Category: Exercise and fitness

This is a great whole body exercise. Even though it is mainly a back exercise it also engages legs, core, and arms. Make sure to put enough weight to allow you to perform between 10 to 12 reps. Repeat 3 to 5 times.

Hip thrust is excellent exercise to isolate the glute muscles. However, you must focus on squeezing your bum and holding the contraction on the top part of the movement. You know if you are doing it right, when you start feeling cramps on your butt;)

This squat variation add a little more challenge to a smith squat, helping develop nice looking legs. Push from your heels and thrust hips forward at the end of the movement to engage glute muscles.

Leg day is my favorite workout. I’m trying to build my legs (more definition and a little bit of size wouldn’t hurt) but sometimes I get bored with mainstream exercises. So I’m always looking for ways to make my workouts more interesting and challenging.

This morning I had a killer training session which compelled me to share it with you;) I choose three exercises to superset (perform back to back with no rest in between sets).  I started with a heavy compound movement, followed by a single leg also compound, and finished with a single joint to recruit those extra muscle fibers. The result was a massive pump and a great feeling of accomplishment.

Here goes what I did:

One of my clients said that she is very competitive and loves challenges. So this week, I gave her a massive challenge: completing 1000 repetitions of several exercises in the shortest period of time possible. She finished the whole thing in about 50 minutes. Do you think you can do better (or even finish it)? It goes like this:

• 40 plank shoulder taps
• 30 squats with med ball
• 20 TRX rows
• 10 burpees

Rest (as short as possible)

In my experience as a fitness professional, I could say that most people who join a gym do so in the hopes of changing their looks, and weight-loss is certainly one of the most common fitness goals out there. Even though regular physical activity is definitely an important piece of the equation, when it comes to slimming down, exercise alone may not be enough. This means that everyone trying to shrink their waistline should pay close attention to their diets.

To comprehend how weight-loss occurs, one must first understand the principles of energy balance. The set of chemical reactions that happen in our body is called metabolism. Metabolism is the balance between the energy that comes in through the food we consume and the energy that goes out through our daily activities. However, according to the law of conservation of energy, energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed in form. For the human body, this means that whatever energy we consume but do not burn is stored as fat.

Sculpting comes from the word sculpture which refers to a structure that have been carefully carved or molded by very experienced hands resulting in harmonic lines that please the eyes. Well, body sculpting is not much different.

One thing to keep in mind is that as with the plastic arts, body sculpting is a long-term project not an easy-fix measure. You may have seen those late-night infomercials promising a super-toned perfect body if you only use their gadget every day for five minutes. Those ads are mesmerizing – it looks so simple! Then we buy their product and soon enough realize that we’ve been duped. The problem is that they hire very fit models who have been working on their physique for years, physiques that we all dream to have one day.

Does this mean that you will never get a better body unless you were born with good genes? Absolutely not – all it means is that you need to train appropriately.

Body sculpting is not much different than body building. Both use weight lifting techniques to improve body composition, aka reduce body fat and increase muscle mass. I would say that the term “body sculpting” is used to sell strength training to females because the term “body building” scares women away.

The goal of body sculpting is to increase lean body mass as you decrease fat deposits, creating a more defined toned look. Most women don’t want to show off some serious muscle definition; all they want is to be firm and not jiggle. However, to get this look, you must lift weights and lift a little heavy. All right, calm down – YOU WILL NOT GET BULKY! Trust me on this one; getting muscles to grow is hard work. You would need way more than a couple of strength training sessions per week to get big.

Many women seem to go to the gym every day, but can’t seem to get the results they expect. They spend hours on cardio machines in the hopes of getting toned legs but in reality they are just wasting their muscles away. Don’t get me wrong – cardiovascular training is a valuable tool to improve heart and lungs health, but it won’t help you building muscles. Keep in mind that one of the most important principles of training is specificity which means that the results you get are closely related to the type of training you do. Therefore, if you want a lean body that shows off some muscle definition, you must train for this outcome.

Ask yourself what you really want to accomplish. If it is a sculpted, toned, firm look, then you must lift weights in order to build some muscle. And I don’t mean doing bicep curls with “Barbie dumbbells” (those pink one-kilo dumbbells reserved for females) for tons of repetitions. You must choose exercises and loads that challenge different muscle groups to elicit change. Otherwise it is just a waste of your time.

Now if you never trained with weights and have no clue how to start, you are better off hiring a trainer to help you set up a balanced program that addresses your particular needs. You can discuss with your PT what you want to achieve, how much time you can commit and by when you would like to get the results.

Keep in mind that it is a lifelong process – not a short-term goal. As you become more proficient, your body will suffer adaptations and you will need to redesign your program in order to keep getting results. A competent trainer can guide you through this process and help you get the best looking body you’ve ever had.