when you set yourself up to be your most productive, your most efficient, before you’ve taken a single step into the office. But for some of us, it’s the worst time. It’s when you’re waking up before the sun, drowsy and hungry and a little cran...

Marcus Samuelsson is one of the most acclaimed chefs of the moment. Not only is the Ethiopian-born, Swedish-raised chef a five-time James Beard Award winner, he’s personally cooked in the White House for former President Barack Obama and is well-known as a regular as a judge on Food Network’s Chopped . The latest addition to his portfolio is Marcus in the swanky new MGM National Harbor in Maryland – just a stone’s throw away from Washington, D.C. The restaurant has soul with soul food. In between bites of the signature deep fried chicken, we spoke with him about his new joint, his benevolent partnership with Stella Artois and Matt Damon, and how he stays in shape in between it all in this edition of FUELED . As you know, I’m passionate about creating exquisite cuisine with unique, bold flavor profiles. One of my favorite ways to infuse flavorful depth into my dishes is using Pure Leaf Tea House Collection, @Pureleaf’s super-premium, organic line of i...

Head to any barre or yoga class and, good news, the women will likely outnumber men 24 to 1. Linger around the squat rack, though, and well -- not the same situation. Still, strength training is having a major moment, and women are in on all the barbell-toting, dumbbell-thrusting fun. With strong female role models like CrossFit champ  Katrin Davidsdottir , called the Fittest Women on Earth, paving the way, more and more women are stepping up to the bench. You may be used to getting dating advice from your best girl pal, so why not fitness advice? We tapped some of New York City’s hottest female trainers for their top strength training tips. 1. "Wake up your muscles up before you start to train." — Ally Love, Peloton Instructor and founder of Love Squad ✨So many great things ✨to be grateful for, all I have to do is just remember to look around?{PS I'm celebrating my 100TH RIDE @pelotoncycle tomorrow so COME!} Life will never be perfect, Ive learned how to ma...

To cut it as a professional boxer you need far more than mere muscles. Sure, assault rifle arms and iron chins help the cause considerably, but what separates the good from the all-time greats is a special kind of mental fortitude. The inner grit that sees a beaten fighter in the gym the dawn after a KO, or a champion that eschews a richly-deserved blowout in favour of skipping and some bag work. David Haye knows the significance of mental strength more than most. After vowing not to box past his 31st birthday, the Hayemaker’s plan to unify the Heavyweight division by conquering Wladimir Klitschko in 2011 went awry – on account of a broken toe and the Ukrainian’s then-invincibility – and Haye has since retired and returned on two occasions. It’d be easy to dismiss Haye’s actions purely as a quest for cash (like choosing to fight Dereck Chisora on a boxing licence from Luxembourg in 2012, or making a ring return last year on Dave (a TV channel bette...

Most guys want the same thing when they hit the gym: girls to gawk at. Kidding! Wait, no I’m not. But other than the girls, they want to build some muscle, lose some fat, and feel “in shape.” And don’t even question me; if I had a dollar for every time I heard a guy talk about Brad Pitt’s physique in Fight Club… So due to their popularity, these goals are what we’ll define as “your best workout routine.” And to reliably achieve and sustain these goals you don’t need a fad workout or “shred” program; you need to understand a few fundamental principles. Like Mr. Belding, principles don’t get old. (See what I did there?) But seriously, most of what we know and put into practice from exercise science -- yes it actually is a science -- has been known for quite some time. In this piece I am going to focus on principles, and most certainly not the “holy-crap-it’s-March-and-summer-is-around...

It’s entirely possible that younger readers haven’t even heard of P90X, and for good reason -- it’s nearly old enough to be an antique. Launched in 2003 via inescapable infomercials that every night owl at the time was familiar with, P90X (and Tony Horton, the trainer and co-creator) is now synonymous with home fitness the way long-forgotten names like Tae-Bo and Jane Fonda used to be. That distinction isn’t without merit. For starters, it was one of the first programs of its kind to be all but explicitly targeted at men. The “X” stands for “extreme,” after all, which I assure you was a savvy marketing ploy back in the TRL days. More broadly speaking, it was designed for people who were already in shape as opposed to couch potatoes too lazy (or embarrassed) to go to a gym. This was not “6-pack abs in just minutes per day.” This was supposed to be hard. Its difficulty was its selling point. RELATED: Forget The Gym? Here's ...

For every reason in favour of working out, there’s an excuse waiting in the wings to keep you from becoming that guy who sits down and does not have flab mushrooming over his belt. But maybe there’s more to it than just being lazy? Maybe. We asked integrative psychologist, health and nutrition coach, and personal trainer Leanne Hall  about how external factors affect different types of physical activity. Get your head right Generally speaking, perfect training conditions don’t exist. And even if they did, you’d still find something to whinge about. “The brain will nearly always come up with 100 reasons why the conditions aren’t ‘perfect’, because there is no such thing as perfect!” Hall recommends thinking less about excuses and instead taking a philosophical and holistic approach to workouts: acknowledge the chicken-egg connection between mind and body and nurture both.   Sex: It’s what’s for breakfast… ...

The Dad Bod Project is AskMen editor Ian Taylor’s attempt to take a pre-emptive strike on his misshapen, doughy torso before he becomes a father. He’ll be charting his efforts in weekly articles that cover the workouts, nutrition and black-belt time management required to get into shape, stay fit and beat the dad bod. A lot can change in six weeks. I declared war on my dad bod at the start of the year and now, just over half way through the campaign, it feels like I’m winning most of the battles, even if an all-out victory with street parties and Victoria sponge remains some way off. My official halfway measurements are below and I’ve lost more weight than I thought I would. Six kilos have gone missing in the last six weeks, and I’m not complaining – but I am surprised. Being lanky, I didn’t necessarily need the scales to tip dramatically. Body composition is my priority, replacing as much fat as possible with muscle – especially around my bread-bin midriff. Thankful...