Using Bodybuilding Principles to Help Overweight Kids

With childhood obesity on the rise, parents, teachers, and adults everywhere are concerned with what to do to help prevent or even stop the childhood weight gain. It is possible to use the principle of bodybuilding to help kids lose weight and get fit.

The first concern most people say have about kids and weight lifting is whether it will stunt their growth. This is a genuine concern. But it had been taken way out of proportion. The kind of weightlifting that could stunt a kid's growth is the kind no child or teenager should be doing. A small amount of weightlifting, though, will not hurt the child. In fact, the same benefits that adults get from weightlifting are also available to children.

The idea of getting your child involved in a weight training routine is simply to help them get more active and to have a more healthy lifestyle. By combining the weights with cardiovascular workouts and good eating habits, you could see a great difference in your child's health.

If you want to start you child on a weightlifting workout plan, there are some things you need to know and do to ensure their safety. Make sure it is all right for them to begin an exercise program. If they have a preexisting condition they may need to get the doctor’s okay before they go ahead with anything.

Also, be sure that anytime they are going to lift weights that they are supervised. Make sure they have someone to teach them the proper technique, to watch them lift the weights to make sure the child does not get hurt, and to help motivate them. Also, your child needs to drink plenty of water.

When beginning the weight lifting routine, you need to bear in mind that your child only need to lift weights about two times a week to see results. Doing a full body routine with free weights and your child’s own body weight is generally the best method for kids to use. There are some great exercises that kids can do, such as:

• Push ups, with the knees on the floor if needed


• Squats


• One arm rows


• Wide stance squats


• Lateral raises


• Calf raises


• Biceps curls


• Overhead triceps extensions


• Crunches


• Leg raises

As you can see these are not high intensity exercises that will cause huge muscle gain. The majority of these exercises use the child’s own body weight, which is the best way to gain muscle for a person at any age. Since you or another adult will be supervising the child, you can ensure they don’t use more weight than they can handle.

Try to have the child to about three set of each exercise with 15-30 repetitions for each set. The rest time should be about 30 to 60 seconds. A child should not really need more than 5 pounds of resistance. Make sure that your child is using the correct form at all times. Do not allow them to increase the weight they are using until they have mastered the form they should be doing for each exercise.

If you choose to add more exercises to this routine or to increase the weight it is your decisions. Be sure to talk to your doctor about what is right for your child. Be sure that your child is getting a good diet and plenty of cardio as well, or else the weight lifting will do nothing.

 

A Bodybuilder's Diet - Weight Loss and Fat Loss are Very Different Things

The discipline of bodybuilding can benefit anybody, even those who are not hoping to compete in bodybuilding competitions one day.  But that discipline is about a lot more than just lifting weights and pumping up.  The diet of a bodybuilder is crucial to his or her success in sculpting that perfect shape.

It is important to understand what a bodybuilding diet is doing to help you accomplish your goals.  The difference between fat loss and weight loss may seem like a small distinction.  But it is quite important.  A well balanced bodybuilder's diet puts a much greater emphasis on fat loss and less on weight loss.  There are some very good reasons for that.

Despite the big emphasis in the culture about the trials and tribulations of weight loss, anybody with a little discipline can do it.  The formula is simply to use up more calories every day than you take in through your diet.  So if you need 3000 calories a day for your basic daily activity, you simply craft your diet to eat fewer than that and you will lose weight.  The tricky part is making sure that the calories you do eat are balanced with all of the nutrition and energy supply so your body doesn’t begin to burn up muscle instead of fat.

A diet that would be a disaster for a bodybuilder's development goals would be one that as high in sugar but low in nutrition.  Even if that diet was carefully measured so that the dieter was eating fewer calories than he or she would burn up based on lifestyle and body weight, that weight loss would be detrimental to the goals of building muscle.  Because the body would require more calories than is in the diet but it was not being provided with sufficient nutrition, the weight loss will come from muscle rather than from fat loss as is desired.  You will get smaller but your body to fat ratio will not change or it will get worse.

Another mistake bodybuilders sometimes make is to work out very aggressively but not compensate for that additional use of calories in diet.  By keeping their diet low based on an activity level that was measured before aggressive training took place, the bodybuilder would not be replacing valuable nutrition that the body needs fast enough.

For a couple weeks, this kind of strategy would seem to work well because you would lose weight very quickly.  But the stress you will put on your metabolism would kick the body into an emergency mode and you will stop losing fat.  Instead, the body will start to consume muscle because it would think it was starving and it needed that muscle for energy to keep the organism alive.  Not only is this inefficient in terms of your bodybuilding goals, it can be dangerous over time.

Of course, none of us can hit the ideal bodybuilding diet but it helps to know what it looks like.  The goal is to assure a smooth transition of your body that works well with your level of working out each week.  Instead of dropping the calorie level severely, try for a moderate reduction of calories.  So if you calculate that you would ordinarily need 3000 calories a day, shoot for 2700 or so which creates a deficit from diet but not a severe one.  But be sure that diet is well balanced so you hit all of your nutrition needs and goals despite the reduce calorie quality of your meals.

You will naturally lose more calories from your workouts each week.  But because the natural calorie depletion is not caused by an extreme diet, you will not experience loss of muscle or bone tissue because of the lower calorie intake.  The body does not go into extreme metabolic shutdown so it burns fat for the extra energy it needs, which is the goal.

While these guidelines are good to understand so you are an intelligent guide of your own health and development, it is always good to get help form your trainer or from reading or good bodybuilding websites (like this one).  The more educated you are, the better you will do at developing and staying on a bodybuilder diet and exercise plan that will lead to your ultimate success.

Bodybuilding Down Through History

When most of us think about the sport of bodybuilding, famous muscle men like Arnold Schwarzenegger come to mind.  But the truth is that bodybuilding did not spring into existence when Arnold became famous after the big bodybuilding move, Pumping Iron.  There is a long history to the sport that is worth understanding particularly if you or a family member is active in the world of bodybuilding.

Some of the earliest recorded history of bodybuilding nutritional concepts and training techniques goes all the way back to the 12th century where the sport was being developed in India.  The sport spread from India so that by the 1500s, bodybuilding was tremendously popular in India and the popularity was catching elsewhere in the world as well.  The equipment of bodybuilding was also being developed rapidly as well.  It is interesting to see archives of bodybuilding equipment from these ancient times, which include barbells that are made of wood and stone.

The actual sport of bodybuilding began to take shape later in the 1800s.  Probably one of the earliest famous bodybuilders was Eugene Sandow.  Sandow might have ranked as the Schwarzenegger of his day and many consider him to be the father of what modern bodybuilding has become.  It was because of his vision for what bodybuilding could become that the sport began to come together into a national and international sport by the early 1900s.  It was Sandow's efforts through his personal appearances, his bodybuilding exhibitions and his bodybuilding magazine, Physical Culture that made that happen.

Sandow's work lead to one of the biggest breakthrough moments in bodybuilding when weightlifting became an official Olympic sport at the Olympic Games in Athens in 1896.  Not long after this, in 1904, Sandow became a featured judge at one of the first important bodybuilding events to be held in London at the Royal Albert Hall.  2000 people showed up at that event to watch bodybuilding as a sport.

Probably the next big personality to take bodybuilding to then next level in the 1920s was Charles Atlas.  Not only was Atlas an amazing bodybuilder, he was an outstanding spokesman for he sport and an image that sold a lot of bodybuilding courses and equipment.  But that explosion in marketing of bodybuilding programs, diets and the popularity of bodybuilders as sports heroes represented the first wave of popularity that would make bodybuilding a major international sport.

It is no accident that some of the biggest movies to follow the explosion of bodybuilding featured well sculpted bodybuilder types like Steve Reeves and Johnnie Weissmuller.  It wasn't long after this period that forces came together to propel bodybuilding into the national spotlight again.  That event was the creation of the movie, Pumping Iron.  The outcome of that surge of interest in bodybuilding gave us such international stars as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno.

The rest, as they say, is history.  Since bodybuilding became such a prominent sport, the imitation of a bodybuilders pose has become part of the national way of expressing ourselves.  We commonly see the image of the bodybuilder show up in popular culture such as the very funny comedy bit that the highly successful sketch comedy show, Saturday Night Live did called "Pumping up with Hans and Franz".

These uses of the image of the bodybuilder, while humorous, are not insulting to the sport of bodybuilding.  Instead, they are reminders that bodybuilding is no longer a "fringe sport".  Bodybuilding is just as much a part of the culture as football or baseball.  And the odds are it will stay that way for a long time to come.

The Best Bodybuilder's Exercises for the Legs

Many people have trouble getting their legs to look the way they want.  If you do a lot of cardio or are a naturally smaller person, it can be very difficult getting the leg definition that you want.  So let's discuss some exercises and tips to help you build your legs up the way you want to.

If you are trying to build up your legs, than you should separate your leg workouts from your cardiovascular workouts.  If you try to do cardiovascular everyday, than on the day that you are going to do your leg workout, do your cardio in the morning and the legs in the evening.  If you can avoid doing cardio at all on the days that you will be working your legs, that is even better.

Another thing you can try to build your legs up is to separate your leg muscle into sections.  Focus on calves and quadriceps one day and hamstrings and glutes on another day.  By separating the muscle groups, you can be sure to give each muscle the attention it needs to get bigger.

Working the whole leg at once works well if you are a beginner or even an intermediate bodybuilder.  But if you are more advanced or just wanting to see greater results, than this method will yield those better results.  If you do decide to try separating working the leg muscles than you need to put about two or three days in between the leg workout days.  This will give the muscles adequate time to rest and build back up for another workout.

If you do decide to break your leg workouts up, than here is a good example of workouts that you can use.  Let's say that on Monday you are going to focus on your quads and calves, then try doing squats, wide stance and normal, leg presses, the inner and outer leg machine(s), as well as calve raises.

Then on Friday when you work your glutes and hamstrings you can do dead lifts, standing leg curl, lunges, and seated leg curls.  These are just a few exercise options for working out your legs.  As you gain more knowledge of different leg exercises and become more advanced in your weight lifting, you can do more.

Another key factor in getting the legs that you want is to be sure you are doing the exercises properly as well as that you squeeze your muscles when you do the exercises.  Squeezing the muscles will help you achieve even better results and will also help you become more aware of the muscles.  Once you know where they are and what they feel like when they are flexed, you can start flexing them whenever you want, so that you can always be getting a little bit of a workout for those muscles.

Also, take your time with each exercise so that you are sure you are only using the muscles and not just using your body's momentum to move.  If you start moving fast or just throwing your body around, then your muscles will not achieve any kind of results.  Be in control of your body and really work your muscles.

Great Cardio Bodybuilding Training Tips to Get the Weight Off

Cardio has a very specific role to play in a bodybuilding development plan that will result in a muscular and well sculpted body.  Before you accelerate a program of bulking up, it is important to trim down your body fat to under 10% so your muscle building program will begin with a lean base of muscle.

For a bodybuilder, weight loss is a goal and there is a lot of science behind us that we will bring to bear in developing a program for getting the body fat ratio down.  Part of that regime of diet and exercise is an expanded role of cardio training to help eliminate fat quickly but in a healthy way.

There are a variety of ways to go about getting your cardio workout.  It isn't required that all cardio exercise happens on a treadmill.  In fact, some experts have observed that while a treadmill workout will get your heart up, it may not be as intensive as other ways to achieve the same results.  Plus treadmills can become tedious and boring which wears down your resolve to hit your cardio workout several times a week to get that workout.

The goal of any cardio is to get your heart rate up.  To know what a good goal heart rate is, you need to know your resting heart rate.  That is not the heart rate you sustain while you are asleep.  It is your heart rate when going about the affairs of your day without working up a sweat.  A good way to get a feel for your resting heart rate is to take a measurement several times a day for a few days in a row and then averaging the results.  While you can take your own heart rate by simply counting your pulse and doing the math, it is much easier and more accurate to use a monitor both for taking your resting heart rate and to wear during exercise so you know if what you are doing is hitting your cardio goals.

The level of intensity you achieve during your cardio may vary and you may wish to diversify your exercises to keep things interesting and to keep your body guessing about what to expect.  A slow cardio workout is one where you may use the same pace and then slowly increase it over a workout that may go for 20 minutes to an hour.  Walking and jogging are good slow pace cardio exercises.  These are also good options if you do other kinds of workouts that stress your legs and you need an exercise plan to go to on a "rest" day but still keeps your heart rate up.

The interval approach to cardio training is a different type of program but it is an excellent way to reach your cardio goals quickly.  With interval training, you would exercise vigorously for shorter spurt and then do a reduced stress "resting" exercise to recover.  A typical interval approach might mean you will sprint at peak demand for no more than two minutes and then power walk for ten minutes.  This is an outstanding heart healthy style of training because it escalates your heart rate quickly and then brings it down only to repeat the cycle numerous times in one workout.

Also, keep in mind that running is not the only way you can get a good cardio workout.  Sports such as racquetball, basketball or volleyball can give you and outstanding cardio exercise session while you have fun at the same time.  If you like to use the weight room, you can develop an excellent circuit training routine in which high intensity weight training exercises provide that side benefit of a fine cardio exercise as well.

By learning what a large variety of cardio exercises there are, you can design different cardio plans each week to keep the variety fresh and to keep you interested in your long range cardio goals.  Then when the weight begins to fall off, you will be inspired to keep hitting the gym and using your cardio programs to keep pushing yourself until you are at the weight and the shape that you want to be.

The Heart of Successful Bodybuilding Training is Scheduling

When a bodybuilder steps onto the stage and begins to pose to show off his phenomenal muscle development, that is not the hardest work of the sport.  The real labor of being a bodybuilder is developing a schedule of training and executing that training schedule religiously.  When a bodybuilder's training program is developed, both the sequence of exercises and the frequency are crucial for him to see he muscle development he wants take place.  The schedule of exercise is one of the critical factors for the success of the workouts.

It is not true that working out ten times a week will be more effective at building muscle than work out five times a week and obeying the schedule designed by your coach or trainer.  Discipline is at the heart of seeing success in bodybuilding and that discipline means staying on schedule, exactly the way that schedule was written.

A bodybuilder's schedule is created to maximize muscle growth based on how muscles react to stress.  While it is true that bodybuilding training often puts tremendous stress on the focus muscle groups, that stress is controlled so as not to exceed the real capacity of the muscle at the stage of training that it is in.  Bodybuilding coaches and trainers know well that a relatively short and fast workout is more effective than many workouts or workouts that go on for a long time.  Most good bodybuilding workouts can achieve the goals of steadily building muscles in forty-five minutes.

There is no magic formula for the perfect bodybuilder's workout schedule.  That is why working with a trainer to gauge where your individual abilities lie and the condition of your muscle development is crucial.  By understanding what your body can handle in terms of training for strength and endurance, a schedule can be written to workout at proper intervals and to allow your muscles to recover in an orderly fashion as well.

The process of muscle growth is one of breaking down old muscle and allowing the natural recuperative ability of the body to grow stronger muscle in its place.  That process takes 48 hours from the time of the workout.  That means that the rest period between workout sessions is just as important to muscle growth as the workout itself.  It is during the rest periods in your workout schedule that muscles develop, recover from the workout and then rejuvenate themselves and grow.

Another very important part of your bodybuilding workout schedule is the sequence of exercises during the workout.  In order to achieve that perfect symmetry to your shape, muscles in every focus muscle group should be developed in a coordinated fashion.  That means that your workouts will use a compound exercise approach where you might focus on the upper body with some lower body on Monday and use entirely difference exercises on Wednesday.  Circuit training, when properly balanced will achieve the same goals.

As a rule, a four-day workout schedule with religiously kept rest days between workouts is a good development plan for most bodybuilders.  The actual workout periods should be planned out so that you move from exercise to exercise in a continuous stream of workouts that give different muscle groups exercise but do not over stress any one muscle group.  If you come away from a workout session with damage to a muscle group because of working it too hard, that hurts your overall plan for muscle growth because you then have to develop a recovery plan.

Your trainer or bodybuilding coach can help you develop a training schedule that lays out a path to bodybuilding success over a period of weeks and months.  Once that schedule is written, it will call upon you to use your discipline and dedication to your bodybuilding goals to keep that schedule without fail.

That means that you are in the gym exactly when you are scheduled to be there and that you neither add nor subtract any part of your exercise plan from any daily workout.  By being scrupulous and exacting about keeping your workout plan perfectly, you will see steady muscle growth and progress toward your goal step by step.  And step by step in bodybuilding is the only reliable path to winning the big competitions that lie in your future.

Mike Mentzer - The Philosopher Muscle Man of Pumping Iron

The movie Pumping Iron put on display the finest of the sport of bodybuilding.  When you watch those phenomenal athletes on the screen, they seem to blend together.  But each athlete who reached that final plateau of bodybuilding to compete to be Mr. Universe was and is a very unique individual with a story to tell.

Pumping Iron introduced us to the very recognizable bodybuilders who went on to become movie stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno.  But it is amazing what we learn when we delve into the other stories from Pumping Iron including the lives and careers of Franco Columbu, Mike Katz, Robby Robinson, Ken Waller and Mike Mentzer to name a few.

Of that illustrious list, Mike Mentzer stands out as a bodybuilder who was by far not a typical "dumb athlete".  In fact, it is entirely appropriate to give Mike Mentzer the title of the philosopher muscle man of Pumping Iron.

Mentzer devoted himself to the development of every aspect of his personhood including the mental, the physical and the philosophical.  To Mike Mentzer, the same discipline that made him successful as a bodybuilder gave him the intellectual powers to conquer the great questions of philosophy.  Small wonder that Mentzer went on to write books and develop an entire bodybuilding regimen that taught upcoming athletes tremendous discipline of body and soul.

Mike Mentzer began competing in bodybuilding competitions young and devoted himself to success.  He suffered some early defeats, which lead him to put himself under the mentorship of the well known bodybuilding trainer Arthur Jones.  It was Jones who introduced Mentzer to a focused and scientific strategy for bodybuilding that would take him step by step toward greatness in the sport.

He realize the fruit of his dedication and discipline when he won the Mr. America competition in 1976.  Then in 1978, Mike Mentzer won the Mr. Universe competition and realized an achievement of a perfect score of 300 in that contest.  That is an achievement that no other bodybuilder before or since has accomplished.

While all bodybuilders must find an inner reserve of discipline to transform their bodies into pure muscle as they do, Mentzer turned that discipline into a spiritual and philosophical quest as well.  He became a devoted follower of the objectivist philosophical school that was championed by Ayn Rand.

Mentzer has often been quoted for saying that, "Man, is an indivisible entity, an integrated unit of mind and body."  His many books and seminars that have brought him success since his bodybuilding championships and since become a movie star briefly in Pumping Iron have put as much emphasis on philosophy as they do on physical fitness.  To Mentzer, the two disciplines were a perfect compliment to each other.

In the years following Mike Mentzer's tremendous success in bodybuilding championships and in the movie Pumping Iron, he used his notoriety to pushing his philosophical and body building methods in a series of books.  Probably the most well known of these books was High-Intensity Training the Mike Mentzer Way which integrated diet, high intensity weight training with other aspects of a well balanced lifestyle for long term health and strength development.

These training regimens were extraordinarily popular and taught many people to develop their bodies in balance with a healthy lifestyle in every respect.  In that way, Mike Mentzer was more than just a bodybuilding champion, he was a philosopher, teacher and mentor for younger athletes on their way up to teach them to realize their success the right way and the healthy way.