If there is one exercise that is hated by most women and loved by most men it would have to be press ups.  You know the drill; get onto the floor, kneel on all fours; wrists under shoulders and knees under (or behind) hips.  Now bend your elbows and bring your chest towards the floor.  Now push yourself back up.  Now do it again, lots of times

Men like this exercise because their shoulder and chest muscles tend to be quite strong; women hate it for the opposite reason – weakness in arm, shoulder and chest muscles.  Working all these muscles at one time is a very efficient way of exercising,  but the ensuing discomfort as the muscles tire is unpleasant to say the least, which is why most women would rather jump off the roof than add press ups to their exercise routine!

Everyone should do press ups and should learn to do them properly; however even if done with poor form they will strengthen something!  Performed correctly, press ups are an unbelievably effective way of conditioning shoulders, chest, arms, back and core muscles.

There aren’t that many other compound exercise that will do so much good in such a time- efficient way.  If you worked all these muscles separately you would have to do pec deck exercises for the chest, shoulder press for the shoulders, bicep curls for the front of the arms, and tricep push-backs for the back of the arms.  So by getting down on all fours and performing two sets of press ups you can give yourself a quadruple whammy and be halfway through your exercise routine before you even know it!

Press ups are even more important as you age as it is one of the few exercises that makes you lean on your wrists, thus forcing the bones in your wrists and arms to strengthen.  Bones are like muscles in that they are designed to respond to the strains placed upon them – if you lean on your wrists often enough they will grow stronger in order to bear your weight.  This is one of the guards against progressive osteoporosis; if your bones are going to thin and become brittle then they will eventually, but working them will make them stronger for longer.

Take a look at the Iron Gym which can help you perform press ups in better form.

Posted by: At Home Workout Reviews

Why Do Pressups?

There has never been a better time to work out at home.

The range and quality of that home exercise equipment is staggering.  But which piece of equipment should you buy?

Well, for strength and sheer power there are a number of exercises every one should be doing.

Of the body weight exercises there are three that I believe should be in everyone’s work out.  They would be press ups, squats and pullups.

Of the three two can be done without any equipment at all press ups and squats.  But the third Pull ups can be a challenge to do at home because you need a bar at a suitable height to be able to pull yourself up and down.

Getting a bar at the right height without having to drill holes and leave a permanent fixture can be difficult if not impossible.  That’s where the Iron Gym in comes into its own.

It can be fitted to an existing door-frame in a matter of seconds.  No drilling, screwing or any DIY needed.  When you finish your workout you simply remove it and store it in a closet or under your bed.

When fitted around the door frame you can use the Iron Gym to do wide pullups, narrow pullups and chin ups. Put the iron Jim on the floor and you can do Tricep dips and press ups.  I know I said that press ups can be done without any equipment and that’s true but the advantage of using the iron Jim is that you can keep your wrists in line with the rest of your forearm and thereby reducing the strain on the joint.

I find I can do more press ups with the iron Jim than without.  Also because the iron Jim raises you off the floor you can get a larger range of movements when doing press ups this way.

With the iron Jim you can target chest, arms,shoulders and much more.  I believe that pullups should be in everyone’s work out and now by utilising this innovative piece of at home exercise equipment there can be no excuse.

Combined with something like KettleWorx Workout you would have a complete cardiac and strength training programme is second to none.

For less than $40 this piece of equipment is excellent value for money.  I like my exercise equipment to be functional, have no moving parts to break, simple to use and inexpensive. The Iron Gym fits the bill perfectly.

Posted by: At Home Workout Reviews

Iron Gym Reviews

Want to get Sexy, Toned Arms and Shapely Shoulders while laughing yourself silly?

Then try the new Shake Weight!

This is the latest piece of exercise equipment to hit the infomercial channels as we all shake off those winter blues and try to get in shape before sleeveless Spring fashions find us guilty of being in possession of Awful Arms and Saggy Shoulders. This is the time of year that the Christmas indulgences come back to bite us in the …arm… and any new item of exercise gear, no matter how laughable, will be snapped up if it will do the job and produce results.

So is the Shake Weight that killer piece of equipment?

The marketing hype claims:

• It’s based on a “completely new” workout technology system called Dynamic Inertia.
• It’ll help you get toned and lean arms, tighten sagging chest muscles and give you sculpted and shapely shoulders.
• It specifically targets the dreaded “batwings” that lurk under the upper arm.
• It can give fantastic results when used for just 6 minutes a day.
• It causes more muscle fibres to be engaged than if you work out with dumbbells, increasing muscular activity by up to 300%.

So it’s a dumbbell that vibrates backwards and forwards. What’s funny about that?

Well, it’s a bit – shall we say suggestive – to say the least! If you don’t understand, you’re too young and should be watching the Disney channel Or else you’re my Mum   The rest of you – just watch this video of Ellen Degeneres trying the Shake Weight out. Laugh? I nearly split my pants!

Interesting, Huh??

Ellen started out by laughing at the Shake Weight and finished by being so impressed that she bought more than one! Just using the Shake Weight long enough to make a joke out of it worked her biceps and triceps so that she was still feeling it next day!

In my opinion as a Personal Trainer, 6 minutes a day is a bit light and the Shake Weight should be combined with other exercise (plus a reduction in calories consumed) to give the best results. That being said, it will certainly work your upper body muscles and target flabby biceps and saggy triceps, and with a little practice can be part of a really effective exercise routine. And at $19.95 (plus s & h), the Shake Weight won’t break the bank, either.

Laugh at the same time and you’ll get an abdominal workout as well. Just joking
If you’d like to check out the Shake Weight for yourself, follow the link.

If however you’re interested in something less gimmicky and definitely does work take a look at The Truth About Abs no gimmicks just rock solid information that will help you lose weight safely.

Posted by: At Home Workout Reviews

Shake Weight Reviews – Killer Workout Or Usual Rubbish?

As I’m sure you know, to lose weight and keep it off long-term your exercise programme needs to be varied and regular and include cardiovascular exercise, muscle toning and work on your core as well as eating a reduced calorie diet.

However, it is perfectly acceptable and possible to spot-tone particular areas of the body, such as the abdominals. This is the part of our bodies that tends to show excesses more than anywhere else!  Saggy tummies and weak abdominals upset us every time we look in the mirror and nearly all women claim that the area they would most like to change is their abs.

A good addition to any home gym with the abs in mind is the Ab Flyer, which consists of a seat that can swing in an arc and handlebars to support your upper body. You kneel on the seat and use your ab muscles to swing it upwards to tone the lower abdominals, and from side to side in an arc to tone the obliques.

Most people know about traditional ab crunches done on the floor; they involve raising your head and shoulders while lying on your back with your knees bent. The idea is to move your ribs towards your hips which contracts the upper part of your abdominals and make them work. However, this exercise does not engage the lower abdominals so you are only doing half the job and will only get partial results – your pooch will still be there!

Also, the main problem with the traditional ab crunches is that they look simple to do but aren’t, and in most cases all you do is strain your head and neck as you haul your torso up, while your abs do no work at all!

With the Ab Flyer, your neck and back are in good alignment and get no strain, and the exercise specifically targets the lower abs so there is no wasted time or effort – the full emphasis of the exercise goes into those lower abdominals.  Believe me, your lower abs will start feeling this very quickly! The hanging seat can also be moved from side to side using your obliques – these are those muscles down your sides that give you a nice, trim hourglass waist when toned up.

Experts have known for a long time that reverse crunches focusing on the lower abdominals are very effective for flattening the abs, but the usual way to do them was by hanging from a bar and lifting the knees. This exercise is not practical for most people as it puts tremendous strain on the arms and shoulders as they must support your entire bodyweight against gravity.

With the Ab Flyer, this amazing reverse crunch is made available to everyone without any fear of injuries to the shoulders, neck or back.  This excellent addition to any full-body fitness routine costs just under $200 (plus S&H), is quick and easy to set up and can be folded for convenient storage.

For more information on The Ab Flyer why not visit this site.

Posted by: At Home Workout Reviews

Ab Flyer Reviews

Since being released onto the exercise market earlier this year, the Ab Circle Pro has had a real combination of reviews, ranging widely from customers who absolutely loved it to those who would cheerfully chuck it in the garbage.

If it was a contender on Dancing with the Stars it would have been in the bottom two more times than I care to name; always however just managing to scrape through into the next round.

So what’s it all about?  Is the Ab Circle Pro as good or as bad as they say it is and does it work at all? The answer to this is to keep things in perspective; it can be as useful as any other fitness machine in that it may actually get people to do some exercise on a regular basis.

The idea behind it is good, as the all-fours positioning makes it much easier to work the muscles of the waist and sides correctly without putting strain on the back or the neck, which up to now was the major problem with trying to tone and shape the abdominal area. What isn’t so good, however, is the build quality and the customer service (although the latter has recently improved).

What people seem to forget all the time is that you simply cannot target just one area to try and lose fat, as weight loss and reshaping your body is a combination of several things, including various different types of exercise and altering your eating habits.  That is the only thing that is going to work in the medium and long-term.

Look at it this way; if you crash diet but don’t exercise – sure, you’ll lose weight. But it won’t be fat, mainly muscle – which is the one thing that you truly need to get and sustain weight loss. Added to that, you will feel as hungry as a wolf and as grumpy as a bear and as soon as you give up in disgust and go back to eating the way you were before, the weight will pile back on – this is what the billion-dollar diet industry relies on.

Then there are the people who do a little exercise (for a while anyway) but don’t overhaul their eating habits as well. In their case they lose a little bit of weight and tone up a little, but because they are still eating too much they don’t get the results they want so they decide that Exercise Doesn’t Work and go back to being a couch potato.  Deep down we all know what the answer is — eat a little less and move around a little more. Problem is, we don’t really want to do it for various reasons, the main one being that it’s too damned hard!

The secret is to make small changes – start with a few minutes exercise a day and a few less calories a day until you get accustomed , and then make more changes. In this respect, the Ab Circle Pro will come in very useful.  If you use it  three times a week for 10 minutes and add in other different types of exercise (such as an aerobics or step class, a few brisk walks and maybe some swimming), plus some weights exercises to tone your muscles, then you will achieve good results.

As I mentioned earlier, most of the complaints that I have heard are in regard of the quality of the Ab Circle Pro and frankly, it isn’t great; the kneepads can split and the wheels squeak, although many people have told me that wearing kneepads and the judicious application of WD40 does the trick nicely.

The bottom line is that you get what you pay for, and it stands to reason that a machine costing under $200 (plus S&H) is not going to be as well-built, tough and hard wearing as a treadmill that costs five times that much. But that being said, I believe the Ab Circle Pro is very useful as part of a weight loss plan and is nowhere near as ugly and bulky as a treadmill!

Posted by: At Home Workout Reviews

The Ab Circle Pro – Saint or Sinner?

The Ab Circle Pro is a great device to help you lose that ugly belly fat and those sagging love handles and give you those taut, toned abs that you’ve always dreamed of. It is a new piece of equipment for the home exercise market that lifts you up from the floor and makes combining your ab exercises with your cardio workouts easier and more effective than you ever thought possible.

To lose weight safely and correctly while toning and tightening all your major muscle groups, there are several components of exercise that must be combined.  The first is cardiovascular exercise which is described as sustained rhythmic exercise using large muscle groups and carried out for a period of at least 20 minutes three to four times a week.

Cardio should be at an intensity that makes you sweat, gets you warm and makes you slightly breathless.  There are two types of mistakes people make in cardiovascular exercise; one is not working hard enough – I see folk all the time in the gym sitting on the exercise bike reading a magazine; if you can read a magazine your heart and lungs are not working hard enough!

The second mistake is performing cardio at too high an intensity for too long at a time (as this puts your body under stress) and then not training again for several days.  You will lose any benefit gained if you do not do another workout within 96 hours.

The best and most effective way to exercise is to take the middle path; walk, pedal or swim at a moderate intensity, enough to make you slightly short of breath and give you a warm glow, for at least 20 minutes three times a week; every other day would be perfect.  This exercise alone can greatly reduce your risk of early heart disease and some cancers.

Cardiovascular exercise on its own is not enough for optimum health and weight loss, as you need to also do exercises to overload your main muscles in order to keep them strong and functioning correctly.  Strength training does not mean big burly men in leotards lifting huge weights; it simply means exercises using hand weights or body weight to challenge your muscles and make them stronger, especially as you grow older.

Just as important as cardio and strength training is core training to keep your deep abdominal and postural muscles strong, which also will shape your stomach and make you look much taller, as you will stand up straight rather than stooping.  Pilates exercises and most forms of yoga are perfect for this.

If you use your Ab Circle Pro as part of your regular workouts, you will be well on the way to correctly combining the principles of fitness for increased health, strength and a perfect shape, as the Ab Circle Pro combines cardio without abdominal and oblique toning to help you shape your body to the look you’ve always dreamed of.

Posted by: At Home Workout Reviews

The Ab Circle Pro – Two Mistakes Not To Make

We get fat for a very simple reason – We eat too much. We take in more energy from the food we eat and drink than we burn by moving around. Put simply, to lose fat we need to eat less and exercise more! That’s it – in one paragraph the secret to losing fat. So why do people find it so hard to follow this simple advice?

There are many reasons:

• Poor eating habits
• Lack of exercise or activity
• Emotional eating (distracting from a feeling you don’t like)Dieting
• Lack of muscle tissue (no fat burning machine)
• No motivation (lots of past failures)
• It’s too damn hard!

We are programmed by nature to seek out and enjoy calorie dense foods. We hate the feeling of being hungry and gain satisfaction by feeling “full”.

This is a very sensible survival trait for people who have a limited food supply (us many thousands of years ago). The problem is we are now surrounded by these calorie dense foods and they are not in short supply! Worse, our food comes packaged and processed, with most of the goodness taken out – it neither satisfies nor nourishes us, so we eat more to compensate.

The supermarkets are full of these foods and to make matters worse, some of the most unhealthy food choices are also the cheapest! A double negative whammy for those with a large family and a limited budget. Combine that with fast food outlets dotted on every street corner and it’s easy to see why as a nation we are becoming fatter and fatter. It is possible to eat healthily on a limited budget but it takes time, preparation and planning.

We don’t need to go back many generations to find activity levels much higher than they are today. Were people obese then? Not many, and only those who could afford to be! Today most of us work at a desk all day. We drive to work, the store, the school, rush from place to place when we’re not working and are mentally drained and physically inert at the end of the day! Where’s the healthy activity that’s going to burn fat and will also make us feel much better?

We even jump in our cars to visit the local store, which may only be a couple of hundred yards away. Combine that with an unwillingness to join a gym or do any exercise at home and is it any wonder we’re piling on fat at an alarming rate?

If you want to learn more about how permanent fat loss is possible if approached the right way, then why not start exercising at home? There are some fantastic pieces of at home exercise equipment available that can really help with your fat loss goals. These include Kettleworx, The Firm Wave and Ultraflex Fitness systems.

Take a look and see what you think it’s a lot easier than you think.

Posted by: At Home Workout Reviews

Fat Loss, Diet And Exercise

Now that you have decided to give yourself the body you’ve always desired in terms of slimness and muscle tone, a great piece of equipment that will help you do this at home is the UltraFlex, a lifestyle and exercise system that will slim you down and tone you up in the time you’ve got available.

In this busy everyday world we are always balancing earning a living with running a home, and whatever time is left is devoted to ourselves (often not a lot!), with exercising coming very low down on the list of priorities.  The usual option up until now, has been to join a health club but then you end up paying a lot of money and wasting a lot of time using the various exercise machines.

Getting to the gym in rush-hour is hard enough, then you have to find somewhere to park and then you often have to wait in line with your turn to use a machine which wastes time and raises your blood pressure to dangerous levels!

If you have the UltraFlex Fitness exercise and lifestyle system at home, then you will never have to wait your turn for a gym machine again!  With no complicated weight stack and height adjustments to deal with, the UltraFlex is easy and convenient and will spot tone any and all of your major muscle groups.

The UltraFlex comes in two sizes and strengths; one for men and one for women.  The man’s UltraFlex has more resistance as men’s exercise goals are usually to strengthen and bulk up their muscles, and heavier resistance and fewer reps are needed to achieve this.

Women don’t want to bulk up and they aren’t particularly bothered about getting stronger, so a woman’s UltraFlex bar offers decreased resistance for increased numbers of sets and repetitions, which will give toned and shapely longer-looking limbs for that perfect silhouette.

You can tone any of your muscles with the UltraFlex just by moving the bar or altering your hand position, whether you want to specifically tone your upper body, lower body or abdominals.  The best approach is to do a balanced programme of full body toning which will give you all-over reduction as well as burning lots of calories.

It is recommended that you also do regular cardiovascular exercise as well as using the UltraFlex toning system.  If you wish, this can be carried out at the same time, bending the UltraFlex as you walk.  If you do choose to put your exercises together in this way, be very careful to keep your attention on where you are going, as you are more likely to fall if you are distracted; my personal preference would be to do your cardio workout separately, either before or after the UltraFlex workout.

Discover how the Ultraflex can help you with your fitness goals today

Posted by: At Home Workout Reviews

The UltraFlex Fitness System – Get The Body You’ve Always Wanted

As a Personal Trainer I often come across infomercials offering equipment for exercising at home and I compare them and then write reviews on each regarding value for money, ease of each to use and set up, and how much good they will do a client.

Two pieces of equipment currently very popular are the Ab Circle Pro and the Firm Wave.  The Ab Circle Pro has kneepads, handlebars and a semicircular track to glide around.  You kneel on the kneepads, place your hands on the handlebars thus leaning forward in an all fours position, and swing the kneepads from side to side.

Using the Ab Circle Pro you move the kneepads from side to side while leaning on the padded handlebars; your abdominal area and waist muscles are toned and you get a cardiovascular heart and lung workout at the same time.

The body positioning on the Ab Circle Pro can feel quite challenging to start with if your upper body is weak, but within a week or so of regular use you will start to strengthen and tone your arm and chest muscles.  The all fours positioning is also very good for strengthening the bones in your arms.

You need to be careful to position your hips and spine correctly when you’re exercising on all fours; if you let your lower back sag like a hammock and your abdominals bulge then you will soon get a sore back.  Keep your tummy muscles pulled in and your spine in neutral and you will find your abs are in the perfect position to be toned efficiently and correctly.

The problem with doing sit-ups on the floor is that they are often done incorrectly and make the abs bulge in the wrong direction!  There have been several reports of the kneepads being uncomfortable to use on the Ab Circle Pro, but I would suggest that wearing some hockey or football kneepads when you use the machine should solve that problem.

With the Ab Circle Pro you also get a low-calorie diet guide and a short DVD.  Like most other home exercise devices, the Ab Circle Pro will indeed help you lose weight and build lean, sculpted muscle if you use it on a regular basis, overhaul your eating habits, and combine it with other types of regular exercise as well.

Comparing favourably to the Ab Circle Pro pricewise is The Firm Wave, which is formed of strong polymer and is in the shape of a humpback bridge.  One side is stable for step and similar exercises, and the other side rocks for increased calorie burn and to challenge postural muscles. With the Wave you get a number of useful DVDs with various fat burning and toning workouts on them.

Get the abs you always wanted with the Ab Circle Pro

Posted by: At Home Workout Reviews

The Ab Circle Pro vs The Firm Wave

When you’re ready to exercise, when you want a fitness programme that has a twist, and if you want to burn lots of calories combined with a great body toning workout, you need the Cardio Twister System, which is currently very popular everywhere.

The Cardio Twister combines a leg and thigh shaping step exerciser with handles that turn as your legs work, meaning that every time you take a step you are rotating through the waist, thus tightening and toning all those hard-to-get-at abs and working your chest, shoulders and back at the same time to give you a full body toning workout.

The problem is always fitting regular exercise into the busy lifestyle of today; with the pressures of working, parenting and being a homemaker, especially if you also have dogs to look after like I do, all means that time is very limited.  We all know we should exercise, but we never seem to get around to it!

It seems like a good idea to get a health club membership when you’re listening to the sales guy, but the reality of the situation is that the gym is often too far away  to get to easily, meaning that you skip sessions and then find you are paying the high fees for something that you’re not using.  Even if you do get there, often you don’t have enough time to do your full routine.

First you have to do your cardiovascular workout on machines like the treadmill, or the stepper, or the rower, then you have to go round all the fixed weight machines, each of which only works one body part at a time, then at the end you have to do your abdominal training and your cooldown.

I find this process is always takes me more than two hours and as regular exercise is recommended 3 to 4 times a week, that would be at least six hours out of my week.  I don’t have six hours to spare in a week!  So the idea that the Cardio Twister would be able to help me get fit in my own time and at home was of great interest to me.

The Cardio Twister is made up of two parts, which easily fit together. The stepper part is a lot more than just a stepper; an up-and-down stepper will only tone the front and back of your thigh and a lot of women have problems with flabby inner and outer thigh.

When you work your legs on the Cardio Twister, you really feel it in every single muscle and you know you’re wasting no time because you’re working several important muscle groups at the same time.  The waist level handlebars rotate with the movement so you twist through your stomach and waist muscles to sculpt lean, toned abs and a trim waist.  There are also several levels of resistance to choose from, to give you whatever type of workout you want.

Click Here For A Workout With A Twist!

Posted by: At Home Workout Reviews

The Cardio Twister System