Heart Rate

Spicing Up Your Flat Stomach Workout

I’m super excited to head to the gym this week because I’m going to have a training partner! Its not going to be a permanent thing, but one of my friends asked me to help her change up her workouts – she’s feeling bored, not seeing results, and frustrated with the combination. So I told her to come with me to the gym and we’ll spice things up — not only will this benefit her, but it’ll be a nice change of pace for me to have someone else to train with.

Flat Stomach Workout – Amanda Seyfried’s Responsibility to Be Thin

Amanda Seyfried, star of the new film “Letters to Juliet”, feels the pressure to be thin- like every other young star in Hollywood.  Its an unfortunate trend that every rising star feels the need to be thin, however, following a healthy diet and nutrition plan is the best way to ensure healthy weight loss.

Four Ways to Feel Healthier Today

There are some health problems that keep you from feeling and doing your best every day. Finding the solution to these problems will help you feel better today – tomorrow – and everyday to come!

Below you’ll find four common health problems and their solutions to help you avoid them forever!

Flat Stomach Exercise of the Week: Dumbbell Step Ups

Its a New Year and its time to give you a new exercise to step up your workout and help you make this year YOUR year.  Its another weight exercise for women who lift weights, to help you tighten and tone your body. This week’s exercise targets your lower body – ensuring that your legs will look great by the time you have to show them off!

This week’s flat stomach exercise for your flat stomach workout is one of my favorite for getting your heart rate pumping and the fat burning – the dumbbell step up.

The Step Up is a GREAT exercise to help you get tight, toned and sexy legs by working all of the major muscles in your lower body: quadriceps, hamstrings and glutes.

No matter your workout experience the step up is an exercise for all levels. If you are a beginner, start with a smaller step and no weight. As you become stronger, you can increase the weight or the height of the step to make the exercise more difficult. Another variation for this exercise, to increase its fat burning abilities is to time yourself.  Instead of doing 10-12 reps, try taking a lower weight and doing the step-ups for a minute. See how many you can do in the minute, take a minute rest and repeat. This will have your heart rate pumping and the fat burning.

More Flat Stomach Exercises:
Flat Stomach Exercise of the Week – Stability Ball Dumbbell Chest Press

Flat Stomach Exercise of the Week – EZ Bar Skull Crusher
Four Types of Pushups to Strengthen and Tone Your Arms and Abs

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Two Ways to Change Up Your Workout and Speed Up Fat Loss

Everyone likes surprises – I know I do! In fact, your muscles need a bit of a surprise every once in a while in order to continue effective weight loss.  Ladies, since you’re already lifting weights because the benefits of lifting weights for women are endless, you need to make sure that you keep your muscles surprised and working. You can change your routine completely or you can make minor changes to your current routine.

If you’re in the middle of a flat stomach workout, I have at least two ways to surprise your muscles that don’t require a whole routine change. Try one of these two methods to keep the fat burning and your muscles growing.

1. Slow Down – Changing the tempo of exercises helps to stimulate the muscles differently.  Instead of just lifting the weight up and down – take a bit more time – push for a two count and bring the weight down for a four count.  For example – when doing a chest press – count two when pushing the barbell up towards the ceiling and then count to four as you lower the weight back down.  Or, if you are doing a squat count to four as you go down and two when you come back up. Slowing down the exercises makes your muscles work longer and therefore burn more fat.
2. Mix it Up with Cardio – Keeping your heart elevated helps you burn more fat. Doing cardio in between sets of weight exercises helps you burn even more fat calories during one workout as it keeps your heart rate up for a longer period of time. Instead of resting after a weight exercise, head to the treadmill for a one minute of sprint or if working out at home try jumping rope for 30 seconds or high knee lifts.  This quick bout of cardio will help you burn even more fat and reach your flat stomach goals even faster.

So, next time you’re in the gym, try one of these two methods to keep your muscles guessing what you’re going to do and make sure that with every workout you are burning fat and building muscle.  All to help you reach your flat stomach goals.

Five Tips to Help You Reach Your Flat Stomach Goals for the Week

A new week is starting – are your goals ready? Is your “to-do” list set? Are you ready to make it another successful week? I know I am!! Unfortunately for many of us – summer is over – not in my mind – but in reality – the kids are back in school! Whether that means more free time for you or less – or it really has no impact on your life whatsoever – we are all busy doing something. Sometimes those busy somethings can distract us from staying on track to our fitness goals.

So – to make sure that you are ready to make this week a successful week  – here are five quick tips to help you get to Friday while staying on track with your flat stomach goals.

1. Pre-Pack Your Food – Whether its lunch, snacks or dinner – making your meals the night before and packing them in your lunch box can help save you time in the morning and keep you on your flat stomach diet.  Especially if you wake up late – you just have to grab and go.
2. Workout Even if Your Tired – Studies have shown that sweating at the gym can help keep you energized and keep those yawns away.  Increasing your heart rate wakes up your nervous system – naturally giving you more energy. So – when those 3 o’clock yawns come – instead of grabbing a candy bar – try taking a quick walk around the office – get your heart rate up and your be recharged and ready to go.



3. Change Up Your Music – Listening to the same music week after week can make your flat stomach workout seem boring and stale.  Spend a few minutes before the week starts and add some of your new favorite songs – ones your heard on the radio or at the club over the weekend. Changing up the tempo of the music or they type of music or even the artists will help keep your energized throughout your workout.
4. Try a Different Cardio Machine – Is there a piece of cardio equipment that you look at every week but have yet to try? Make this week the week that you try it! Not only will it help spice up your cardio routine but the new/different equipment will target different muscle groups and help kick up the benefits of your cardio workout.



5. Workout at a Different Time – If possible. Our schedules won’t always allow us to work up a sweat at a different time – but if you usually go at night and can wake up a bit early to get your workout in before work – give it a try. You’ll feel great for getting the workout out of the way and give your body great energy to start the day.

Now – go make this week the best week and accomplish your goals!

Three Tips to Create a Flat Stomach Workout

With all the flat stomach workout information you see online and in magazines it’s hard to figure out what’s the best and most effective way to create a flat stomach workout that will work and get you results.  So I’m going to take the time right now to help you with some basic guidelines to follow to help you get the flat stomach you’ve always wanted.
Interval Training

Stay away from your standard steady state cardio regimen, such as walking or jogging at one speed, as it will not get you optimal fat loss results to get a flat stomach. The most effective flat stomach cardio is Interval Training.

This means you are alternating a certain time period of high intensity work (or sprinting) with a slow intensity work (like a slow jog or walk). This type of interval training will help you burn fat faster and up to 48 hours after your workout.

The best part about this type of workout – you can use it on any cardio machine in the gym – the bike, Treadmill, Elliptical, even the Stair Climber.
Here is an example of what your interval training could look like:

Week 1-3: 15 Seconds Sprint, 45 Seconds Walk/Jog (repeat for 5 minutes)

Week 4-6: 30 Second Sprint, 30 Seconds Walk/Jog (repeat for 10 minutes)

Week 7-10: 1 minute Spring, 1 minute Walk/Jog (repeat for 15-20 minutes)

Workout Program

In order to get flat abs, your workout needs to incorporate weights – not just cardio and crunches.  A full body weight workout is the most effective and efficient type of workout for a flat stomach. This type of weight workout will keep your heart rate elevated, therefore, burning more fat throughout your workout.

Also, when you lift weights you build muscle. The more muscle you have, the more fat you burn, which will get you the flat stomach that you want.

Full body workouts allow you to train every muscle group, three times a week (with a day of rest between each workout).  This type of training promotes muscle growth as well as fast fat burning, due to the increase in fat burning enzymes in your body. The more fat you burn the sooner you have the flat stomach you’ve always wanted.

Below is a sample of a full body workout

A follow along flat stomach workout video.

Diet

The hardest part of any flat stomach workout is the diet. When you think of working out, you don’t really think about what you eat – you are most concerned with what you have to do at the gym. However, a flat stomach diet is a key element in getting the stomach of your dreams.

If you’re post workout attitude about eating sounds like this, “I just worked out so I can eat whatever I want” – will only make it harder for you to get a flat stomach.  A flat stomach diet must consist of protein, healthy fats, and ‘good’ carbohydrates.  Making sure you have the right mixture of these foods in your meals is important to getting a flat stomach.

Lose Weight and Get a Flat Stomach

You want to lose weight and get a flat stomach, but you’re not sure what to do to get there.  You’ve read magazine article after magazine article and tried every diet, without success. You’ve tried the low-carb diet, [singlepic=28,300,220,,right] to only binge on a bag of potato chips two weeks later. You’ve tried going to the gym and spent hours on the treadmill, seeing some results, but then life gets crazy and you never go back.

But you still want to lose weight and get a flat stomach – what can you do that will work?

Here are five quick tips to help you get on the road to a flat stomach:

1)  Make the commitment – nothing will work until you make the commitment to yourself to lose weight and get a flat stomach. Write down your goals – what you want to achieve and by when – then put it in a place where you can see them daily. Reminding yourself daily of your goals will keep you focused and make sure that everything you do will help you lose weight.

2)  Lift Weights – No, lifting weights will NOT make you look like a man.  Lifting weights will build muscle on your body and help you get a flat stomach. The more muscle you have on your body the more fat you will burn for longer periods of time after your workout. Try this leg workout for a start.

3)  Do Cardio – Spending hours on the treadmill walking at a slow pace is not an effective way to lose weight. To lose weight and get a flat stomach you need to use high intensity interval training. This type of cardio will increase your heart rate quickly and help you burn fat for up to 48 hours after your workout.

4)  Eat More Often – Eating smaller meals more often will help to increase your metabolism. Decreasing the time between meals will allow your body to stop storing fat. Instead your body will continue to burn fat throughout the day, allowing you to lose weight and get a flat stomach.  Making sure that these meals are healthy options is also an important part of the weight loss process.
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5)  Drink Water – Water has tons of benefits. It is a great alternative to other sugar-filled drinks.  Drinking water throughout the day will also help to keep you full – making sure that you eat when you are hungry not just because you are bored or think you need to eat.

So make this time different.  Make the commitment to yourself to lose weight and get a flat stomach.  Use this five tips to help get you there.

3 Fat Blasting Moves to Flat Abs

Don’t have time for the gym or a long workout?  Here are three quick moves you can do at home (if you have a stability ball) or right before you cardio session the gym. These three exercises will get your heart rate going and fat burning through your body all day long.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyjU165YLXU[/youtube]

Fast Fat Burning Workout

I’ve changed up the workout routine yet again and it was another kick butt, fat burning, heart pumping workout. It was fun though, knowing that I was burning fat and getting another step closer to my goal.
Today’s workout was based around the idea of high intensity and little rest. I focused on no rest between exercises and 30-40 seconds rest between sets. This type of workout keeps your heart rate up and burning fat for longer.
The workout:
Warm-up: Bridges + Clams
Set 1
Single Leg Machine Leg Press (4 sets/ 10-15 reps)
Calf Raises (3 sets – Regular/Toes In/Toes Out)
Set 2
Dumbbell Chest Press (20/15/12/10 – Increased weight on 3rd set)
Supine Lat Pulldown (4 sets/8-10 reps)
Set 3
Dumbbell Shoulder Press (Heavier weight 4 sets/8-10 reps)
Resistance Band Flyes (4 sets/20 reps)
Set 4
Machine Assisted Dips (4 sets/10-12 reps)
Stiff Legged Deadlifts (4 sets/15 reps)
Set 5
Crunches (3 sets 50 reps)
Plank (hold for 30 seconds)

I ended today’s workout with 30 minutes on the treadmill – doing an incline walk – focusing on a heel toe walk to work a bit more on the hamstrings.
I made it out of the gym, but we’ll see how I’m walking tomorrow!