Workout Magazine

Pilates exercises are fantastic for building strength within the core, increasing flexibility, and correcting weaknesses and imbalances in muscles around the spine. Pilates has a multitude of superficial benefits (toned abs, a firm, shapely body and long lean limbs, to name a few), but it can actually serve as a serious ally when it comes to warding off lumbar pain. These exercises strengthen the stabilizing muscles of the core, which support the alignment of the spine’s natural curvature. Improper spinal alignment is associated with a laundry list of ailments, aches, and pains, from things as grim as cancer to as seemingly docile as everyday joint pain. Using workouts like the one below can help prevent spinal misalignment, poor posture, and unnecessary injuries to the lower back. How to do this routine: Make sure that your muscles are warm first; 5-10 minutes of light cardio is ideal. The exercises are broken down into groups of three. Do 12-15 repetitions of each of the exer...

Speed agility training should be a combination of exercises that boost explosive velocity, agility, coordination and cardiovascular endurance. The training moves in this program will make a faster, stronger, and all around more robust athlete. These speed drills are largely plyometric exercises that not only decrease reaction time, but also build stability in ankles, knees, and hip joints to help avoid common sports injuries. These exercises for quicker feet are excellent for any sport, but especially beneficial for those who play soccer, football, rugby, volleyball and basketball. Any athlete who must move quickly and do frequent direction changes on the court or field will benefit immensely from regularly doing programs like this one. Do this routine while wearing a weighted vest for a more intense challenge and a significant improvement in performance. How to do this plan Start with 15 minutes of cardio to warm the muscles and help prevent injury and strains. Do each exercise for ...

It’s no secret that thighs can be the easiest place to gain weight but the hardest place to lose it. Many people would swear that just looking at cheesecake adds an extra dimple, pound, or ripple to legs and glutes. The inner thigh exercises of this workout tone legs the hard (but truly effective) way. It’s hard to find exercises that target this specific body part that don’t require a gym, but this no-equipment routine can easily be done at home. Here’s what you can do to help tone up one of the toughest areas of all. How to do this workout In this second printable routine, do each thigh slimming exercise for the listed time period or the set number of repetitions. Do the whole workout between two and three times through. Do this workout two to three times a week, always with a day of rest in between. 5 Minute Cardio Warm Up (do it just once through) 30 Seconds Agility Dots (on each leg) 15 Crossover Lunges 15 Windshield Wipers 15 Ski Squats 15 Pilates Tease...

This Advanced Pilates Workout should be a challenge, even to those who have solid baseline core strength. If you can't do these exercises with proper form, practice the Beginner/Intermediate 10 Minute Pilates Routine first. This version of the routine is similar to this more advanced workout, but it modifies the exercises to make it easier on those who are still developing core strength. Remember that proper form when doing an exercise is priority, and essential to an exercise being effective. Once you have mastered the beginner level, give this harder version a try; all you need is a thick pilates mat. How to do this program Do each exercise for the indicated time period or designated number of repetitions. Doing the routine once through makes for a roughly 10 minute workout. For an added toning benefit and to burn additional calories, do this routine twice through. 60 Seconds Pilates Hundreds 15 Pilates Side Plank with Leg Raises (on each side) 15 Pilates Kneeling Rear Leg Ra...

Plyometrics workouts are ideal for building explosive speed beneficial to athletes of sports such as basketball, soccer, martial arts, football and many more. These types of programs train the muscles in a very particular way in order to create quick, powerful movements that take little reaction time to conjure. Workouts that use these types of exercises build strong, fast athletes because of the way they stretch and then contract the muscles. This is a plyometric workout that focuses largely on the legs, though they require enough effort from the entire body to garner cardiovascular benefits as well. For the most benefit from these moves, wear a weighted vest while you do this routine. How to do this plan Do each exercise for the listed number of repetitions. Do the entire routine at least twice through, but three times for the most benefit. Warm up: 1 Minute Jumping Jacks 1 Minute High Knees 15 Broad jumps 15 Squat Jacks 15 Burpees 10 Agility Dots on each leg, both directions 15 L...

Balance is essential to an efficient and accurate golf swing. Without it, a golf swing is robbed of both its power and it’s precision. Doing these simple golf balance drills on a regular basis allows you to put your strength into your swing without losing your poise or accuracy. This is just one of the elements of perfecting your golf swing; sports specific stretching and strength training for the sport are just as crucial. If you are serious about improving your game, make all three; flexibility, strength, and balance drills, a regular part of your practicing. Golf Balance Exercises Ice Skaters How to do this exercise: Stand straight up on one leg with other leg a couple of inches off ground straight in front of your body. Slowly swing leg around until pointing straight back, then swing leg back in front. Increase difficulty of this exercise by holding the lifted leg higher. Why you should do this exercise: This builds up coordination through the ankles and hips, as well as...

These exercises can help tighten the muscles on the outside of the thighs, giving you the look of long, lean legs. Cardio can help get this look but only toning moves combined with cardio can truly sculpt your legs into your own personal work of art. Both the video above, and the second printable plan below combine cardio intervals with toning exercises specifically for the area, in order to help you burn fat calories and tone your legs at the same time. The harder you push on the cardio and the more repetitions you do of the exercises the more sculpting results you will see. How to do this workout After a short cardio warm up, do each exercise for the listed number of repetitions. You may want to start at 10 reps if you are new to exercising. Build up to 15 reps as you get stronger. Do the entire routine three times. 15 Lateral Jumps - Back and forth counts as one rep 15 Pilates Side Planks with Leg Raises - repeat on each side 15 Squats with Side Leg Raise - Alternating left and ...

Knee pain is one of the most universal complaints, especially among runners, and most particularly among those who have just started back into a regular running routine. The good news is that with the right approach, you wont have to give up your running routine; you can beat knee pain. Knee Exercises for Runners 3 – Way Leg Extension How this helps: This has by far and large been the most effective exercise for me when I have experienced pain during running. It builds up the four muscles through the top of the thigh that make up the quadriceps, which wrap around the knee, giving it stability and strength. It is very important to use a very light weight (roughly 10-20 pounds, maximum) during this movement. You will need: A Leg Extension Machine (found at the gym), or a chair and a simple ankle weight. How to do it: Sit upright on the Leg Extension Machine. Select a very light weight and position your body so that just one leg is underneath the bar that will lift the weight. E...

Baseball is truly a sport of precision. A game’s score can come down to the accuracy of a pitcher’s throw, the swing of a bat, or speed of one player crossing home plate. Everything about the sport leaves very little room for errors. Training for a sport should involve a multidimensional approach that focuses on improving speed, agility, and strength in a way that is relative to the motions and demands of the sport. These baseball workouts have been specifically selected for their ability to improve an individual’s performance on the field. To increase explosive speed: Plyometric and Cardio HIIT Workout Video The different plyometric exercises included in this routine are fantastic for increasing the essential explosive speed needed by base runners and defensive players in the field. It also includes a cardiovascular-endurance boosting benefit. Implement the training styles in this particular workout routine twice a week. To increase core strength and improve the pow...

Workouts that target pectoral muscles are important for a well-shaped and defined chest. Dudes aren’t the only ones that need to focus on working these muscles; the same moves are also great exercises for saggy breasts- preventing them and even reversing the effects that aging can have on this particular part of the body. Upper body strength is a common weak spot, especially among women. Having strong chest muscles not only gives you a better body shape, but also allows you the ability to do everyday activities effortlessly and with less chance of injury. To get stronger, larger chest muscles, it is crucial to comprehensively work the pectorals through various ranges of motion. Technically, you might get bigger pecs by doing the same canned workout with heavier and heavier weights, over and over again but they aren’t going to be well developed, truly strong, or proportionate unless you approach their development expansively. Developing the pectorals evenly throughout all ...

Baseball is a sport that requires a very unique kind of fitness. During an actual game, there is much less emphasis on endurance than there is on explosive speed and very individual and articulate skill sets, such as pitching strikes, swinging bats and defending the bases to keep an opponent from advancing towards home. This article will detail baseball speed training workouts; plyometrics, exercises, and specific drills that can aid in cutting down the time it takes to get from one place on the field to another. Running Lines The best speed training exercises for any given athlete are going to be the ones that mimic the movement that they need to do quickly within their sport. For baseball, this means that the emphasis should be on taking off; generating a great deal of speed from a dead stop, as happens when someone is waiting on second to steal third or make the sprint for home when a ball has been dropped by a catcher or hit into the field. The best option for players to replicat...

Push ups are an amazingly effective bodyweight exercise that have been around longer than all of the protein powder businesses and Gold’s Gyms put together. The variations and their valuable contribution to any exercise program is a testament that the best kinds of plans to get healthy and fit are really the most simplistic. You don’t necessarily need machines to tone the body, treadmills to burn calories, or even weights to gain strength. Bodyweight exercises are nothing to scoff at, and if maneuvering, hefting or lifting your own bodyweight is not challenging enough for you, it likely means that you aren’t being creative enough in the modifications that are available for the exercise that you’re doing. For example, if you can do push ups from morning until night without breaking a sweat or experiencing muscle fatigue, why not try lifting a limb – or two – off of the ground in order to increase the difficulty for the remaining balancing arm and leg...

Some days you really just don’t feel like going to the gym. Actually, sometimes maybe you don’t even feel like leaving the couch. It’s natural to sometimes not feel like jumping into physical activity, but how do you know when it’s okay to skip a workout, and when you’re just being too lazy? If you are normally an avid exerciser, and you’re feeling tempted to skip a day, you are excused. If you are typically very good about not missing a workout, or you hit the gym on an average of 4 to 5 times a week, you should be able to skip a day without feeling guilty. Just make sure that one or two missed workouts doesn’t turn into weeks and weeks of lounging over lunging. If you are brand-new to an exercise program and on day three you already feel like skipping a workout, override the urge to ditch and push yourself to stick to your new workout habit. If you are brand-new to the habit of exercise and you’re already feeling as though you’d ...

Abdominal muscles have always been the quintessential token of “being fit”, the focal point on which people fix their forward stares and fitness related goals. In all reality, it takes a lot more than just high reps of many assorted abdominal moves to develop an envy worth set of six pack abs or even a flat or moderately toned stomach. Nonetheless, situps do have a role in attaining a noteworthy set of abs; here are the top 10 best abdominal exercises that you can do at home-no equipment required! Crisscross Crunch - The Crisscross Crunch is a triple threat in that it tones the entire abdominal wall (even the stubborn lower abs), tightens the oblique muscles, and burns a decent amount of calories because the entire body is involved in the motion. To get the most out of this abdominal workout, it’s crucial to maintain proper form by not letting your abs “cheat” by bringing your knees in any further than your hip joint. Russian Twist - Do a few reps of t...

Hiking is a fantastic workout for burning calories and building muscles and often times you can even forget completely that you are technically exercising. In this article you will find calories burned by weight, learn what muscles are used most during mountaineering, and even pick up a few exercises that will help you push through your next outing. Hiking builds multiple components of fitness simultaneously, predominantly cardiovascular health and strength – especially of the lower body. What Muscles are Used Hiking? Trekking up hills or mountainsides is hard work, and it engages multiple muscle groups in tandem, all while burning a serious number of calories and increasing your aerobic threshold. Here are the muscles used most strenuously: • Glutes • Quadriceps • Hamstrings • Calves • Abdominals • Lower Back • Obliques • Ankle and Knee Complex • Inside and Outside Thigh To burn even more calories and to engage the upper body further...

The FBI has a particularly rigorous PFT that must be passed in order to make the ranks and become “one of America’s finest”. The FBI Fitness Test might have high standards, but the job is one that is not particularly forgiving when it comes to daily demands and high intensity situations, either. If you want the prestige of the position, you’ve got to prove yourself by passing the FBI PFT. The test calls for a well rounded level of fitness that is without any weak spots. In other words, if you’re just a cardio junkie, you’re likely going to struggle to pass the test. On the flipside, if all your workouts consist of is building massive muscles, you are also going to have trouble passing the test and landing that dream career as an FBI agent. In order to do well on the FBI physical test, you’re going to have to have mastered these three elements of fitness: • Strength • Stamina • Speed Here’s the general gist of what makes up...

Whether or not the idea of climbing into burning buildings interests you, fireman workouts and fitness training tests are a great way to both get fit and gauge your fitness. The best part about firefighter fitness training in terms of both function and getting into top shape is that it is so dynamic. These routines are comprehensive; they don’t have you doing sets of lat pull downs, basic dumbbell curls or jogs on the treadmill at zero incline. Instead, the best firefighter workouts have you hefting your bodyweight up a rope, lugging bags filled with sand up flights of stairs, and turning a heavy tractor tire end over end. Even if you don’t have access to a gym, vacant buildings with flights of stairways to climb, giant tractor tires to flip, or ropes to ascend, you can still train like a fireman to boost your overall fitness or chances of passing their fitness tests. So how do you get fit like a firefighter? It takes a lot of work, and it requires you to be fully engaged ...

Building a basic home gym that will give you a workout just as good (if not better) as your local gym does not have to be a budget buster. In fact, building one can be quite inexpensive. When building cheap home gyms the first thing you should do is decide which aspects of fitness you want to achieve the most, so that you can build your gym based off of those specifics. You don’t need a huge dumbbell set if you don’t plan on lifting more than 10 lbs for any given exercise. If cardiovascular training is your main focus, you can replace the expensive cardio machines options with cheaper, yet just as effective low-tech options- like a cardio step. Below are some of the best options for building cheap home gyms. Home Cardio Equipment - Agility Ladder (See all Soccer Training Aids ) Lay it out in the back yard, in the garage, or anywhere else you have some room and hop, skip, jump, and shuffle your way to a stronger, healthier heart. - Jump Rope (See all Jump Ropes ) This is ...

Barefoot running is a quickly growing trend that many people are interested in, but have a lot of questions about. These reviews are meant to help you choose the best pair for your needs based off of what each particular style is best intended for. Nike Free After 8 years of research, Nike came up with the “Free” style that is supposed to feel as close to shoeless as possible while still offering some cushion and allowing the feet to perform as they would if they were bare. Some people have mixed feelings about using these for long distances. Adidas AdiZero Not boasting any fancy research, this style is built to be light and feel more natural. These are pretty much a regular running shoe just with a bit less cushion, making them lighter and more flexible, getting your feet closer to the ground. Merrell Trail Glove This is pretty much exactly what they call it - a glove. It has almost no cushion; it is mainly a rubber sole to protect your feet and some laces to hold it on. ...

Building strong ankles and feet is paramount in switching to barefoot running injury free. This exercise routine will help build and maintain strength throughout your foot and ankle and lower your chance for injury. Do these exercises without shoes, with 3 to 4 sets of each exercise, increasing the repetitions or time as often as you can. Focus on form and range of motion. Agility Dots: Hop with both feet (or on a single leg, to make the exercise harder) in an “x “ pattern on the floor with the corners of the “x” about one foot apart. Move quickly in an hourglass pattern around the “x” in one direction, then switch directions and repeat the motion. One revolution around is one repetition. Start with 4 in each direction (and on each leg if doing single leg) and increase from there. Single Leg Calf Raises Using a step, try and balance on one leg while doing a calf raise. If it is too difficult to do on just one leg, then start out using both feet unti...

Walking is excellent for your health in so many ways. It releases feel-good endorphins, helps fight off weight gain, regulates blood sugar, increases circulation and therefore the appearance of hair and skin, and the list goes on. The number of calories burned walking will depend on a number of different variables, including but not limited to: • Gender • Bodyweight • Muscle mass • Physical fitness level • Speed • The presence or absence of inclines and intervals • Duration of time spent walking Here’s a general breakdown by weight of calories burned walking for one full hour on a level surface at 4 miles per hour (a quick, brisk pace): Weight (lbs)..…………….....Calories Burned Walking 90 ………………………………………….205 100……………………………...

What is barefoot running and why is it popular? Over the last few years there has been a huge resurgence of this trend. I say resurgence because, of course, this style of running has been around since human kind began. The amount of time humans have been wearing shoes is actually incredibly short. So with all of our technological advances in footwear, why are people choosing to go back to minimalistic styles? It is partly because modern shoes are actually built too well. It gives too much support, too much cushioning, and actually makes our feet weaker. The human body is designed to run without any superfluous support, and that is why many people are trying to lean away from the modern options to something they feel is more natural. Click here for a thorough breakdown/review of these kinds of shoes There are many benefits to minimalistic footwear; mainly building stronger ankles and feet, but before you toss your shoes in the trash there are some things you should know. Avoid injuri...

Don’t feel like going to the gym? With these free fat burning workout videos , you don’t even need a gym membership – or even any equipment, for that matter. The best workouts are always going to be those that consist of moves that engage multiple large muscle groups. You can easily take a simple, conventional toning move and turn it into something more efficient that gives you the most bang for your buck for every moment that you spend on your workout. While it takes a lot of different kinds of training to reach well rounded fitness (strength training, cardio, stretching, etc) total body strength training and HIIT (high intensity interval training) are best for burning off body fat quickly. Apply this concept to the exercises that make up your routines and they become dynamic, fat burning workouts. Here are the best examples of workout videos that put this principle to work. Best Fat Burning Workout Videos HIIT - High intensity interval training workouts use shor...