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Viewing Category: Exercises & Workouts
How to Avoid Butt Amnesia and Get Buns of Steel
by Shin Ohtake on Thursday, July 15, 2010 • 10 Comments
Gluteus Maximus…it’s got a powerful ring to it, doesn’t it? Sounds like it could even be a name of a Spartan warrior. Well it’s not a name of a warrior…it’s actually the scientific name for your butt. But it’s actually quite fitting when you figure the important role your butt plays in your body, as well as for athletic performance. Speed, quickness, and power all hinge on your ability to utilize and maximize your glutes. The more you’re able to use it the better you’ll be…for just about every sport. The fastest, quickest and most powerful athletes are all able to harness the power of their glutes. Learning to use your butt can really help boost your athletic performance.
(Note: If you’re having trouble viewing this video, please try watching it directly on my YouTube channel and see if that helps)
How To Get Ripped Abs Without Crunches - Part 3 (Video)
by Shin Ohtake on Thursday, July 01, 2010 • 9 Comments
Here’s the last part of the 3 part ab series. This particular movement may be the most simple, but it’s probably also the most challenging…if you perform it correctly. The problem with this exercise is that most people don’t do it properly and hence aren’t maximizing the potential this exercise can offer your body. If you think you have strong abs…well then, this is a great litmus test to challenge your abs. I’ll show you how you can progressively increase the difficulty using this anti-movement abdominal exercise to challenge even the strongest core. Try this one out and see if you can stimulate your abs better than your traditional ab crunches and twists.
Please excuse the poor sound quality of this video…the A/C kicked in while filming the video and I wasn’t aware how loud it was!
(Note: If you’re having trouble viewing this video, please try watching it directly on my youtube channel)
Exercises & Workouts •
How To Get Ripped Abs Without Crunches Part 2 (Video)
by Shin Ohtake on Wednesday, June 23, 2010 • 16 Comments
Here’s part 2 of a 3 part ab series. Following the same philosophy (from last week) that anti-movements patterns stimulate your abs better than flexing, twisting and crunching your abs, this particular exercise really hits your lower abs—especially that stubborn stomach pooch, right below your belly button!
Now doing this ab exercise alone won’t do the trick, but when you combine it with a clean diet (no refined carbs, no processed foods, no refined sweets) and an effective fat burning workout program, you’ll finally be saying “so long” to your lower belly pooch.
(Note: If you’re having trouble viewing this video, please try watching it directly on my YouTube channel and see if that helps)
Exercises & Workouts •
How To Get Ripped Abs Without Crunches (Video)
by Shin Ohtake on Thursday, June 17, 2010 • 34 Comments
Traditional ab exercises like sit ups and crunches are not the best way to get you ripped abs. In fact, if you’ve read any of my past articles regarding ab/core exercises, you know that I don’t like anything that involves excessive movement of the spine.
Your spine is strongest at it’s neutral position, which is a natural “s” curve. And since your spine houses your spinal cord, it would make sense to have it in a position that can provide maximum support at all times. This is why excessive flexion, extension and rotation is not recommended, since it compromises your spine’s ability to protect your spinal nervous system.
So, how do you work your abs?
(Note: If you’re having trouble viewing this video, please try watching it directly on my YouTube channel and see if that helps)
How a Good Night’s Sleep Can Help You Lose More Weight
by Shin Ohtake on Thursday, May 27, 2010 • 12 Comments
There really is nothing better than a good nights sleep! After you wake up from a deep restful sleep, your mind seems clearer, your body feels better and even your day seems to go better. Well, your not just imagining it…it’s true. Your body’s chemistry is greatly affected by sleep. In fact sleep plays a vital part in managing your body’s hormones…the same hormones that also control your metabolic processes responsible for weight loss. Believe it or not, sleep plays a huge part in weight loss. Numerous studies have found a direct correlation between weight gain and lack of sleep. Depriving yourself of adequate sleep can alter your hormones and make losing weight much more difficult than it should be.
Why Longer Workouts Can Keep You Fat
by Shin Ohtake on Thursday, May 20, 2010 • 31 Comments
Time may be the most important aspect in our lives. It keeps ticking away no matter what we do. It’s what we live by, it’s our guideline. It keeps us organized and on schedule. There’s 24 hours in a day, most of us work 40 hours (or more) a week, we divide our day up into hourly increments and so it’s no surprise that we judge things based on time.
If someone worked 8 hours, you automatically assume that person did more work than someone that worked 4 hours…right? The problem is, that assumption neglects a very important component…quality. Quality can’t be defined by time…in fact, more often than not quality has an inverse relation to time. You’re more likely to perform higher quality of work in a shorter amount of time. And the longer you work, the more likely your quality declines. And this holds true for fitness as well.
It may come as a surprise, but working out longer isn’t always good for you, and it doesn’t mean you’re going to lose more weight either. In fact, it can stop you from losing weight all together. There’s reason to believe that your body wasn’t designed to exercise more than a certain amount a day and doing more can actually be more harmful.
So if you’re still stuck in the mind set, that you need to workout out longer so you can burn more calories…you’ve been going down the wrong path and it’ll only lead you to more frustrations.
Quality over quantity. Save precious time by learning to work with your body, so you can lose weight easier and more efficiently and achieve optimum health and fitness at the same time. Believe it or not, it’s much easier than your think.
How Lack of Oxygen Stops You From Burning Fat
by Shin Ohtake on Thursday, April 22, 2010 • 26 Comments
Oxygen is something we all take for granted since we really don’t ever think about it. But it’s the most important element that’s responsible for the existence of life. Without oxygen there wouldn’t be any living thing on this earth!
It’s amazing how the most important element in our life is taken for granted. It’s estimated that in the last 10,000 years the level of oxygen in the atmosphere has dropped by 50 %! Now 10,000 years may seem a long time, but in earth time, it’s just a blink of an eye.
Scary thought considering the explosion of global population and industrialization is crippling our oxygen producing environment faster than ever before.
And in addition to less available oxygen, we’ve also become less efficient at consuming oxygen. This means that you’re functioning with lower levels of oxygen in your body. Since oxygen is needed in essentially all of your metabolic processes including burning fat - without proper levels of oxygen, these metabolic processes slow down or get halted altogether, seriously compromising your health and stopping your weight loss and fitness progress dead in it’s tracks.
Needless to say having enough oxygen in your body is critical for a healthy body.
I’ll show you how to effectively increase oxygen levels in your body, so it can function at an optimal level, ensuring that your fat burning and weight loss efforts are realized to it’s maximum potential and protect you from any serious health problems.
The One Hormone That’s Keeping Your Belly Fat
by Shin Ohtake on Thursday, March 25, 2010 • 67 Comments
Beer belly, spare tire, spill over…they’re all the same thing - Belly Fat. And it’s the most difficult area to lose fat and get lean. No amount of sit ups, crunches or side bends are going to get rid of it. It’s fat around your belly and you need to burn off the fat if you ever want to see the effects of all your ab/core exercises.
The problem is that the fat around your belly isn’t like any other fat on your body. It’s heavily influenced by your hormones and in order for you to make real changes in that area, you’re going to have to take charge of your hormones. And this is the difficult part…first you have to know which hormones are doing the damage and then you have to learn how to control these hormones and lastly, you have to implement these changes if you ever want your belly fat to go away.
Now, there’s few key hormones that affect your belly fat, but there’s one in particular that really makes a difference. It’s a powerful hormone that is essential to your body’s metabolic functions but it can also easily get out of balance and cause havoc to your body. And to make matters more difficult this hormone increases as you age making the occurrence of imbalance, and a larger belly, almost a sure thing. BUT all is not lost…you CAN get rid of your spare tire, IF you know what to do. Stop wasting your time and effort on things that don’t work. I’ll show you what you need to know, so you can take control of your hormone and really start making a difference in your body. You’ll understand why you haven’t been able to burn off your belly fat and learn to make the necessary changes in order to finally penetrate the stubborn fat that’s been surrounding your belly like Fort Knox.
The Best Way to Train for an Endurance Event
by Shin Ohtake on Wednesday, March 03, 2010 • 10 Comments
If your training for an upcoming 10 km and you’ve been told that you need to run, run and run some more for those distances or longer to build up your endurance…you’ve been told wrong. Training for a 10 km or even a longer endurance event isn’t about just doing that activity for long periods of time. It’s easy to think that way and it seems like the right thing to do, but what you don’t know may actually be hindering you from getting better faster. There’s nothing worse than putting in hours of hard work and not seeing the results you expected. If you want your results to reflect all the hard training you put in, than you better start training right. I’ll show you the most common mistakes people make when training for these events and simple but effective training methods that you can easily implement into your training regimen to help you improve your performance.
Exercises & Workouts •
The Proven Formula To Losing Your Stomach Fat
by Shin Ohtake on Thursday, January 21, 2010 • 55 Comments
Do you workout but your one problem area never seems to go away…your belly fat? If you’ve been on a quest for a flat belly or even a six pack, it’s what you don’t know that may be sabotaging your efforts of budging that stubborn fat off your stomach. The right information can be the difference between looking at your same old belly a few months from now or seeing a brand new you with flat abs you haven’t seen since your high school days. Find out what’s keeping you from losing your gut.
Why 95% Of People Who Lose Weight Gain It Back.
by Shin Ohtake on Thursday, January 14, 2010 • 24 Comments
Losing weight isn’t the hard part, it’s maintaining your hard earned body that’s tricky. Most people gain their weight back within 2 years of losing it all. And the reasons aren’t what we initially thought. Gaining your weight back and more, may have more to do with your body’s biological processes. There is strong evidence which shows, once you lose the weight, your body does everything in it’s power to regain that weight back. Your thinner body needs less calories to sustain itself, but your craving for food intensifies, making it increasingly difficult to maintain your hard earned lean body. But not all is lost, where there’s a will there’s a way! Find out what you can do to keep your weight off and maintain your lean body for the long term and avoid being the 90 - 95% of people that gain it all back.
What’s The Best Time Of Day To Workout?
by Shin Ohtake on Thursday, November 05, 2009 • 40 Comments
Will you get better results if you workout in the morning or the afternoon? Some say exercising in the morning forces your body to utilize fat as the energy source, so it’s the best time to workout if you want optimum fat loss. Others say your lean muscle building and fat loss hormones peak in the afternoon, so if you want a better body you’d better workout later in the day. So which is it, AM or PM?
Can Too Much Running Cause Death?
by Shin Ohtake on Thursday, October 22, 2009 • 28 Comments
Death by running? Talk about an oxymoron. The once savior to all heart disease is now a possible culprit? Say it ain’t so! Well, just this past week there were three deaths in the Detroit Marathon. The incidents all happened within 16 minutes of one another—most likely all from cardiac arrest. But don’t worry, as suggested by the CNN article titled, “Despite 3 deaths in Detroit race, runner fatalities are rare”, these incidents are not common. Whew! A sigh of relief if you love running and participate in long distance events like the marathon, right? Not so fast. What I’m about to tell you may have you thinking otherwise…
Is the “Maximum Heart Rate” Formula Sabotaging Your Workout (And Your Results)?
by Shin Ohtake on Wednesday, September 16, 2009 • 31 Comments
Exercising within your “target heart rate” zone has long been accepted as a standard training protocol, but what if I told you that the formula for calculating your max heart rate is inaccurate? And that even the doctor that created the formula admits to being completely surprised at how the medical and fitness communities have made it the standard formula, without anyone actually doing any extended research. Here’s the real story on how the formula for calculating your max heart rate came about (from the NY Times Health):
Exercises & Workouts •
Ab Strengthening Exercise (Better Than Situps)
by Shin Ohtake on Tuesday, September 08, 2009 • 24 Comments
Strengthen Your Abs With Suitcase Squats:
One question I’m often asked is, “What ab exercises can I do other than the traditional sit-ups and crunches?”. Well, if you’ve been following me or have read any of my articles, you know that I’m not a big fan of “traditional” ab exercises. Here’s why:
Exercises & Workouts •
