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Knowing Your Fitness Basics Will Keep You on Track

The term fitness basics refers to all of the things you should know about going into and beginning your new fitness regimen. Fitness basics can help you explore the world of fitness in a healthier, guided way. One of the fitness basics is realizing that getting into shape or just changing your body for the better is an ongoing process.

Preparation and motivation are key elements

The first of the fitness basics is that you must work with your fitness trainer to determine that the program you are considering is safe for you. Then, you must mentally prepare yourself for the task at hand, which is no easy job. When you prepare for these fitness basics and set goals it will be easier to keep yourself motivated, which is important because motivation is a key element to fitness success.

Next of the fitness basics is considering how often you will exercise. Any fitness expert will tell you one of the best ways to start is getting involved in a fitness program that you’ll stick with. When you’ve planned everything and obtained the necessary equipment and clothing you should be motivated to get your body into shape. Read the fitness articles below to learn the techniques that will get you to the next level of fitness. Before long you’ll look better and feel like taking your body to the standards set by many of the fitness models you’ll see on this site.

If you're serious about bodybuilding, then check out our new MenBodyBuilding site.

• Abdominal Exercises and a Beginner’s Guide to Getting Fit: Part 1
• Abdominal Exercises and a Beginner’s Guide to Getting Fit: Part 2
• Abdominal Exercises and a Beginner’s Guide to Getting Fit: Part 3
• Begginer's (or re-beginner's) guide to getting fit
• Benefits of Flexibility Training
• Effective Ways of Measuring Progress
• How to Build More Muscle in Less Time with Supersets
• Safety Precautions and Basic Gym Safety
• Stretching Principles and Guidelines

Stop night binges before it's too late

It's 10 p.m. and another active day is winding down for the typical bodybuilder.

His contest fast approaching, he's training three hours a day on a 1000-calorie diet, and the fat is falling off him like dead skin from a snake.

He's looking good but he feels like hell. His blood sugar level is lower than the Dow-Jones index of 1929. Hunger fuels his fevered mind with a craving unknown to the bleakest refugee camps of Somalia. He finds himself tempted by barely edible concoctions that would leave even a pregnant woman red-faced.

And so, in a moment of weakness, he opens the door of his refrigerator and, like some food-mad Faust, sells his soul to the demon Baskin-Robbins. Fifteen-hundred calories of guilt later, with his pancreas spewing enough insulin to cure a third of the world's diabetics, he lies disconsolately in bed. His diet has been beaten by an iron hand in an ice-cream glove.

Late-night binges can spell ruin for the bodybuilder who's trying to trim down. All those calories so late in the day have nowhere to go but to fat. The empty calories of ice cream, or any other sweet, are best avoided at all times, but if they are eaten in the morning, they can at least be burned through the day.

The late-night binge is really a modern problem. With the advent of electricity, and later television, people were more inclined to keep later hours. As the evening wore on hunger grew until finally they raided the fridge for a snack before bed. That snack, however, could be more accurately described as a carnival of intemperance which left its crumb-flecked victim on the brink of cardiac arrest.

Those nocturnal temptations are even greater for the dieting bodybuilder. Chances are he is unswervingly strong all day, living on tuna, water and air, but as the sun goes down so goes his willpower, and, in turn, his diet.

Of course, he could always retire earlier; he won't feel hungry if he isn't awake. But many bodybuilders stay up late intentionally to keep their metabolisms running high. They burn more calories awake than asleep, so it's not uncommon for top champs to get by on only four or five hours of sleep a night in the last few weeks before a contest. Their metabolic momentum is so great they feel, in the argot of the game, wired. But by staying up late they give temptation time to weaken them.

According to Henry Jordan, MD, director of the Institute for Behavioral Education at King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and author of Eating Is Okay and The Doctor's Calorie Plus Diet, we eat at night because we are tired.

"If you've seen movies about the Korean conflict," he said, "you'll remember that the Chinese Reds brainwashed their American prisoners to get information. One of their devious tricks was to keep waking them up at odd hours, making sure they never slept for more than a few consecutive minutes. This trick usually worked. Something similar to this technique is working on you late at night when you're exhausted and you finally decide to have a bite before nodding off. You should be aware that this fatigue factor is working and that it lowers your resistance. You might even want to eat your evening snack or protein shake such as BSN Syntha 6 a little earlier, before you're too tired."

Jordan does not advise his patients to stop eating at night, but to eat less, and to watch what they eat.

"It's a grim fact of life that the kinds of foods we crave at night often differ from those we enjoy by day," he said. "How many of us have sudden eleven o'clock urges for salad or lima beans? Instead, we become obsessed by pizza or coffee cake. One of my patients craved certain sweets so strongly that she'd often get into her car and drive fifteen or twenty miles to find a shop that was open ate."

Remember, the number of calories you consume each day marks the difference between being ripped and being fat. If you eat at night to suppress your hunger, don't do it with a lot of high-calorie food. A bowl of ice cream, while satisfying to the palate, has far more calories than, say, a chicken breast, and yet the chicken will probably make you feel fuller. The equal amount (in calories) of spaghetti is even more filling.

You can help diminish that late-night hunger by budgeting your day's calorie allotment so you have a few hundred left over for supper. The more you eat at 6 p.m. the less likely you'll stuff yourself at midnight. Of course, this doesn't mean supper should be a glorious repast complete with suckling pig, trifle and dancing girls — at least not the pork and dessert. Breakfast should always be your heartiest meal.

Loneliness and boredom can drive you to binge. Nights on your own can seem particularly long if they're uneventful. Idleness makes you more vulnerable to the lure of the pantry. In the day there are plenty of distractions at work or school to take you out of yourself, but at night, with nothing to do but leaf through the richly illustrated pages of Bon Appetit, you could be a basket case before Johnny Carson shares humorous tidbits with you.

So get busy. Go to films, take aerobic dance, write letters, get a hobby, but for your sake don't sign on for gourmet cooking classes. You cannot fling yourself into a pot of temptation and hope to survive.

Bodybuilders should consider another aspect of late night binges before they cram their maws with filet mignon and pecan pie moments before the Sandman's arrival: That late supper could be your last.

"The situation created by a large evening meal is highly conducive to the production of arteriosclerotic lesions in the arteries of the heart and brain," said Dr. Paul Roen of the Clinic for the Study of Arteriosclerosis. The disease, which thickens and hardens arterial walls, is the major cause of heart attacks and strokes.

In his experience as a training consultant to numerous champion bodybuilders, Joe Welder found that the late-night binge isn't the only destructive practice that hurts your chances of shaping up. Even midday foraging in the fridge is a diet danger.

"A bodybuilder might have a handful of peanuts one hour, and an apple the next, and some pretzels after that," he said. "It might not seem like much each occasion, but cumulatively it can mean a lot of unnecessary calories through the day. You've got to watch yourself at all times. Those little snacks can add up."

There are two ways to eliminate temptation: eat it, or never bring it into the house in the first place. The choice is yours.

Should I Exercise At Home or The Gym?

Choosing some home exercising vs. a couple hours spent in the gym is mainly up to each individual. The importance of exercise truly lies in doing it on a regular basis.

Regular physical activity has enormous benefits as it increases your fitness level and capacity for exercise. The beauty in it is that the bid is extremely broad as it includes brisk walking, jumping rope, jogging, bicycling, cross-country skiing, dancing, swimming, weight lifting, aerobic and more. And it can be started any time you have some spare time to enjoy it.

Whether it is performed in a gym or at home, let’s take a closer look to each side’s strong points and we leave the choice to you. Enjoy your time and have a pleasant and effective session!

Exercising in the gym:
• Targeted moves in a group can be quite stimulating
• Due to the program of the respective gym you make regular sessions
• You may get useful information on the execution of different moves from a professional instructor
• According to the equipment of a gym, after some exercise you may take a relaxing sauna. Exercising at home:
• You may enjoy the total privacy and comfort.
• You can save money. More and more people are choosing to invest in home exercise equipment as a convenient and possibly cheaper alternative than going to the gym.
• When you exercise at home you are not stopped by the rain or busy traffic to get to the set.
• Workout schedule is not dictated by the gym's hours.

Anyway it is highly recommended to ask an expert before starting to take exercises either at home or at tha gym.It also doesn't matter if you have weight loss or fitness goals. A professional can help you choose the best fitting type of physical activity for your personality, lifestyle, age and health conditions.