Exercises week 4 part 2

Today’s post will just be the workouts for the second part of week 4:

Monday Chest– Flat Bench press – 3 sets of 10 reps

/Cardio                 Incline dumbbell press– 3 sets of 10 reps

Decline chest flies– 4 sets of 8 reps

Pushups (cheat or regular) – 4 sets of 15 reps

Run/Walk for 20 mins or as long as you have ( at least 5 mins)

Tuesday Arms– Tricep kickbacks– 3 sets of 10 reps (put knee on bench bend over and place opposite              hand bench hold a dumbbell in other hand and do a reverse hammer action up flexing your triceps)

Bicep concentration curls– 3 sets of 10 reps each arm (sitting down put arm inside of leg with dumbbell and curl up then drop weight slowly down.. that’s 1 rep)

Tricep overhead– 4 sets of 8 reps (hold a dumbbell over your head keeping elbows in lower the weight down then push it back up arms fully extended..1 rep)

Standing alternating curls- 2 sets of 20 reps

Tricep one arm overhead extension- 3 sets of 10 reps

Abs – Crunches 4 sets of 25 reps, Side crunch 4 sets of 10 each side

Wednesday Shoulders – Front raises– 3 sets of 10 reps (standing with dumbbells in each arm to the side lift the weight to the front then slowly back down..1 rep)

Side raises– 3 sets of 10 reps (standing the same as above lift weights to the side.. 1 rep)

Shrugs-4 sets of 8 reps (hold weights in hands to the side then shrug shoulders to ears then down)

Legs-     Body squats– 3 sets of 10 reps (add weight as needed)

Leg press machine – 3 sets of 10 reps

Hamstring curl machine – 4 sets of 8 reps

Always remember to change these to your our liking or even if you don’t want to do weight training you can still do some sort of exercise to help you stay motivated and to help you relieve stress. Happy exercising!

8 best exercises for stress relief

Today’s blog will be about the 9 best exercises or types of exercises to relief stress. All of these exercises are great for relaxation and stress relief because they help calm the mind and helps release the “feel good” neurons. I will list the best exercises from eighth to first and explain a little bit about each exercise.

8. Tennis/Basketball- Tennis or Basketball is a great cardio workout and can help release stress by getting your body going and keeping your mind focused on the match or game. Playing with an opponent is another reason tennis and basketball are good for stress relief.

7.Circuit Training- Circuit training is a good exercise for stress relief because it makes you focus on the weight training and the cardio parts of exercising causing your heart rate to jump and releasing more neurons into your brain

6. Pilates- By using your core and breathing techniques, Pilates is another good exercise to relieve stress

5. Dancing- Going out to dance or just doing it in a group is a great way to exercise and also have fun which in return helps lower stress.

4. Karate-Karate is a good way to lower stress because it forces you to focus on what you are doing while also releasing anger through breathing techniques and form.

3. Weight lifting- Weight lifting helps you lower stress by taking out your anger and turning it into strength. While weight lifting you usually just think about the weights in your hands and nothing else, which makes you not think about your stress.

2. Walking-Taking a brisk walk is a good way to get out and just to get away from the stressors you have and also is a great exercise for your health

1. Yoga- Yoga makes you use strength training by holding poses and also makes you use your flexibility which doing these things in return makes you relax and breath deeper. When you breathe deeper and when you start to relax, it makes your stress levels lower.

 

How exercise improves Learning

Exercise is good for many reasons as I have explained in earlier posts but there are even more reasons to exercise and this post will explain why exercise is good for your brain and its learning abilities. Your body is made to be in motion and when you’re in motion all of your body functions work better. So when you are exercising it allows your brain to function better when try to learn something because you are helping its functionality. As Newton said in his first law of motion, an object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion, the same goes for your body. When you exercise regularly it helps your body function more regularly which as I said earlier helps your learning ability. According to attitudemag and John Ratey, M.D., “Exercise improves learning on three levels: It optimizes your mindset, by improving alertness, attention, and motivation. It prepares and encourages nerve cells to bind to one another, which is the cellular basis for learning new information. And it spurs the development of new nerve cells from stem cells in the hippocampus, an area of the brain related to memory and learning.” Doctors and researchers have been noticing for more than a decade the relationships between exercise and better brain. Exercising is a way to get the slow or even reverse the physical decay of the brain. This means that when you exercise your brain is getting exercise also and this is healthy for memory, learning, and thinking. A study was done with people in three groups learning new foreign words that were equal to their native language, one group just learned and the other two groups exercised before sitting down to learn. The two groups that exercised, one exercised mildly and the other exercised at a moderate pace. Out of these three groups, the two groups that exercised before learning retained more knowledge than the group that did not exercise. The group that exercise mildly before showed the most retained information. Therefore exercising mildly or even moderately before learning something new can be another benefit of working out.  This is yet another benefit to exercising just as stress relief is one.

More about stress relief and workouts for week 4 part 1

Today’s blog will be more about stress and exercise. A lot of people say that they are too busy to exercise or it is too much stress to put into their schedule, but when you exercise it relieves all those feeling and you just forget about some things while you exercise because it removes the stress hormones and releases the good-mood chemicals into your brain. For people working out for stress relief, do something you love. When you do something you love it makes it easier to get into the routine and makes you like working out therefore you will do it more often. Also make sure you start out slow and on your own terms. Don’t start out with too much of a load than you can handle because then you will be adding to your stress levels. Now for here are the exercises for the first part of this week:

Monday Chest Day– Incline bench– 3 sets of 10 reps

Flat Chest Flies- 4 sets of 10 reps

Decline bench dumbbell press- 3 sets of 10 reps

Push-ups– 3 sets of 10 reps

Cardio- Run or walk for 10-20 mins or play a couple competitive basketball games or another sport

Tuesday Arms- Tricep kickbacks– 3 sets of 10 reps (put knee on bench bend over and place opposite              hand bench hold a dumbbell in other hand and do a reverse hammer action up flexing your triceps)

Bicep preacher curls or machine– 3 sets of 10 reps

One arm tricep overhead– 4 sets of 8 reps (hold a dumbbell over your head keeping elbows in lower the weight down then push it back up arms fully extended..1 rep)

Standing alternating curls- 2 sets of 20 reps

Tricep pushdowns (on cable machine) – 3 sets of 10 reps

ABS- Plank for 1:30 min (can break time up into 3 sets of 30 secs), 30 sec side plank each side, 60 decline crunches

Wednesday Shoulders- Front raises– 3 sets of 10 reps (standing with dumbbells in each arm to the side lift the weight to the front then slowly back down..1 rep)

Side raises– 3 sets of 10 reps (standing the same as above lift weights to the side.. 1 rep)

Shrugs-4 sets of 8 reps (hold weights in hands to the side then shrug shoulders to ears then down)

Legs-     Weighted squats– 3 sets of 10 reps (add weight as needed)

Leg press machine – 3 sets of 10 reps

Hamstring curl machine – 4 sets of 8 reps

 

How exercise improves sleep and workouts for week 3 pt. 2

Hey bloggers, today I am going to talk more about how exercise also helps with sleep, then the workouts for week 3 part 2. First off I want to say that exercising too close to your bedtime (within 3 hours) can make it harder to sleep so do not try to exercise late at night. According to howstuffworks.com your body temperature goes up and down during the day and it reaches its low right before dawn and that is what makes your body know it is time to sleep. When you work out your body temperature goes up above normal for a period of 4 to 5 hours then after it drops lower than if you hadn’t worked out making it easier to fall asleep since your body temperature is lower. So if you try to work out 5 to 6 hours before bed you will be falling asleep about the same time your body temperature is lowering. Morning exercise is great for stress and mood improvements but it is not as good for sleep as an afternoon workout, don’t get me wrong morning workouts still help sleep but not as directly as an afternoon workout.

Thursday Back – Cable Rows- 3 sets of 10 reps

Lateral Pull-downs- 3 sets of 10 reps (In front of head, wide grip)

Reverse grip bent over rows– 3 sets of 10 reps

Lateral pull-downs– 3 sets of 10 reps (In front of head close grip))

Abs- Crunches– 5 sets of 20 reps, then 2 sets of 20 reps on decline bench

V-ups- 4 sets of 15 reps each side (lay on your side then bend your legs up as well as your torso and squeeze… 1 rep)

Friday Cardio or OFF DAY- I prefer to do cardio on Friday so a 20 min. walk/run or a couple games of basketball or tennis and a mixture of the lifts done earlier in the week(pick workouts that you feel did the most for you or what part of the body you want to work on)

Saturday off day or cardio/mix if Friday was off– See above for example if you took Friday as an off day

Sunday-OFF DAY (Sunday is always my off day no matter what)

 

Other exercise benefits and workouts week 3 part 1

Today I am going to talk some about the other benefits from exercise and the next post, Wednesday, I will chose one of these other benefits to talk more about. All you have to do is comment and say which one you want me to talk more about and I will talk about the most requested benefit. The second part of this blog is going to be the exercises for week 3 part 1(mon.-wed.). Other than weight management, exercise can help a lot of this in your body. Exercise can help with a load of diseases/syndromes including stroke, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, depression, certain types of cancer, and arthritis. Exercise can also help sleeping patterns as long as exercise doesn’t happen to close to when you try to fall asleep. Energy boosts is another benefit from exercise, regular physical activity can give you that energy you need after work or even after household chores. Physical activity delivers oxygen and nutrients to your tissues and helps your cardiovascular system work more efficiently. Pick one of these benefits and comment below and I will talk more about it next week. Now for the workouts:

Monday Chest Day– Flat bench– 3 sets of 10 reps

Incline Chest Flies- 4 sets of 10 reps

Decline bench dumbbell press- 3 sets of 10 reps

Push-ups– 3 sets of 10 reps

Cardio- Run or walk for 10-20 mins or play a couple competitive basketball games or another sport

Tuesday Arms- Tricep kickbacks– 3 sets of 10 reps (put knee on bench bend over and place opposite              hand bench hold a dumbbell in other hand and do a reverse hammer action up flexing your triceps)

Bicep preacher curls or machine– 3 sets of 10 reps

Tricep overhead– 4 sets of 8 reps (hold a dumbbell over your head keeping elbows in lower the weight down then push it back up arms fully extended..1 rep)

Standing alternating curls- 2 sets of 20 reps

Tricep pushdowns (on cable machine) – 3 sets of 10 reps

ABS- Plank for 1 min (can break time up into 2 sets of 30 secs), 30 sec side plank each side, 50 decline crunches

Wednesday Shoulders- Front raises– 3 sets of 10 reps (standing with dumbbells in each arm to the side lift the weight to the front then slowly back down..1 rep)

Side raises– 3 sets of 10 reps (standing the same as above lift weights to the side.. 1 rep)

Shrugs-4 sets of 8 reps (hold weights in hands to the side then shrug shoulders to ears then down)

Legs-     Body squats– 3 sets of 10 reps (add weight as needed)

Leg press machine – 3 sets of 10 reps

Hamstring curl machine – 4 sets of 8 reps

 

Your body system’s defense to stress and workouts for week 2 part 2

Hello all today I will be giving the workouts for the second half of the week and also giving more insight on how exercise relieves stress. According to the American Psychological Association “Exercise forces the body’s physiological systems, all of which are involved in the stress response, to communicate much more closely than usual: The cardiovascular system communicates with the renal system, which communicates with the muscular system. And all of these are controlled by the central and sympathetic nervous systems, which also must communicate with each other. This workout of the body’s communication system may be the true value of exercise; the more sedentary we get, the less efficient our bodies in responding to stress.” (Melnick, 2013) This is yet another reason that exercise relieves stress and why it may be one of the best ways to reduce stress in a lot of people. If your body can communicate better than you can in return handle/deal with stress better. Now for the workouts for the second half of the week:

Thursday Back – Cable Rows- 3 sets of 10 reps

Lateral Pull-downs- 3 sets of 10 reps (In front of head, wide grip)

(picture by workoutlabs.com)

Back extensions– 3 sets of 10 reps

Lateral pull-downs– 3 sets of 10 reps (In front of head close grip)

Abs- Crunches– 3 sets of 20 reps, then 20 reps on decline bench

V-ups- 4 sets of 15 reps each side (lay on your side then bend your legs up as well as your torso and squeeze… 1 rep)

Friday Cardio or OFF DAY- I prefer to do cardio on Friday so a 20 min. walk/run or a couple games of basketball or tennis and a mixture of the lifts done earlier in the week(pick workouts that you feel did the most for you or what part of the body you want to work on)

Saturday off day or cardio/mix if Friday was off– See above for example if you took Friday as an off day

Sunday-OFF DAY (Sunday is always my off day no matter what)

 

Endorphin Info and Workouts Week 2 part 1

Hello all, today’s blog will have Monday- Wednesdays workouts and also show more about what endorphins do for you to help you feel better and happier. According to webMD “endorphins trigger a positive feeling in the body, similar to that of morphine. For example, the feeling that follows a run or workout is often described as “euphoric.” That feeling, known as a “runner’s high,” can be accompanied by a positive and energizing outlook on life. Endorphins act as analgesics, which means they diminish the perception of pain. They also act as sedatives. They are manufactured in your brain, spinal cord, and many other parts of your body and are released in response to brain chemicals called neurotransmitters. The neuron receptors endorphins bind to are the same ones that bind some pain medicines. However, unlike with morphine, the activation of these receptors by the body’s endorphins does not lead to addiction or dependence.” (WebMD) All these endorphins are released while you go for a walk, wieghtlift, or even just go hiking.

Monday Chest Day– Decline bench– 3 sets of 10 reps

Incline Chest Flies- 4 sets of 10 reps

Flat bench dumbbell press- 3 sets of 10 reps

Any chest press machine– 3 sets of 10 reps

Cardio- Run or walk for 10-20 mins or play a couple competitive basketball games or another sport

Tuesday Arms- Tricep kickbacks– 3 sets of 10 reps (put knee on bench bend over and place opposite              hand bench hold a dumbbell in other hand and do a reverse hammer action up flexing your triceps)

Bicep concentration curls– 3 sets of 10 reps each arm (sitting down put arm inside of leg with dumbbell and curl up then drop weight slowly down.. that’s 1 rep)

Tricep overhead– 4 sets of 8 reps (hold a dumbbell over your head keeping elbows in lower the weight down then push it back up arms fully extended..1 rep)

Standing alternating curls- 2 sets of 20 reps

Tricep pushups (hands close together) – 3 sets of 10 reps

ABS- Plank for 1 min (can break time up into 2 sets of 30 secs), 30 sec side plank each side, 50 crunches

Wednesday Shoulders- Front raises– 3 sets of 10 reps (standing with dumbbells in each arm to the side lift the weight to the front then slowly back down..1 rep)

Side raises– 3 sets of 10 reps (standing the same as above lift weights to the side.. 1 rep)

Shrugs-4 sets of 8 reps (hold weights in hands to the side then shrug shoulders to ears then down)

Legs-     Body squats– 3 sets of 10 reps (add weight as needed)

Leg press machine – 3 sets of 10 reps

Hamstring curl machine – 4 sets of 8 reps

Remember to change workouts as needed and to your liking and time! Happy Lifting!

Working out Depression and Anxiety

Hello viewers, today I will be giving the example exercises for Thursday-Sunday later in the blog but first I want to talk a little more about how exercise is a great health benefit for stress relief and also anxiety. Science has provided some evidence that physically active people have lower rates of anxiety and depression than sedentary people. Exercise may improve mental health by helping the brain cope better with stress. In one study, researchers found that those who got regular vigorous exercise were 25 percent less likely to develop depression or an anxiety disorder over the next five years (america) .This information was discovered by the American Depression and Anxiety Association. Not only do people who have been exercising regularly have benefits physically and health but also have a better mental fitness. People who exercise usually have better alertness and cognition which in turn helps people lower their stressors. This blogs example exercises are for Thurs-Sun and a couple of the days are off days and remember to form the exercises to your liking these are just examples.

Thursday Back – Cable Rows- 3 sets of 10 reps

Lateral Pull-downs- 3 sets of 10 reps

Back extensions– 3 sets of 10 reps (picture by workoutlabs.com)

Hip bridges – 3 sets of 10 reps (Lie on your back, feet flat, knees bent. Squeeze your buttocks as you lift your hips, creating a straight line from the knees to the shoulders.. 1 reps)

Abs- Crunches– 3 sets of 20 reps

V-ups- 4 sets of 15 reps each side(lay on your side then bend your legs up as well as your torso and squeeze.. 1 rep)

Friday Cardio or OFF DAY- I prefer to do cardio on Friday so a 20 mins walk/run or a couple games of basketball or tennis and a mixture of the lifts done earlier in the week(pick workouts that you feel did the most for you or what part of the body you want to work on)

Saturday off day or cardio/mix if Friday was off– See above for example if you took Friday as an off day

Sunday-OFF DAY (Sunday is always my off day no matter what)

What the Blog is about

Hey fellow stressors and lifters, this blog is going to be about how lifting and exercise can get rid of stress and everyday struggles and I will also post workouts for people to try and do. I will mainly focus this first blog post on what lifting is most popularly used for. In the world today many people use lifting/exercise as a way to keep fit, look good, and get ready for beach seasons, but that is not the only way exercise will help you out. Stress is an everyday thing in everyone’s life, everyone has felt it at least once, there are many ways to get rid of stress nowadays but I have found that the easiest way is to…that’s right…. Exercise! When using exercise to relieve stress you’re not only keeping fit and doing it for the muscle benefits but also you are forgetting about the stressors of life for the good 20 minutes to 1 hour that you are in the gym. The First step to this is getting away from the stress no matter where it is school, work, home, wherever and get to a gym! Once in the gym it is another thing to know what to do and that is going to be the second part of this blog. I like to keep a certain routine to what I do from day to day throughout the week, obviously not everyone has to lift 5-6 days a week but at least 3-4 days is a good number. I like my workout week to go:

Monday- Chest/Cardio

Tuesday-Arm/abs (60% triceps/40% bicep)

Wednesday-Shoulders/legs

Thursday-Back/abs

Friday-off day or cardio

Saturday-Cardio (If Friday is an off day) and a mix lift

Sunday-off day

Everyone can do their own days for certain workouts but should still hit on all the muscle groups listed above. I will be posting workouts for each day twice a week and each post will have the next 3 days work out routines on there.