by Mikhail Tuknov


The effort and stress involved in most conventional workouts discourage people from getting fit. Here are a few activities which offer you the opportunity to lose some weight while having fun.

Walking

Walking can be a very fun way to reduce weight and stay fit. In fact, experts say that walking 10,000 steps daily can help keep you healthy. Some people think that walking only exercises your feet and legs. However, you should know that walking actually helps improve your cardiovascular system, building up blood vessels so you have more oxygen stored in your blood. This helps increase your endurance and helps you keep your energy up after a long day.

When you take a walk, remember to enjoy the journey. Some people use treadmills, but that would actually be pretty boring and would seem like too much work to be worth it. When you take a real walk or even a jog, however, you’ll get to enjoy observing what’s going on around you. You might even manage to forget that you are exercising.

Video Games

Oh yes, there are actually video games that can help you stay fit and active. This equals to a lot of fun and a lot of calories lost. One of the most popular active video games is DDR or Dance Dance Revolution. This video game involves you stepping on a dance pad in time to instructions on the screen. Just a few minutes on DDR will get your heart pounding, your sweat pouring and your face smiling.

Another option would be the ParaParaParadise dance machine. This game is actually based on a popular dancing style in Japan called “Parapara”. Although the traditional modes have specific steps to follow in order to be considered a legitimate score, the game also offers a “freestyle mode” which allows you to be more creative and be more active. Offering different difficulties accompanied by energizing music, you’ll never realize you are actually exercising on this machine. A version is also available for use with Sony’s eye-toy.

The Wii is the latest to come out with active video games. Using motion-sensor controllers, a gamer will actually have to move in order to play the games. You need to punch when playing boxing games, you need to swing the controller in order to wield your sword and slay the dragon.

The active video game also helps boost morale by making you feel as if you have accomplished something. There are high scores to beat, after all.

Martial Arts

Forget repetitive and seemingly-senseless movements. What discourages people from doing aerobics or other types of traditional exercise is that they can be pretty boring and actually only burn a few calories per hour.

Martial Arts, on the other hand, can help you burn as much as 1000 calories an hour! Now that is some exercise.

In Martial Arts, your whole body will stay active -this means you will be able to tone and shape every muscle in your body. What’s more, this workout is far cry from being boring. You get to learn a new skill, practice it against opponents and generally focus on something other than how much weight you’re supposed to be losing.

What’s great about martial arts is that every move has its purpose. Whether it’s knocking out an enemy or regenerating life energy, martial arts is something where all movements count. Did you know that people who begin practicing Tai-Chi during their retirement years can actually extend their active life?

Dance

Dancing is another activity where you can get fit without actually thinking about exercise. It allows you to let lose, get those muscles working and that blood pounding. Dancing is all about having fun and feeling good about your body and your moves. It’s all about self expression and communication without words. Real exertion in dance can burn off as much calories as martial arts!

Dancing allows you to learn a skill and improve your overall personality. It allows you to become more aware of what you can do as a person. Dance also helps relieve stress and produce endorphins for that natural high.

Actually, various types of workouts are based on dance movements. Although these workouts pretty much focus on getting the same results as your regular exercise routine, the pacing and rhythm involved makes the exercise fun and more vigorous.

Swimming

Swimming is another activity that exercises the whole body. If you live near the beach or at least have a pool nearby, you should take advantage of the exercise opportunity. Of course, in order to keep fit with swimming, you’ll need to actually move. Just lounging about in the pool will not help sculpt your body.

What’s great about this activity is all the resistance you have to contend with. The water, despite supporting your buoyant body, actually causes every movement to require extra exertion. It also cools off your body. This equals to a great intense yet comfortable workout.

Why should you stress yourself when you can relax and get fit at the same time?

by Alan Tii


Staying focus and determined in is one of the most important criteria towards keeping fit. People often give up halfway towards keeping fit when they lost focus and determination . At times like this, we will need to give ourselves that additional motivational force to encourage ourselves to be back on the right track once again.

With that in mind, I present you the top fitness tips used by most trainers to keep them motivated all the time:

1) Find a partner

Find someone who has the same burning passion as you towards fitness to be your fitness and diet partner. Give positive encourage to each other along the way . In this way, you won’t give up too easily towards reaching your goal.



2) Set your goals

Set realistic goals that can be achieved in a certain time frame. Your goal can be ranging from simple goals like reduce carbohydrates intake for 1 month to more difficult goals like keeping to your fitness diet for 1 month. Many often give up halfway due to lack of goal setting.They often find themselves training aimlessly and overtime, they will lose motivation towards working out and give up.

3) Treat yourself

After you have achieved a certain goal within your stipulated time frame, reward yourself .Buy yourself a new pair of running shoes. Pamper yourself for that day by treating yourself a sumptuous meal of your favorite food. If you have been following religiously to your fitness diet all the while, a day of self-indulgence won’t do serious harm to your body.However, restrict yourself to only one day and leave your next happy moments for your next reward day.



4) Take A Break

Feeling tired and exhausted from your workouts ? Well, give your muscles a break then ! Your muscles need to rest in order for them to grow significantly.Improvements in strength and fitness will only occur during the rest period after your hard training.This resting process takes at least 12-24 hours to complete.If sufficient rest is not given to your muscles, then complete regeneration cannot occur.

5) Music

Equip yourself with a portable music player and immerse yourself in your favorite music. But of course, if hard rock music is your favorite genre of music, listening to linkin park’s song while working out is definitely not going to be beneficial for you. You will tend to follow the beat of the music and this will seriously affect the momentum of your workouts. Go for smoothing classical music to allow your heart and mind to be at peace while working out.



6 ) Think positively



The main reason why people often fail in keeping fit is because they always think negatively about working out. Even before starting the workouts, they are already thinking of the tiredness and sweat that the workouts will bring about and this negative thinking will deter them .The end result? They won’t even want to start the workout anymore . Yes, working out is tiring and will indeed cause you perspiring like hell. However, the results are definitely worth all the sweat and hard work with you slowly chiseling your body towards a model-like body after every single workout.Therefore, the next time when you are about to start your usual exercise routine, think positively about the workouts. Overtime, you will find working out to be a fun-filling activity rather than a strenuous activity.

7) Take a before picture

Take a picture every now and then to monitor closely how your exercises are helping you to sculpture your body.For example, you could take photos of your body bi-weekly and compare week 1 photos with week 3 photos and so on. If you have been following closely to your effective workout routines and your fitness diet, you should be able to observe visible results to your body every fortnightly.These visible results will keep you stay motivated towards achieving your fitness goal.