Fantastic article by Robert Adams about common fitness training mistakes:

Many women and men train using too often just their preferred machines, which limits their range of motion and does not work their muscles in an efficient and effective manner. Ultimately this can limit the engagement of small stabilizer muscles that give you maximum benefit throughout your fitness training program.

Great article by Deborah L. Mullen:

Contrary to what many people think, strength training is as important, maybe more important to successful fat loss than aerobic exercise. The reason lies in the amount of calories that are burned when you aren’t exercising. Depending on the intensity and your weight, an aerobic workout (walking, cycling, stairstepping) will burn approximately 300 calories per hour. If the exercise is strenuous enough (which is unlikely in the beginning exerciser) the resting metabolic rate (RMR) will be elevated temporarily up to a few hours afterwards. Compare this to strength training which elevates the RMR permanently. The RMR accounts for 60 to 75 percent of your daily calorie expenditure, so even a modest increase will help burn off more fat.

Craig Ballantyne, one of the world’s foremost fat loss experts, posted an article today on his Men’s Health blog about three great bodyweight exercises for fat loss.

Bodyweight exercises help you burn fat shockingly fast, without any fancy equipment. Here are 3 kick-butt bodyweight exercises you can do anytime, anywhere to burn fat, stay energized, and avoid overeating.

I see too many people at the gym sitting on the recumbent exercise bike, reading the latest issue of Us Weekly, and barely peddling fast enough to power the LED display. If your goal is fat loss, and you’re able to read a magazine while you’re exercising, you’re not working hard enough (not even close).

High-intensity interval training (HIIT) involves a series of maximum intensity efforts followed by low intensity recovery periods. A study at Laval University in Quebec, Canada suggests that HIIT trainees lost 9-times more fat than those who performed traditional aerobic cardio sessions (i.e. 20-60 minutes of long boring cardio).

Example HIIT workout on the recumbent exercise bike:

• Begin with a light 3-minute warm-up at 60 RPM
• Increase the intensity to 100+ RPM for 30 seconds
• Reduce the intensity to 70 RPM for 1 minute
• Repeat that interval system 3 to 6 more times
• Finish with a 3-minute cool-down at 60 RPM

Depending on your fitness level, you may need to adjust the difficulty by either increasing/reducing the length of the work/rest periods, increasing/reducing the intensity of the max efforts by peddling faster/slower, or raising/lowering the resistance on the exercise bike. The goal during the work period is to work as hard as possible, so that by the time the rest period arrives, you have no choice but to slow down so that you can recover and allow your heart rate to come down.

If you’re not seeing results from the time you spend in the gym, it’s possible that you’re doing too much low-intensity cardio, and not enough high-intensity interval training.

For high-intensity workout programs in Vancouver that produce real results, check out our outdoor boot camp program.

Bikini season isn’t far away, so if you’re thinking about how to slim down for the nice weather, consider an exercise program designed around bodyweight training.

Bodyweight training refers to any resistance training exercise that can be performed without any external resistance (i.e. dumbbells, barbells, exercise tubing, etc). Examples of bodyweight exercises include:

• push-up
• chin-up
• squat
• lunge
• crunch
• burpee

Bodyweight exercise programs are convenient because you can do them anywhere. From your living room, to your backyard, office, hotel room, or anywhere you have about 8×8 feet of open space.

And not only are bodyweight exercises every bit as effective as exercises performed with free weights, in some cases they are significantly more effective. Exercises like dips and chin-ups are significantly more effective than any comparable exercise done with free weights or on a machine.

Push-ups require you to perform a plank (i.e. working your core musculature) while exercising your chest, shoulders and triceps. That’s not the case when you perform dumbbell or barbell exercises on a bench.

The burpee is one of the most intense and demanding total body exercising that you could possibly do, and it requires absolutely no equipment or external resistance whatsoever.

Remember, you burn more fat doing resistance training than you do with boring cardio. Cardio training is ok as part of a balanced program that includes resistance training, but if your time is limited and you can’t do both, choose resistance training.

With an effective exercise program combined with proper eating, you can safely burn 2 pounds of fat every week. If you need some help with program design, consider hiring a personal trainer in Vancouver to help you look your best in time for bikini season.

My boxing instructor, Ritchie Yip, uses the term “Core 4” to refer to four common counters to the jab. The title of this article is a homage to Ritchie, but the article is not about boxing.

Core 5 refers to the following five resistance training exercises:

• Squat
• Lunge
• Push-Up
• Pull-Up
• Row

One of the most common mistakes that I see people making in the gym is poor exercise selection. Biceps curls, triceps pushdowns, side lateral raises, leg extension, prone hamstring curls, glute extensions, calf raises, and the list goes on. These exercises are fine as a supplement to an otherwise balanced workout program, but too many misguided people seem to base their entire workout around them.

Whether your goal is to lose fat, build muscle, gain strength, improve athletic performance, or some combination of those goals, your workout program should be based around compound exercises (multi-joint, multi-muscle group), and a great place to start is with the Core 5.

The Core 5 exercises are not easy. That’s probably the main reason why most people avoid them. It’s easier to sit down on the leg extension machine and squeeze out 20 reps than it is to muscle out 10 strict squats. But since the leg extension exercise uses only one muscle group (quadriceps), and squats involve various muscles (including the quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, calves, and core), most busy people with limited time to spend exercising would be much better served doing squats; think “maximum bang for your buck”.

Obviously not everyone can do pull-ups (most people can’t complete a single repetition of a pull-up using correct form), but that’s where the assisted pull-up machine or the lat pulldown machine comes in handy (or resistance tubing for those of you working out at home).

Push-ups can be done against a wall, or with your hands on a bench or table, progressing to knee push-ups, and eventually toe push-ups and decline push-ups.

The squat, lunge, and row all have their own levels of progression to suit men and women of all levels of fitness.

If you’re not seeing results from the time you spend in the gym, consider hiring a personal trainer in Vancouver to help you with exercise selection and program design. IDEA Health and Fitness Association released a statistic that found 75% of people who exercise are not getting the results they want, and out of the 25% of people who are getting results, 90% of them are working with a personal trainer.