Stretches for weight lifting for women

No woman who lifts weights wants short, tight muscles that stop you from moving freely and gracefully to show off the results of your hard work . And of course no one wants to put themselves at greater risk of an injury. So stretching is a must (but you knew that already, right?)

If you lift weights, what are the most important stretches to spend your time on?

The short answer is: you need to stretch every muscle group that you've just been working.

Aside from that, for women I think stretching the glutes, and especially gluteus maximus is important. Tight glutes can make your strong butt look much bigger and rounder in your jeans than it really is.

Visit this page at bodybuilding.com for a range of stretches for your butt - including pictures.

Spending a little extra time stretching the pecs is also a good idea. Most of us spend a lot of time at a desk, which can lead to rounded shoulders and tight pecs. When you're training the chest as well, it can get tighter, giving you unattractive posture. This page has a comprehensive explanation of how to stretch the pecs, or just watch the videos for the short explanation.

Here are a few hints for getting the most out of your stretching time:

Do:

• warm up your muscles first. I know, you know this is important to prevent injury, but doesn't stretching feel GOOD if you're warm first? A brisk 5 minute walk or some bodyweight exercises (planks, pushups and squats with no weight) is usually enough.
• keep good posture when you stretch. Just like when you're lifting weights, when you're stretching to some extent you are "setting" your body into that position.
• hold it for 30 - 60 seconds This might seem like a long time when you're keen to get on with your workout or get into the shower, but I believe you'll get the proper benefit when you allow the muscle to relax into the stretch.

Don't:

• Bounce! At best, your muscles don't fully stretch out because theyre guarding themselves against being injured. At worst, they do get injured.
• Rush through it. It's said that we need to spend at least half as long stretching as we do lifting weights. e.g., for an hour workout, lift for 40 minutes, and stretch for 20.

My best tip to help fit more stretching into your daily routine: you can stretch during sets of weights at the gym, and when you're resting between intervals when running, cycling etc.

Real food vs marketing

Domino's Pizza have conducted the research - the results are in!

What creative or crazy junk foods have you noticed being advertised lately? I think the creamy pasta served in a bowl made of pastry (by the real-world Domino's) is pretty high in my Empty Calorie hall of fame!

Do "Diet Derailers" live in your kitchen?

Most of us following a healthy lifestyle or working on weight loss have a range of fantastic nutritious foods in the house. Things like fruit, veges, tinned vegetables, dried beans, tuna, lean meat, rolled oats, nuts...these support our diet.

Many of us also have things in our kitchen that could derail our good eating habits and make us go off track. We think they're harmless because we bought them for our partners or our guests (or our children). We "know" we're not going to eat anything so high in processed carbs/saturated fats/sugar! In reality, these foods are laying in wait, ready for the opportunity when we come home tired or stressed, or really hungry, or just don't care at that moment about what we eat.

And next we know, we've eaten the chocolate biscuits, chips or icecream...and wish we hadn't.

The fail-safe golden rule is don't keep junk foods in the house. You can still have these foods occasionally, but you can do yourself a favour by keeping them out of your cupboards. For example, go out to eat ice cream, and if you want chips buy one small packet on the day you're going to eat it.

Try talking to your partner and others you live with to explain that you're trying to eat healthily and it would make life easier for you if they help you out by not bringing their junk foods into the house, or at least keeping them somewhere you won't be tempted by them. They could keep it in another room, in their car, or out of sight in a box at the back of the pantry or fridge.

As for guests, if you only want to put healthy foods in your own body, why not do them the same favour? You'll be setting a positive example without having to say a word.

It'll pay off the next time you come home from a rough day and are deciding what to cook for dinner. You'll see those healthy foods and may not even think of eating anything else!

Image:
freedigitalphotos.net

One thing you should do every time you run on a treadmill

Every time you use a treadmill, you should use the incline. It's not just there as an option - it's there to make your running or walking session more effective, interesting, and simulate the real world. Have you ever spent a few weeks jogging on the treadmill, and you got fitter and faster and you were pretty proud of yourself. And then you went for a run outside and wondered why it felt so hard? One difference between the treadmill and the road is that the road doesn't move itself underneath you, you need to use a 2% incline on the treadmill to replicate running on the ground. The incline is great for intervals too. You can work really hard at 10% for a couple of minutes (either walking or running), then lower to 2% for a minute or so to recover, then ramp it up again. Another way to change the incline which makes your workout time disappear before you know it is to increase it progressively. Start out on 2% for one minute, then 3% for the next minute, then 4%, then 5% etc. When you've gone as high as you want to, start coming back down! 5% for a minute, then 4% for the next minute, and so on. This way you are well and truly warmed up before you get to the steepest section, and as you start to decrease the incline it feels easier and easier. Do you have other ways you like to vary the incline and speed to mix up your workout? Let me know in the comments!

How to do HIIT and other interval training

High intensity interval training (HIIT) is the "new black" in fitness, with long slow cardio well and truly outed by the scientific evidence as less effective than intervals in burning fat, increasing fitness, and supporting lean muscle mass. You've heard heaps about interval training, but how do you do it?

One way is use the clock. You work hard for 1 minute, then rest for 1 minute (or 2 minutes to 1, or 30 seconds to 90 seconds). The length of your rest and work periods depends on how hard you are working, and how long you need to recover to keep working hard.

Another way to decide when to speed up and when to slow down is to count light posts, houses, or blocks (obviously this one is for when you're running or riding a bike outside). Sprint to one light post, and then walk until another. You can see you rest period coming up, which helps motivate you to push on a bit further.

If you're in the gym or working out with your Ipod/mp3 player, you can use songs instead. Go hard for one song, back off in the next, and then go hard again. You can even create a playlist that combines high energy songs to motivate you to work hard, and slower ones to catch your breath.

Of course you can do intervals when you're running, riding, rowing, stair climbing or swimming, but you can do body weight intervals too. Turbulence Training is a fantastic program with heaps of variety. Great for those of you don't enjoy gyms (or can't access them). It's fun and very time efficient too.

Check out these other posts for tips on:

• fun intervals you can run outdoors
• running intervals on a treadmill
• hill-running intervals