By training your major muscles in every session, you’ll ignite a surge of fat burning hormones, for crystal clear muscle definition from head to toe.
1. Barbell Squat
Stand holding a barbell across the back of your shoulders with an overhand grip, your hands wider than shoulder-width apart. Keeping your back naturally arched, bend at the hips and knees to lower your body. Push back up to a standing position.
2. Dead Lift
Stand with a barbell on the floor in front of you, with the bar over your toes. Bend your knees and grasp the bar with an overhand grip. Keeping your back straight, stand up. Keep the bar close to your body as you lift it. Slowly lower the bar.
3. Dumbbell Clean and Press
From the starting position, dip your hips and explode upwards, forcefully pulling the weights up. As the weights near your chest, dip under and ‘catch’ them on top of your shoulders. Stand, press the weights overhead, then reverse the move.
4. Dumbbell Squat
Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and hold a pair of dumbbells at your sides. Keeping your back naturally arched, bend at the hips and knees to lower yourself until your thighs are parallel to the floor. Push back up to a standing position.
5. Dumbbell Single-arm Row
Holding a dumbbell in your right hand, place your left hand and left knee on a bench. Hold the weight with your arm straight. Use your upper-back muscles to pull the dumbbell up and back towards your hip. Pause, then slowly lower the weight.
6. Burpee
A. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart. B. Bend at the hips and knees to lower your body as far as you can, then C, place your hands on the floor and straighten your legs behind you. D. Perform a push-up, then draw your knees back towards your chest until your feet are beneath you, and stand up.
7. Farmer's Walk
Stand holding a pair of heavy dumbbells at your sides at arm's length. Keeping your body upright, walk for the amount of time specified in your workout. If you're short on space, walk in a circle or figure eight. Don't lean forwards or back.
8. Single-leg Romanian Dead Lift
Stand on your left foot with your right foot raised behind you and your arms hanging in front of you Keeping a natural arch in your spine, push your hips back as you lower your hands and upper body. Squeeze your glutes and press your heel into the floor to return an upright position. Complete your reps on one leg before repeating the other leg.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
The Perfect Body Formula
To build the perfect body, it helps to have the right dimensions. Thankfully, the magic formula for those dimensions has been known for centuries. It's called the golden ratio - a dividend of two measurements that's roughly equal to 1.618.
Its influence can be seen in the shape of a seashell, the spirals of a pinecone and the Parthenon in Athens. And in blueprints for the archetypal human form: Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man and Michelangelo's David. In fact, whether you're looking at art or nature, you'll find this ideal proportion turning up everywhere.
So it's no surprise to learn that chicks dig a physique that measures up to the golden ratio. An Archives of Sexual Behavior study reveals that women are most attracted to muscular men whose shoulders measure 1.6 times the size of their waists.
Of course, it's not always easy or practical to measure the width of your own shoulders - you need someone to do it for you. But you can use your chest circumference as a handy stand-in stat. ‘They're just different measures of the same thing.’ says Dr Viren Swami, author of The Missing Arms of Venus de Milo: Reflections On the Science of Attractiveness. One of Swami's studies shows that women prefer a chest-to-waist ratio of 1.4 instead of one in which the two measures are closer to each other. (It's a smaller ratio than 1.6 since your chest is narrower than your shoulders.) The bottom line: when women look at men's torsos, the V shape is victorious.
You can figure out your own proportion in three easy steps. All you need is a tape measure and a calculator.
1. Measure your shoulder circumference at its widest point - usually around your shoulders and chest in a line halfway between your nipple and collarbone. (If you're on your own, you can measure your chest at its widest point, just below your armpits.)
2. Determine your waist circumference by wrapping a measuring tape around your abdomen so that the bottom of the tape touches the top of your hip bones.
3. Divide the circumference of your shoulders (or chest) by that of your waist.
You don't have to look like a cartoon superhero to hit the ideal proportion: if you use the standard from Swami's studies, you could hit the jackpot by having a 114cm chest and an 81cm waist.
To visualize the look, think Muscle Beach 1940, not WrestleMania 2008. (For the sake of comparison, the most popular muscleman from the pre-steroid era, Steve Reeves, had a 132cm chest and a 74cm waist - a way-beyond-golden ratio of 1.8.) Leanness rules over hugeness. What's more, lower-body dimensions don't have the same appeal as those of the top half. ‘This point is pretty conclusive,’ Swami says. ‘When women judge a man's physical attractiveness, lower-body shape plays a negligible role.’
Which isn't to say that you should ignore your southern hemisphere, because it's exceedingly difficult to develop a lean, muscular upper body without using your body's biggest and strongest muscles: your hips and thighs. Their immense power to drive metabolism and generate muscle-building hormones will help grow your chest, shoulders, arms and upper back, too. The trick is to use your meatiest muscles strategically to produce the eye candy women find so tasty.
But before you launch into the workout, know that you don't have to achieve picture-perfect results to get the girl. There's some research to suggest that women aren't too keen on the most attractive men - they consider them too far out of their league.
The golden ratio is nice to shoot for, in other words, but you won't be disappointed with a silver or bronze.
Its influence can be seen in the shape of a seashell, the spirals of a pinecone and the Parthenon in Athens. And in blueprints for the archetypal human form: Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man and Michelangelo's David. In fact, whether you're looking at art or nature, you'll find this ideal proportion turning up everywhere.
So it's no surprise to learn that chicks dig a physique that measures up to the golden ratio. An Archives of Sexual Behavior study reveals that women are most attracted to muscular men whose shoulders measure 1.6 times the size of their waists.
Of course, it's not always easy or practical to measure the width of your own shoulders - you need someone to do it for you. But you can use your chest circumference as a handy stand-in stat. ‘They're just different measures of the same thing.’ says Dr Viren Swami, author of The Missing Arms of Venus de Milo: Reflections On the Science of Attractiveness. One of Swami's studies shows that women prefer a chest-to-waist ratio of 1.4 instead of one in which the two measures are closer to each other. (It's a smaller ratio than 1.6 since your chest is narrower than your shoulders.) The bottom line: when women look at men's torsos, the V shape is victorious.
You can figure out your own proportion in three easy steps. All you need is a tape measure and a calculator.
1. Measure your shoulder circumference at its widest point - usually around your shoulders and chest in a line halfway between your nipple and collarbone. (If you're on your own, you can measure your chest at its widest point, just below your armpits.)
2. Determine your waist circumference by wrapping a measuring tape around your abdomen so that the bottom of the tape touches the top of your hip bones.
3. Divide the circumference of your shoulders (or chest) by that of your waist.
You don't have to look like a cartoon superhero to hit the ideal proportion: if you use the standard from Swami's studies, you could hit the jackpot by having a 114cm chest and an 81cm waist.
To visualize the look, think Muscle Beach 1940, not WrestleMania 2008. (For the sake of comparison, the most popular muscleman from the pre-steroid era, Steve Reeves, had a 132cm chest and a 74cm waist - a way-beyond-golden ratio of 1.8.) Leanness rules over hugeness. What's more, lower-body dimensions don't have the same appeal as those of the top half. ‘This point is pretty conclusive,’ Swami says. ‘When women judge a man's physical attractiveness, lower-body shape plays a negligible role.’
Which isn't to say that you should ignore your southern hemisphere, because it's exceedingly difficult to develop a lean, muscular upper body without using your body's biggest and strongest muscles: your hips and thighs. Their immense power to drive metabolism and generate muscle-building hormones will help grow your chest, shoulders, arms and upper back, too. The trick is to use your meatiest muscles strategically to produce the eye candy women find so tasty.
But before you launch into the workout, know that you don't have to achieve picture-perfect results to get the girl. There's some research to suggest that women aren't too keen on the most attractive men - they consider them too far out of their league.
The golden ratio is nice to shoot for, in other words, but you won't be disappointed with a silver or bronze.
Are You A Good Candidate For Personal Training
A lot of people do a lot of talking when it comes to being healthy. They say things like "I am going to start working out" or "I need to start eating better" or "I just need too lose the love handles" but this is the end of the discussion. If you are saying things like this, what is stopping your from going out there and doing it?
Some people have the desire to get healthy but don't have the motivation to do it. Others are motivated but are not sure where to start or are intimidated by the big gym atmosphere. It only takes one minor excuse to keep you from reaching your fitness goals. For a lot of people, just getting to the gym is the hard part, once they get there doing the work out is easy.
One way to gain motivation, knowledge and accountability for your weight loss and fitness goals is to hire a personal trainer. At Fitness Together the motto is simple: one client, one trainer, one goal. A personal trainer should figure out your goals and help you reach them, not push you to do things that you don't want to do.
When you hire a personal trainer, they hold you accountable for eating healthy and doing your work out, which helps eliminate some of the excuses. Through proper training you can learn to do exercises and routines that you can use for the rest of your life. They also give you the knowledge to eat a diet that is personalized for you.
Some people have the desire to get healthy but don't have the motivation to do it. Others are motivated but are not sure where to start or are intimidated by the big gym atmosphere. It only takes one minor excuse to keep you from reaching your fitness goals. For a lot of people, just getting to the gym is the hard part, once they get there doing the work out is easy.
One way to gain motivation, knowledge and accountability for your weight loss and fitness goals is to hire a personal trainer. At Fitness Together the motto is simple: one client, one trainer, one goal. A personal trainer should figure out your goals and help you reach them, not push you to do things that you don't want to do.
When you hire a personal trainer, they hold you accountable for eating healthy and doing your work out, which helps eliminate some of the excuses. Through proper training you can learn to do exercises and routines that you can use for the rest of your life. They also give you the knowledge to eat a diet that is personalized for you.
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