8 Ways to Be Fitter at 70 Than You Were at 25

Liz Hodgkinson shows that age ge is no barrier to fitness.

By rights, my exercise regime should be slowing down now that I have hit threescore years and ten. Instead, it gets tougher all the time. Over the past year, I have added CrossFit, Insanity and boxing to my regular exercise programme of weights, cardio, spin and treadmill – or at least my instructors have. Rather than making concessions to my age, they are working me ever harder, and although it’s an effort to get to the gym at 6.30 every morning and put myself through increasingly difficult paces, the results - and the compliments - are more than worth it. Read more

The Right Way to Train Your Core

If you're going to put in the time and effort, you may as well get the best results. Here's the right way to train your core.

There’s a lot of misinformation out there on how to best train your abs. Take a look at any late-night infomercials for a prime example; you’ll see no shortage of ab machines that guarantee ripped, 12-pack results — and most often with nonfunctional movements demonstrated by models who have clearly been doing more than crunching or twisting on a machine. Read more

The 7 Best Strength Exercises You Aren't Doing

 These seven strength exercises can improve your overall fitness by hitting important muscle groups that you may be neglecting.

Every exercise in your strength program has a purpose — to help you build strength and muscle, burn fat, and improve your fitness. While there’s a time and a place for nearly any exercise under the right circumstance, some movements are simply more effective than others. And it should be no surprise that the ones that build a foundation for skills that you’ll use in real life will be the most beneficial for improving your fitness and quality of life. Read more

Hardcore Plyometric Workout

Check out this hardcore plyometric workout with JamCore Girl Lisa Clapperton. It is definitely NOT just for women.

Do We Really Need Abdominal Training?

Abdominal training can be achieved from a broader training program, says Jean-Claude Vacassin.

Abdominal training, or core training to give it is more popular name, divides opinion more than perhaps any other aspect of fitness. Some people will have us believe that specific core training is everything if you want to move well and stay injury-free, whilst others will assert that you don't need specific core exercises to train the abdominals, you just need to do the big exercises, such as squats, deadlifts and push ups, correctly.

But who is right and how much specific core training, if any, do we need? Read more

Running 7 Minutes a Day Cuts Heart Disease Risk in Half

To cut your risk of heart disease in half, you only need to run about a mile a day, according to a new study.

... In a new study from Iowa University, the University of South Carolina and the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, researchers examined the benefit that running had on slashing heart disease risk. They looked at the lives of 55,137 adults between ages 18 and 100.

What they found is an encouragement to anyone of any age, suffering from any sort of circulatory problem. Runners had a 30 percent lower risk of death across the board. Even better, daily runners had a 45 percent lower risk of death from heart disease and stroke.

The most remarkable aspect of the study was the average running time needed to obtain the positive results; heart disease risk was nearly cut in half for runners who ran just seven minutes a day! Read more

Burpees: Modified and Beginner Variations

Burpees are a great whole-body exercise, but they are just too hard for some beginners. This video shows several ways to modify burpees to make them a little easier when you're starting out.

5 Fitness Benchmarks Every Man Should Be Able to Meet

In 1926, physical culturist and strongman Earle Liederman wrote a book entitled Endurance. In it, Liederman says that every man should be physically fit enough to save his own life in an emergency.

According to Liederman: “Every man should be able to save his own life. He should be able to swim far enough, run fast and long enough to save his life in case of emergency and necessity. He also should be able to chin himself a reasonable number of times, as well as to dip a number of times, and he should be able to jump a reasonable height and distance."

Liederman set out five fitness benchmarks that any man possessing adequate fitness should be able to meet:

• Swim a half a mile or more
• Run at top speed two hundred yards or more
• Jump over obstacles waist high or more
• Pull-ups - 15-20+
• Dips - 25+

How to Train to Meet the Five Fitness Benchmarks

If you need some fitness goals to motivate you to train hard, these are good ones since they are functional and have practical value. For any that you can't already do, you will need to train three non-consecutive days a week.  Assuming you fall short in all five, you would set up your training schedule to train pull-ups, dips, and swimming on the same days, and sprinting and jumping on alternate days.

Pull-ups

Test yourself using an overhand grip on the pull-up bar. Be sure you go all the way up and all the way down on each repetition. Divide the number by two, and do three sets of that number with a one minute rest between sets on training days. Aim for three sets of ten.

Dips

Test yourself using either dip bars or do your dips between the backs of two chairs. Be sure to go down to parallel. Take that number and divide by two. Do three sets with that number with one minute rest between sets on training days. Aim for three sets of fifteen. Although dips are supposed to be easier than pull-ups, for some people, correctly performed dips are just as difficult as pull-ups.

Swimming

Test how far you can swim. Let's say it's 400 yards. On training days, do four 100 yard swims with a rest between repetitions approximately equal to the time it takes to swim the distance. Add a lap to each repetition whenever you can. When you can do four repetitions of 225 yards, you should be ready to try a half-mile swim. If you're using a 50 meter Olympic-sized pool, a half mile is 800 meters.

Sprinting

Unless you have been training at sprinting, it's unlikely that you can run 200 yards at top speed. To get there, you need an overdistance day, a race-pace day, and a speed day. On overdistance day, do 2-3 300 yard sprints on a six-minute clock. That means run a 300 every six minutes. Walk between runs. The runs are at 90 percent speed - fast, but not at top speed. Your times should fall between 40-50 seconds. Slower than 50 seconds and you're either not sprinting or your fitness has a lot of room for improvement.

On race-pace day, do 4-8 100 yard sprints at full speed on a three-minute clock. On speed day, do 4-8 50 yard sprints at top speed on a two-minute clock. If you're running your 50s and 100s correctlty, it will take you 20-25 yards to slow down after passing your finish line.

If a running track is available, you can substitute meters for the yard distances. This adds ten percent to the distances. Two hundred meters is almost exactly 220 yards or an eighth of a mile. It's a little surprising that Liederman didn't use that instead of 200 yards for his benchmark. For 300 meter repeats, acceptable times might range from 44-55 seconds 

Jumping

A waist-high barrier is about 39 inches or a meter for the average man. That may sound daunting, but remember that Liederman is not talking about a 39-inch vertical leap from a standstill. He's talking about  getting over a barrier the height of a high school boys' high hurdle with a running start.

To accomplish this, you can use either a scissors high jump or hurdle the barrier. Start with the scissors jump. For those who haven't seen it, this video demonstrates it:



Most people don't have a high jump bar, but you can lay a broomstick or something similar acroos a stack of boxes. Just be certain that whatever set-up you use, there is no possibility of hurting yourself when you miss. Otherwise, you will quickly lose your enthusiasm for practicing jumping.

Each training day, do ten jumps. Start low and keep increasing the height until you miss or do ten jumps. Keep trying the height you missed at until you reach ten jumps. If you reach ten jumps first, start at a higher height next time.

Once you scissor jump a waist-high barrier, you have technically met that benchmark. In the spirit of Liederman's training philosophy, though, you could repeat the procedure with hurdling. If you do that, alternate a scissor jump day with a hurdle day, which means that you would practice each three times every two weeks.

Meeting these five fitness benchmarks should give you a great deal of confidence. Not only are you fit, but you can actually do something useful with your fitness. Most bodybuilders, and even many athletes, can't say that.

Did you know you can actually build muscle using ONLY bodyweight exercises? To find out about the revolutionary new program that allows average people to pack on muscle WITHOUT weights in the comfort of their own home, Click Here!

Standing Ab Workout

If you would like a change from getting down on the floor for your ab exercises, try this standing ab workout.

Spinach Can Help Fine-Tune Physical Fitness, Develop Muscular Strength

So Popeye was onto something. Spinach can help fine-tune physical fitness and develop muscular strength, Elizabeth Renter says.

Remember Popeye? The cartoon character who always ate spinach to boost his muscular strength? Well, he may have been on to something. While he should’ve been eating fresh spinach rather than canned, research shows that spinach could have not only boost strength, but also improve fitness levels overall. Read more

4 Exercises You Can Do in Bed

If you hate to get up to exercise, Vanessa Voltolina describes four exercises you can do in bed.

OK, so maybe that 7 a.m. spin class just isn’t happening today. Maybe you want to spend more time sleeping -- or maybe your partner wants to do something else under the covers. Whatever the case, don't sweat it. Your bed isn’t just for snoozing. Yep, that’s right: There are some gentle (yet tough!) exercises that you can do each morning to start your day off right. Read more

Getting Fit? It Only Takes a Minute

High-intensity interval training is not only effective and time-efficient, it's also less boring than traditional workouts.

There was an odd thing happening in the Equinox Gym, the newly opened temple of fitness that occupies part of what was once the Biba building on Kensington High Street.

Alongside the honed and toned hard bodies pounding the exercise machines, in among the glistening biceps lifting weights only marginally less substantial than a new Routemaster bus, a sudden reversal of evolution appeared to be taking place. The several million years it took for man to walk on two feet had, in less than an hour, been wiped out. After no more than 45 minutes in the place, I was no longer capable of standing upright and was reduced to crawling about on my hands and knees.

That is what happens when you engage with the latest fitness craze to arrive here from the United States: you feel it to the point where you end up barely able to stand. But the temporary return to primitive perambulation is worth it, or so its advocates insist. The rewards are substantial. Read more

Primal Posture

Joseph Mercola gives some tips to counteract the bad effects of too much sitting.

Mounting research suggests that even if you exercise regularly, you might still succumb to the ill effects of too much sitting.

For example, a study published last year1 concluded that adults who spend an average of six hours a day in front of the TV will cut their life expectancy by nearly five years, compared to someone who does not watch TV. Read more

Super-Fit Grandfather Pumps Iron at 90

Super-fit grandfather John van Walwyk is still pumping iron at 90. His diet of spinach and Guinness may not be for everybody, but he does demonstrate that the old can be fit too.

A great-grandfather who is still pumping iron at the grand age of 90 says spinach is his secret to staying young.

John van Walwyk, dubbed the real-life Popeye, lives in sheltered accommodation but walks two miles to the gym three times a week. Read more

Why Junk Food Makes You Stronger

Switching to a healthier diet leads to a loss of muscle and strength sometimes. Elliot explains why and reveals how to maintain your size and strength while still eating foods that are good for you.

Abs and Core : The Best Exercises

This video demonstrates some of the best exercises you can do for your core and abs and to strengthen your lower back and obliques. It's a great routine and helps fitness levels from beginner to advanced.

Get Fit Like a Wild Man

MovNat founder Erwan Le Corre reveals how to get fit by training like a wild man.

In the late 19th century, Dudley Allen Sargent – virtually the founder of physical education in America – warned that without solid physical education programs, people would become fat, deformed, and clumsy. Sound familiar?

Fitness has become accessory to the life of the modern man. It is up to each of us to exercise or not. Most people don’t, and being out of shape has become both ubiquitous and commonly accepted. It has become okay to be a physically soft, inept grown-up. Superficial, cosmetic improvements in body shape remains the primary motivation to the few who exercise, and globo-gyms are filled with “mirror-athletes” — people obsessed with their own reflection. Read more

Why You Shouldn’t Burn More Than 4,000 Calories a Week through Exercise

Mark Sisson explains why excessive exercise can be hazardous to your health.

Everyone agrees that being sedentary is bad and unhealthy and that being active is good and healthy. The research agrees, too; regular physical activity leads to good health, longer lives, and an improved ability to function throughout normal life. When you’re able to walk to the store, carry your groceries home, take the stairs, get out of bed without struggling, pack enough lean mass to survive a stay in the hospital, and ride your bike when you want to, you’re a functional human being, and remaining active on a regular basis helps maintain this state so crucial to basic health and happiness.

But what’s often hidden amidst the blanket pro-exercise sentiment is that too much exercise can have the opposite effect on health – people can really take physical activity too far. I talk about this all the time, so much that you’ve probably got “Chronic Cardio” emblazoned across your brain and shake your head when you see some hapless soul in spandex and the latest runners heaving himself down the street, heel first. I know just how bad that stuff can be, because I did it for a large part of my life. You’ve all heard that story before, though, about how even though training cardio hard gets you “fitter” in one sense of the word, it’s actually counterproductive for a healthy long life (doubly so if you want to have some lean muscle mass and pain-free joints in your later years). Read more

Want the Physique and Endurance of a Fighter?

If you want the physique\ and endurance of a fighter, Chad Howse explains how to train like one.

In a sport where livelihood and fitness are so closely linked, it’s no wonder that fighters are in such great shape. Their conditioning is just as important as their talent and skill.

For a fighter, how well-prepared he is usually determines how well he performs. A supremely conditioned fighter can overwhelm a less-conditioned athlete with a constant and unrelenting barrage.

If they’re not in exquisite shape, fighters run the risk of not only losing, but also having their years of hard work and dedication wasted and missing their chance to let their talent and skill show and shine. Thus, fighters take training pretty seriously. Read more

Excessive Exercise Harms the Heart, Say Scientists

It's about time we quit congratulating marathoners and triathletes and began pitying them instead. Excess exercise "hurts the heart" and cause dangerous long-term harm, say scientists. Of course, this is exactly what people used to think before the running boom of the 1970s. Short, intense activities, such as sprinting, are much better.

Extreme exercise such as marathons may permanently damage the heart and trigger rhythm abnormalities, warn researchers.

They say the safe ‘upper limit’ for heart health is a maximum of an hour a day - after which there is little benefit to the individual.

A review of research evidence by US physicians says intensive training schedules and extreme endurance competitions can cause long-term harm to people’s hearts. Read more