Reprinted article by Frederic Patenaude
What if I told you that you could get in the best shape of your life even if you didn’t have time to exercise, even if you were busy, and even if you didn’t know where to start?
I’m talking about developing an enviable physique, whether it means increased endurance and heart function, tight and sexy thighs, butt and legs, or muscular arms.
There are tons of exercises that can give you results, but if you want those results fast, why not focus on the very best exercises – the “secret weapons”? Although these exercises are well-known, you might not have realized their importance or how to incorporate them into your routine – until today.
#1 Squats: The squat is one of the most basic all-around fitness exercises that you can do, and it is one of the best. It works several body parts at once, including your core, quads, hamstrings and calves. There are many different types of squat. For an intense workout in 5 minutes a day, I suggest trying the squat-based Lightning Speed Fitness Program, from Roger Haeske, click here for a free report.
No matter what you do, you should incorporate squats into your routine. If you train for strength, squat using a barbell or holding dumbells in your hands. If you want to train for endurance or cardio, use body-weight squats such as in Roger’s Lightning Speed Fitness Program.
#2 Pushups: This exercise is no secret, but not enough people take advantage of it. Many women and even men still have weak, flabby arms and chests. The best way to develop them is by starting to incorporate daily pushups into your routine. They work the chest, shoulders, triceps, back and abs (core).
The key with pushups is to incorporate different kinds of pushups into one routine. If you cannot do a standard “man” pushup, start with the “girl” version on your knees. Then work your way toward doing regular pushups.
EVOLUTION OF THE PUSHUP:
#1 Wall pushup: Stand facing a wall. The farther your feet are from the wall, the harder it will be. Lean in toward the wall.
#2 Counter Pushup: Pushup leaning from the edge of a counter.
#3 Knee Pushup: the standard “girl” pushup on your knees
#4 Feet Elevated: you’ve now reached the regular pushup level, congratulations!
Other pushups that rule:
Wide Hands – place hands on the floor at a greater distance apart (past the shoulders). This works even more back muscles.
Close Hands – Place hands on the floor closer to each other (maybe a foot apart or less). Very difficult. Feet Elevated – Place your feet on a chair or other object and push up from the ground. More difficult. Handstand Pushup – This is my favorite pushup EVER and the ultimate exercise to build strong shoulders. If you’re a man, you need to be able to do this one.
Go to a handstand, your feet against the wall, then lower your head to the floor and push up. If you can do a few of those, you’re good. To help you succeed in mastering this pushup, you can first use your toes to help you “crawl” the wall, or have a friend hold your feet and help you through it. At first, your goal should be to simply stay in a handstand with your feet facing the wall.
#3 Walking or Running Hills: You want extreme health, a fit body and a healthy heart? Try walking or running up hills. This is one of the best exercises for overall fitness. So go find hills in your area, and dare to walk the hell out of them!
#4 Pullups & Chinups: Many women lack upper body strength. Unfortunately, this can lead to injuries and lack of ability, as many common movements such as lifting a box (or a child!) require strong upper body muscles.
It’s wise for all women to strengthen these muscles by working on the two best exercises for them: pushups and pullups. Just because pullups and chinups are hard, it doesn’t mean women can’t do them! In fact, you *should* be able to lift your own body with your arms. In nature, this sort of movement is very basic and in fact a matter of survival.
And for men, the benefits of pullups and chinups cannot be emphasized enough: you will build a strong back and enviably muscular arms.
For women, I would set a goal to do at least 1 complete pullup and 2 complete chinups, with a future “ultimate” goal to do at least 3 pullups and 5 chinups.
To get started, use the assisted pullup machines at the gym, or follow the following routine:
1. Hang for 30 seconds or as long as possible in the position of having pulled your body up all the way from a bar. You can use a chair to get in that position. When you feel you can’t hold yourself any longer, lower gently in a slow and controlled manner. Do this 5 times.
2. Get on a chair and check out what kind of a bend you need in your arms before you can successfully pull yourself up. Then do it five times from there. Improve from there.
3. Hang from a bar and see how far you can pull yourself up 5 times in a row.
Do these three exercises 2-3 times a week and make sure to warm up properly beforehand (by doing some jumping jacks for a few minutes, for example).
For men, a good benchmark for strength would be to be able to do a few series of 5 pullups with 10% of your weight attached to your body (as extra weight).
#5 The Plank: This is a powerful isolation move used in “Pilates and Yoga and it works the abs, back, arms and legs as well as your internal abdominal muscles, which is your core strength!
To do it, lie face down on mat with your elbows resting on the floor next to your chest. Go to a pushup position while resting on your elbows or hands. Then squeeze the abs and keep your body in a straight line. Hold on in there for 30-60 seconds and repeat as many times as you can. Start by doing the plank on your knees and gradually work your way up.
So there you have it, 5 powerful exercises that *everyone*, man or woman, should include in their routine for functional fitness and strength. Now, get started and tell me about it!
Frederic Patenaude, is the author of the best-selling e-book “The Raw Secrets.” He is currently giving away free access to his private library of over 100 exclusive articles along with a subscription to his newsletter Pure Health & Nutrition. Visit http://www.fredericpatenaude.com while charter subscriptions last.
For the last two nights, I have enjoyed ice cream that as only taken me five minutes to prepare. Yes, you read that right. Ice cream in five minutes. And it only takes two ingredients. Yes, two ingredients. I have to thank April at http://rawfoodpassion.blogspot.com for the recipe.
So on to the good stuff:
Strawberry Banana Ice Cream Dream…
Strawberry Banana Ice Cream Dream:
2 Frozen Bananas
1/4 cup of frozen Strawberries
Directions: Blend until smooth and creamy. Then devour the ice cream!
Chocolate Ice Cream
2 frozen bananas
1 tablespoon of raw chocolate
Directions: Put the frozen bananas in your blender, add the raw chocolate and mix until you get your desired consistency!
Go ahead give it a try.
It can be really quite amazing: when we first start paying more attention to what we eat and really think about it properly, inevitably we will start to become increasingly aware of old patterns and habits around our eating habits that also aren’t serving us and begin to question those too.
It’s not uncommon for us to realise, for example, that previously we would eat:
a) When we’re not hungry
b) Because someone offered us something and we didn’t want to say no
c) Because we were taught always to clean our plate
d) Because we’ve always eaten it, it has positive associations or it’s a family custom
e) Because we were bored, tired, stressed, depressed, feeling stuck or wanted some kind of stimulation or numbing to occur
As the purer foods start to come in, all of these things and many more besides come up for the assessing, and it’s here that the journey to food freedom really begins.
Because when we start becoming more aware about not just what we eat, but how, when, why, where and even with whom, that’s when a whole can of worms can be opened up. And this is where the new chapter starts and everything that has gone before – everything that has never really served us – comes fully onto our radar, and we then have the choice as to whether we “keep, replace or modify” that particular behaviour or habit around food.
For my own part and those of many others, I know that this isn’t always easy. In fact, so entrenched are our beliefs, habits and choices around food that over the years we have come to see them as part of us rather than something we can choose to continue with or let go of like an old worn out coat.
For this reason, on week 1 of the 30 Days To Raw group support program (which I ran many times over a 3-year period), rather surprisingly to course participants who often joined expecting me to tell them what to do and what not to do, we didn’t spend barely any time at all discussing what food we were eating, or “should” be eating or devising menu plans – as this is way too far head of the game; instead we spent the first 7 days focussed entirely on developing AWARENESS as that is essentially what would take each participant from a sense of powerlessness to a new, much more more enlightened and empowered place altogether. It’s from here that we could begin to see what they were dealing with and therefore could start to address each limiting belief or habit one by one, in order to chart the path to freedom – which is really very easy once the initial clarity has been achieved.
So how can you begin to do the same thing for yourself?
In the 30 Days To Raw Program we took it from the top and the top is taking a look at…
Eating only when hungry
This is the single most important habit to acquire if you want to be as lean, radiant and energetic as possible. This is quite simply because when you eat more than your body needs you are likely to gain excess weight (unless you have a body type or metabolism which means that you can get away with it or poor absorption which means your body won’t be fully “receiving” most of what you eat), and also, as digestion utilises more energy than any other physical activity, your body won’t have the energy available to put into other more useful activities such as cleaning house, and you won’t feel as energetic as you could because your body is busy processing and digesting your food.
So, start here and ask yourself:
Why Awareness Is Your First Step to Food Freedom
Do you eat only when hungry? If not, why not?
The longer you can stay with this question and let all the many answers spring up, the more you’ll be able to clearly see where you’ve been limiting yourself in the past.
Some common examples of answers to this question are:
“I eat when I’m not hungry…
“…when I’m sad”
“…when I’m tired but don’t want to go to bed”
“…because I just enjoy food too much”
“…because my kids don’t finish their meals and I don’t want to waste it”
“…because the clock says it’s time”
“…because I don’t know what else to do”
“…because I was cleaning out the fridge and found a piece of cheese that needed eating”
“…because the cake looked too good not to eat”
Needless to say, these are but a few examples of many!
You will have your own list, but what I can tell you for a fact is that 99% of people that I have taught and coached over the years say that they don’t only eat when hungry, and of course, this is where I started too! (The good news is this can be completely reversed).
So, how do we start to rectify this?
There’s many things you can do, but the first step is to get clarity on your own reasons why – knowledge is power, remember! (Or as Anthony Robbins would more correctly say, knowledge is power when you use it!)
When you have your list, the next step is to dig a bit deeper and ask, “why do I eat when I’m…?” (fill in the blank). Is it because of a fear, a habit, an addiction, or something else?
Example: Sarah frequently eats when she’s stressed out at work. She’ll constantly be nibbling fruit, nuts, crisps or some kind of snack at her desk throughout the day, and the more stressed she gets the more she eats. Naturally, every time she does this on one level she feels marginally better (partly due to “getting her teeth into something”) but simultaneously she starts to feel more tired, more anxious and of course her weight is on the increase, which creates further stress still.
Digging one layer deeper, we discover that Sarah’s underlying fear is of not being skilled enough to do the job she’s in (and of being “found out”) which in turn undermines her self-esteem.
From there, with the awareness that she is putting on weight from the overeating combined with the above, she then starts to feel that she’s not just inadequate but fat and unattractive too.
And so it goes on. Which drives the eating further because now she feels bad about all of it!
And now she’s eating for stress and pain.
From this one example it’s not hard to see why one simple problem can not only lead to over eating but also escalate into something much bigger and very quickly.
What would be more appropriate is to STOP and for Sarah to really examine what aspects of the job feel overwhelming, addressing each one in turn to see how they can be rectified – whether that be through lightening the load, delegation of the jobs Sarah isn’t trained for, or even changing jobs.
So as you can see, though we started with chaos, by just taking a couple of minutes to really look, to really become AWARE about what the issues are we can prevent the downward spiral, or heal an existing one, and very quickly begin to create order, balance, harmony and peace once more.
And so this is why awareness absolutely is the first step on the path to food freedom, and by starting here only greater strength, clarity and power can ensue.
© 2011 Karen Knowler: Karen Knowler, The Raw Food Coach publishes “Successfully Raw” – a free weekly eZine for raw food lovers everywhere. If you’re ready to look good, feel great and create a raw life you love get your FREE tips, tools and recipes now at www.TheRawFoodCoach.com.
Welcome to Joiful Thoughts
As a professional full-time Associate Broker of real estate, vegan, and woman who does her best to look for the positive in life, my blog features real estate information, recipes, tips on living a healthier lifestyle, motivational stories, and quirky tidbits. Joiful Thoughts comes to you weekly up to three days a week. I would appreciate feedback and comments--I enjoy ongoing dialogue, and I'm happy to answer your questions.