Explosivelyfit Strength Training

Maintaining mental sharpness-part two

Keeping your brainpower and your physical conditioning in top-notch condition requires time and effort. Increased lean muscle, a healthier heart and circulatory system and respiratory capabilities all come with effort. So does maintaining and increasing your mental capabilities. Neither one will come about if all your spare time is spent in front of the television or computer.

Here are a few suggestions to preserve and even increase your mental potential.

Stay involved with your family, friends, and community. Be an active member of one of your favorite organizations, volunteer or even start a new job. You will never know what you can do until you try it.

Explore new ideas and the world on the internet, sign up for an online class on a topic you have always wanted to know more about.

Try a new hobby, sport or join a book club.

Switch from your dominant hand to the weak hand in activities such as brushing your teeth, playing ping-pong, tennis, and pool. Nearly everything can be more challenging to your brain if done with the less dominate hand.

Use your mind to create new ideas and then draw them out on paper.

Stand on both feet for two to three minutes just thinking. After that is easy to do then do it on one foot. Practice this near something sturdy in case you start to fall and need to reach out to stabilize yourself.

Practice deep breathing or meditation exercises.

Do something to keep your brain challenged, you will be rewarded with a higher quality of life for doing so. In reality the saying of use it or lose it really is true. Never give up on making yourself better. Do something positive for yourself every single day.

Maintaining mental sharpness-part one

Use it or lose it applies to most things in life. This principle applies equally to both physical and mental abilities since each aspect declines without daily challenges. It is common knowledge that if the muscles and cardiovascular systems aren’t subjected to an appropriate level of intensity, frequency, and duration of exercise they will slowly deteriorate. The same holds true for our mental capabilities. If they aren’t used, they also decline.

Physical exercise enhances your vitality just as mental stimulation can increase your minds ability to adapt to new situations and circumstances. But you’ve got to use it to achieve the positive benefits.

The aging process affects the brain in subtle ways. As we get older, the mental processing takes longer. It may even be true that it is harder to learn new things. Our recall of stored information is slower; it is harder to remember names, faces, and other factual information. We even find it more difficult to focus on accomplishing multiple tasks. Getting more than one or tow different things done is not as easy as it was when we were younger because it’s more difficult to divide our attention.

Cognitive stimulation, exercise for your brain, has been found to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Do you read a lot? Listen to the radio, do crossword puzzles, or play cards or checkers? Are you stimulating your brain? If not then get going.

In a study conducted in late November of 2002, the participants were taught deliberate cognitive techniques that helped to improve their memory, concentration, and problem solving abilities. Two years later, these skills remained with this group.

There is enough information supporting the use of mental exercise to ward off age related declines in mental sharpness that it behooves an individual to stay mentally active.

The final best reasons to exercise

Since the beginning of this series, we’ve briefly hit upon six good reasons to exercise. This last installment touches upon two more health related reasons for doing a daily thirty-minute regimen.
Interestingly enough the two diseases that exercise may play a significant role in preventing are also two of the biggest life altering afflictions in our nation; after obesity that is. Cancer and osteoporosis affects millions of our citizens each year.

Exercise, load bearing intense exercise, has a positive relationship both in maintaining bone density and in strengthening the bones that are in danger of losing their integrity. Weight bearing activities include walking, jogging, and squats (after consultation with your doctor). The stress placed on the long bones of your body encourages the bones to adapt to the load.

This is the SAID (Specific Adaptation to an Imposed   Demand) effect. The load has to be great enough on the muscles and bones to make them adjust and grow. Soup cans will not cause this change and neither will long periods on the cardiovascular vascular machines. You have to actually load the muscles and bones with external weight to see differences in the outcome of your exercise sessions.

Just as intense exercise helps ward off osteoporosis, it strengthens the immune system and improves circulation. Additional benefits are reduced body fat, increased lean muscle mass, and a faster transit of food and drink through the digestive system. All of which play an important role in preventing cancer of the prostate, in the uterine lining, the breast and colon cancer, especially colon cancer.

If you hear someone say, they don’t have the time or energy to exercise every day you can bet they will have the time to be sick or injured.

You don’t have to go all out when you first begin. Start out easy. Yes, I actually said easy. Develop the healthy lifestyle habit and it will stay with, and continue to benefit, you until your dying day.

The best reasons to exercise part two

The previous issue listed three of the best reasons to exercise. Here is a quick recap of those reasons.

1. Your energy and stamina will increase so you can do more every day.
2. Daily exercise may help lower your blood pressure by five to ten millimeters of mercury.
3. Improvements in cholesterol numbers often accompany an exercise program.

Now, moving forward with an additional three reasons to exercise, we’ll briefly consider the effects exercise has on your mental state, losing or controlling weight and the obesity problem in our nation.

4. One of the benefits of exercise is the effect it has on your mental state. It can help reduce the stress in your life, and in some cases, improve mild depression-talk to your doctor before eliminating any medications you may be taking for this condition.

Sleep is enhanced each night and it boosts your mood the next day, a good thing if you hope to maintain a healthy relationship with others.

Even if you work at a physically demanding job, you will still benefit from an exercise program. Your job is your job but exercise is a separate issue. It’s something you are doing for yourself not because you have to in order to live but because you want to.

5. Speaking of losing weight, exercise has a beneficial effect on this too. In doing so it uses up extra calories and helps to maintain or even cut weight. By combining exercise with a well balanced diet of wholesome foods, you have the two ingredients for getting rid of excess weight. The downside to this is you’ll have to buy new clothes to fit your svelte new form.

6. The American population is getting fatter and fatter, so fat in fact that we are (at 25% obesity rate) almost, but not quite the world’s fattest nation. News.com.au reported on 19 June 2008 that Australia had surpassed the U.S. with a greater proportion of obese people with a figure of 26%. These are not healthy figures for either of our great countries. More exercise or at least some exercise and moderation in the food eaten will lower these numbers.

This leads up to the dangers of obesity and being over weight…type 2 diabetes. Exercise can help lower the circulating blood sugar. This allows insulin to work more efficiently in lowering the blood sugar levels. Activity prevents glucose from building up in the blood by using it as fuel in the muscles. This fuel keeps the muscle working.

The health benefits of exercising thirty minutes a day

The advantages of exercise are well known throughout the civilized world. Quite often, the first thing people think about when hearing the word exercise is long boring cardio sessions or bulging muscles.

You don’t have to spend hours and hours in the gym to reap the rewards that come with consistent exercise. As little as thirty minutes a day will provide positive long lasting effects on most of the organs in your body. Even three ten minute sessions of exercise each day will work for you; as long as the intensity level is appropriate for your present physical condition.

The benefits that accrue from a paltry thirty minutes of your time exercising cover a broad range of factors directly relating to your health and well-being.

Here are the three of the best ten reasons to exercise each day.

1. Your energy and stamina will increase so you can do more every day.

Two of the after effects of exercise are increases in a person’s energy level and a greater immune protection response. Odd but true. However, you will have to try it to find out for yourself.

Start out with five minutes every day doing something for your health. Soon you will find that this time goes by so fast that you’ll want to go longer. Work up to the recommended thirty minutes and make it a habit for life.

2. In some cases, daily exercise may help lower your blood pressure by five to ten millimeters of mercury. This has a direct influence on your circulatory system, kidneys, and brain. The decease in blood pressure pushing through the circulatory system lowers the risk of damage to the organs. In the case of the brain, it lessens the chances of a life altering aneurism that breaks.

3. Improvements in cholesterol numbers often accompany an exercise program. By increasing your high-density lipoprotein (HDL-the good one) in your blood stream and losing a bit of weight you help protect your heart. Not only can exercise help raise the HDL numbers it can also lower the other triglyceride levels in your circulatory system.

If you haven’t consistently exercised in the past, the most difficult part now will be establishing the habit. Get started. Do something for yourself. Don’t keep putting it off until it’s too late. Do it now.

Moderate exercise-what is it and will it benefit me.

Moderation in all things (1) generally means making a half hearted commitment to a goal. However, in some respects moderation can be a useful guide when it comes to exercising if you’ve been sedentary for a long time. This concept certainly applies to the current couch potato and all of the ex-jocks who at one time were fit for school sports but are now living in the past of what they used to be and do.

Starting out slowly has merits. It helps condition your body and mind to the exercise sessions on a regular and more importantly a consistent basis. Without the consistency of exercise, the benefits will not accrue. Needless to say, persistency of action counts.

Moving your body even moderately strenuously about thirty minutes a day can make amazing changes in your fat and lean muscle ratio, your mood, weight control and the ability to live independently on your own if your are elderly.

Walking briskly for thirty minutes or more daily can lead to profound health benefits. After your walk do some strength training exercises for ten to twenty minutes. In less than an hour each day, your body will transform itself into a new you. If an hour a day is too much then walk one day and strength train the next.

A healthy cardiovascular system forms the basis of an exercise program for the uninitiated. Without strong heart and lung functions, it is difficult to become stronger. You simply become too winded to continue. Get your heartbeat up into your personal heart rate target zone and keep it there for up to thirty minutes a session.

An easier way to determine if you are working out moderately is to be aware that you are working. Your heart should be beating faster than normal, you should be breathing faster than normal but still be able to carry on a conversation or at least complete a seven word sentence.

If thirty minutes is too long then split the time up into three ten minute sessions spread throughout the day.

Now is the time to stop wishing for better health and a leaner body. Wishing and hoping won’t cut it any longer. As Mark Twain once said, “There are a thousand excuses for every failure but never a good reason.” You have to start working out in order to reap the benefits.

Thirty minutes isn’t much is it? So what is your reason for not exercising?