Daily tip #20| Basic routine

On one of my recent posts I've had a comment asking me of how to set up a basic routine to get started, I understand it might be difficult when having no idea from what to start, so let me give you a hand..



So, when beginning you want to start slow and easy so you don't injure yourself. Let me make you a basic, home workout to use.


Day                     Exercise                Sets                      Reps      
Monday             Crunches                    3                      12-25
                          Pushups                     3                        8-12
                          Overhand pullups       3                        8-10
                          Lunges                      3                         8-14


Tuesday             Cardio day, you should jog, swim, bike or brisk for 25 minutes.



Wednesday        Crunches                    3                      12-25
                          Pushups                     3                        8-12
                          Overhand pullups       3                        8-10
                          Lunges                      3                         8-14
                     
                         Cardio, swim, jog, bike or brisk for 25 minutes.

Thursday           Cardio today, jog, brisk, swim or bike for 40 minutes today.




Friday                Crunches                    3                      12-25
                          Pushups                     3                        8-12
                          Overhand pullups       3                        8-10
                          Lunges                      3                         8-14

                      Cardio, easy jog, swim, brisk or bike for 15 minutes.


Saturday        Intense cardio day, jog, swim, brisk or bike at about 80% of your speed, 1 set lasts five minutes, 5 sets.



Sunday        Long session today, you might be feeling sore from saturday, so now you want to go easily, but long, do 60-90 minutes of light/slow jogging, brisking, swimming or biking. Do not go hard.





How much rest should you have between sets? Start off with 60 seconds of rest between sets. If you feel like you're getting too beat, increase the rest to 90 seconds, nothing over two minutes though. If you feel like this is too easy, decrease the rest to 30-45 seconds.


So there you go, I just put together a simple workout week, you should be able to follow this for quite a while. You do not want to increase the reps/lenght of cardio until you learn the proper form and understand your body, I suggest keeping this atleast two months, from then on you can increase the reps.

Do not forget to sleep better, eat better , drink a lot of water and have a better mindset. You'll achieve what you want eventually, you just have to fight for it, or in this care, do the above four.


Remember, you're getting used to this kind of routine, this is not a 'diet' type of thing, this is a lifestyle. You can get injured, stay safe.


You should always know it's better to cheat a day or two than quit. If you really feel like you can't do anything today, take the day off, but make sure to not miss one next week.

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Daily tip #19| Abs

Let me ask you something.. Do you hate sit ups? I hate sit ups. And there is a very solid reason for it..


Before that, how many times have you seen the commercial where ripped models are using the product X and 'working out on it'? Many, I bet. Maybe you've bought one of those things too, and now it's just collecting dust. Never fall for those commercials, NONE of the things there work. Some of the commercials claim the product will get you abs only with 7 minutes of exercise per day!


... Now that is just outrageous. You can't get abs with a cheap plastic toy which bends and does nothing else, you get abs with 101% dedication, 90% work 120% rest and 200% nutrition. That's how you get abs, and that is how you get ripped, don't spend your money thinking 'maybe this one will work'. It will not, it never will. You can go to the gym, destroy yourself in there for two hours a day, three days a week and you're not going to achieve ANYTHING if you come home and eat pizza.


If you are buying these products, and believe me, A LOT of people are falling for these, you probably don't know how to work out your abs. The only exercise you might think of to get abs is sit ups, right? Well..



Sit ups.. They don't work. Sit ups are useless, and they can mess up your back. Do NOT do them. Ever. They're a complete waste of time. Your abs are not going to get the workout they need, it might seem like it's helping in the beginning, but you could've actually gone way further if you were doing something else, and you're probably going to start having problems with your back soon.

There is something, far greater than sit ups..


 And that something is crunches. Crunches are just plain wonderful. You lay down flat on your back, legs bent, hands behind your head lightly supporting your neck, looking up to the ceiling, you move your face towards the ceiling together with your shoulders. Do not begin doing a sit up, this is not a sit up, this is a crunch, concentrate on contracting your abs and as far as possible, as soon as you're at the most you can move your shoulders forward, HOLD. Hold that position for atleast two seconds, then slowly lower your shoulders down. Repeat. So what if you can do 20 sit ups, try 20 of properly done these, you'll see the HUGE difference. So, you work your way up to 20 of properly done these, now, take a big book, or a brick, or just something heavy you can fit, and hold it under your head while doing the crunches. This'll be like exercising with crunches all over again.


Form is KEY in this exercise. Do not concentrate on how many you do, concentrate on your abs, and the perfect form. If you don't, you'll end up working out your neck, or your hips. If you want to do that though, feel free, but it's not going to make your abs stronger.  Remember to move your shoulders straight up, no arms flailing around, no moving your head around. Try to lessen the tension in your neck, you have to learn to support it right, try different ways, just do not hurt yourself.



Why you would want to do this? This will strenghten your abs, and strong abs stabilize your lower back and protect you. They also look great!



Do not forget, nutrition is key to achieving abs. You can have rock hard abs, but nobody will be able to see them! Make sure to not make common mistakes, and sleep right!


Cheating a day is better than quitting.

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Daily tip #15| Supplements

There are literally thousands of supplements and they all promise more than the other. Who to really believe? I believe, with hard sweat and good nutrition, you can build muscle on your own. But if you do want that 10% edge and have some money to spend, then surely, I have some tips for you.


First off, you might not even know what kind of supplements there are, just to name a few there is:


Protein powder,
Creatine,
Glutamine,
Tyrosine,
Taurine,
Beta-Alamine.


What exactly are supplements? A supplement is basically nutrition without calories. Food is nutrition with calories, I think that's a good example.


Now, out of all of those above, I only recommend using all natural, preferably isolated whey (protein) powder. If natural and isolated, whey powder is perfect in my opinion and experience. Natural means the whey has no toxins or metal scraps, no additional weird things that you didn't even know existed. Isolated means it is stripped off it's calories. If you're going to be doing this, I do not recommend your day consisting of every meal with protein powder in them, I suggest you only consume protein powder after workouts.


Alongside this, to help you build muscle or work out more intensively, I recommend green tea. Yes, green tea. It has the caffeine, and there are a lot of health benefits coming along with green tea. If you hate green tea, force yourself. But if you really really hate green tea, you can use coffee. Just plain green tea, and plain coffee, not a single tiny spoon of sugar, none of your beloved creams, nothing in addition, just pure green tea and coffee. You can't even imagine how many calories people drink. Do not buy the 'quick-made' coffee, use real, quality coffee beans and grind them, it's way better.





A lot of supplements have toxins in them, toxic metals and pesticides all in one package. You should always make sure what you'll be using, you could just be working out for nothing since you're going to kill yourself with all of that stuff. The fitness industry has changed quite a bit - 26 billion dollars a year. They're going to be pushing the cheapest-made and highest price stuff they can. You want to use a brand that has been tested by USP to be sure that what's on the label, is in there, and nothing additional. Brands can buy these research companies or have one within them, hoaxing the labels and the real nutrition, which can mess you up and let your work, time and money to waste, you don't want that.



Now something to help you weed out products.. I always say to remember, if a product claims to make you gain 16 pounds of muscle in less than a year.. It's full of crap. Hide your wallet and walk away immideatly, that will never happen since building muscle is very slow, and you really don't want to be changing workouts as quick as socks, because it 'isn't working'.


This is my tip for today, I hope you have a nice sunday night, don't forget to sleep the way you should, and be productive tomorrow!

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Daily tip #14| Sleeping better

Sleep is very important. (also see this) As most of you probably work using a computer, or just spend your leisure time watching tv, you should know that this can alter your sleeping by quite a lot.. Melatonin is a natural hormone which helps regulate your sleeping and waking up. When it's dark and dim, it get's produced more, calming you down and preparing you for sleep. When it's bright ( a computer screen, a light bulb, even an night-time alarm clock glowing can make your sleep worse.


Spending a lot of time in dim places can mess up your sleep-wake patern, make your brain sleepy and you less capable of solving problems, and performing physical activities. If you want to fix this, you should generally expose yourself to more sunlight during the day. Bright day? Don't wear sunglasses. Having a break? Go outside, do not relax inside. In your home, you could move your work desk to your window.


You want to boost melatonin. How can you boost it? Well, you should turn off your computer and tv atleast a few hours before sleep. If you like reading, do not read from a backlit e-book, choose a real book or an older e-book and use a dim bed light. You should also change the light bulbs in your house, do you really need those bright, high electricity consuming light bulbs?



Now that we have the sleeping pattern sorted out, we need to increase the quality. You should always try to keep the noise down. If you have loud neighbors, try putting on some soothing music, in fact, you can even use white noise. You should also keep your room cool, a room that is too cool or too hot can have an impact on your sleep, generally you should keep the room at around 18 celcius or higher(something like 65, 70 fahrenheit).



Eating properly, yes, food does have quite a significant impact on your sleep.You really don't want to eat two to three hours before bed, especially foods with fat. Fat is digested slowly, keeping your stomach up over-working, also giving you poorer sleep. Something like a yogurt or a banana is fine, and actually can help because of the serotonin properties. No alchohol. You'll have withdrawals during the night, giving you very poor sleep. Same with smoking, you will be having nicotin withdrawals during your sleep, if you've been smoking or regularly drinking for a long time, you might not realise how much you're missing out on.



Anxiety and stress also has an effect, thinking about these things or worrying about events can make you stay up quite a while. What you can try to do is relax. How? You should deeply breathe, closing your eyes, slowly starting to tense all of your muscles, beginning with your toes all the way up to your head, while visualising a very peaceful, nice and pleasant place..


You should never brainstorm or try solving a problem in bed. If you really need to do so today, go to sleep earlier to wake up early and solve it. The solution thought up while trying to sleep is not going to be as good as it could be with a clean, fresh mind.



If you're sleeping properly, you should never need to use an alarm. If you do need to use an alarm clock, you need to go to sleep earlier..

If you feel like you need to change your bedtime, don't straight up try to, it will probably not work, demotivate you and give you poor sleep that night. You should try shifting the time 15 minutes at most per day. Daily naps can help, and can be horrible. A nap can compensate for the lack of sleep the night before, but it can also mess your sleep up. The most you should nap for is 20 to 30 minutes.


On weekends, you should try and keep your schedule the same, you don't want your body to begin adapting to something new, and then be smacked back down to your normal sleep ways just straight before work on monday, I don't think you'd feel as keen on things as you are capable of that day, which, in an important job is not very good.



There you go, these are my tips. I have many more, but I do not want to go all-out as I did with my jump rope daily, a lenghty post will probably be not as imformative as a short, sort of dosed one can be. I hope this helped, so good night and sweet dreams (coming soon).

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Daily tip #11| Exercise does make you happy

Do you ever feel like you've acomplished something, and become more happy after workouts? Well, you're kind of forced to. Some even describe the post-workout feeling as euphoric.When you workout, you improve, get more fit and flexibe, those are not the only reasons why you're happy. A study from the American College of Sports Medicine has shown that just a basic 30 minute exercise session can really boost your mood and tackle depression seriously. This does sound familiar, doesn't it? If low or medium intensity exercise is all that’s needed to give yourself a boost, imagine what you can get out of intense exercise..

Now, there's sience behind this, there's three things that make this happen:

Serotonin: It is a neurotransmitter which makes us emotionally stable. Levels of serotonin rise high during exercise, meaning it boosts your confidence and makes you happier. Serotonin produces out of an tryptophan, which is found in bananas, cottage cheese (more reasons to love cheese),chicken, and baked potatoes. Serotonin is also responsible for your sleep and awake cycles, mood, libido and appetite. It is directly linked to feelings of depression and sadness.



Dopamine: Dopamine is a neurotransmitter which makes us feel energised, motivated and upbeat. High levels of protein containing foods such as meat, milk, fish and beans help produce dopamine. Dopamine is factor in developing and strenghtening coordination and  muscle memory. Dopamine makes the brain associate happiness with exercise, your brain will then remember the feeling and will be encouraging your body to do exercise, in order to get more.


Phenylethylamine: An naturally occuring neurotransmitter found in the brain, it works as an mood enhancing stimulant, also aiding in the production of dopamine.



Endorphins: They bind to opioid receptors in your brains neurons, altering the number of neurotransmitters which are discharged. It reduces your central-nervous-systems' ability to receive electrical impulses of your nerves which mean pain, this means your body declines the feelings of discomfort, sadness and pain while working out.



So now you know, exercise is truly the key to happiness, not only will you look great - you'll feel better.

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Daily tip #9| Jump rope

I've been getting the idea that people prefer indoor cardio workouts. I don't exactly know why, maybe because they don't know their city well, or they don't feel comfortable going through the city (in this case you should bring someone along with you, you'll help them and they'll help you!).

Since this seems to be getting more and more common ( I hope you don't forget to open your windows after the workout ) I suppose I could share my experience with indoor cardio..

Jump rope, just like swimming, is definitely one of the best activities to target almost every muscle in your body, especially stability/core muscles (Your abs). How is that? Well when you jump, the core (your abs) are used to stabilize yourself to not fall while landing. The legs (calves in this case) are used to help you jump. Your upper body and arms are used to hold and move the rope, your arms don't get much workout out of this though, if you're doing jump rope right, you'll be using your wrist more. However, you can buy a heavier rope, which will then help you use your arm muscles more.

Yes, this is exactly why Rocky and other boxers perform this activity religiously. Another benefit of doing jump rope, is that it will likely expose your weakest muscles. However, this is not a beginner activity (unless you're really good at jump rope to begin with). You should start with jogging and/or swimming and gradually learn to jump rope better, until you can get 30-40 minutes of good rope jumping, then you can use it as proper cardio. Many people get discouraged before reaching that level, but if you stick to it, it'll be worth it. Jump roping is also hard on the joints, although not as hard as running. Lastly the seriously obese can hurt their backs and legs joints due to the excess weight in the mid section causing excess momentum and jarring. If you're seriously obese you are likely to hurt your back and leg joints due to the weight in the middle of your body, which will then cause excess momentum.

Interesting? So, here's what you need to get started:

You need an area which has high enough ceilings.
Stable flat floor,
A good pair of shoes (check daily tip #2)
And, a jump rope (make sure you have this one.)


Now, for those who are planning to do it in your garage or basement which has cement floor, you need to make sure that you have shoes which absorb much of the impact. If neither your floor or shoes are absorbing the impact, your joints are. It's obvious that it isn't the best idea to let your joints absorb the whole impact, it will also tire you out very quickly. Don't worry though, you can use your mind and create a platform.

For example, you could use a piece of some wooden board ( I used 122 cm on 122 ). You then place it between the floor and several collapsed carboard boxes, which will likely give you (depending on your boxes) about 2 or 3 centimetres between the floor and your wood board. I suggest not trying to jump rope on the carpet, it will make the rope drag and will be very hard, you don't want to damage your carpet either. If you don't have wood, you can try placing a piece of linoleum (I'm sure it's at your local DIY store) on the carpet. The carpet will be a nice cushion, and you can stash the linoleum away.


About the rope. If you are a beginner, you should avoid ropes called 'speed rope', or 'weighted rope', these will require you already knowing the technique, which you probably don't know.

We have the parts, now lets get to the jumping part!

If you're new, what's likely to happen when you try jump roping for the first or second time? The rope hits the ground, or you trip, now why is that? The most likely reason people trip or hit is because the rope might not be of proper lenght. Either it's way too long or short. But how do you measure how much lenght do you need? You definitely do not eye it.


- Set the rope on the ground.
- Stand on the midpoint of the rope with both feet ( make sure you're standing in the middle, the distance should be equal to both handles)
- Grab the handles and pull them up to your chest while still standing on the middle point.

If the top of the handles reach above your shoulders the rope is too long, and If the top of the handles only reaches your upper abs or lower, the rope is too short. The handles should reach your armpits. Now, if you're a beginner you should start with a slightly longer lenght, then gradually shorten it to the proper lenght.

You've set the rope, now jump! Your arms should very barely move when you jump. The movement of the rope should be done with your wrists. If you want to increase the speed, you should increase the tightness of the circles that your wrist is making ( that's the only way I can explain it, you get what I'm saying.) Also keep your elbows tucked into your side. The whole jump should be coming from your feet and calves pushing from the ball of your foot and definitely not from the knees and upper legs. If you find it hard to get the idea, stand straight and make yourself taller by raising yourself to the ball of your feet, you understand now? Good. Do the same but harder, to actually make you hop, do not bend your knees.



 You should keep repeating this until you can get about, lets say 10 cm off the ground. While doing this you should imagine you have a rope, and mimick the movement of it with your wrists. The actual trick to going over without falling is to get the rope to skip under the distance between your feet and the floor while you're in mid air.



 For the first few weeks (Yep, weeks) you should target no more than 1-3 minutes of flawless jumps (not stopping or hitting your feet) so that you do not get too frustrated (believe me, you can, and I don't want you to quit.). Do not try double hopping. Practice and patience (nutrition too) will strenghten your core, making you better. And as I mentioned, you should lenghten the rope more if you trip or hit often, gradually shortening it.


We got the technique, the place, and the learning curve down, now what's a routine? One of my prefered ones is 5 minutes of clean jumps, then for ~45 seconds. That's not it! I repeat until I get 40 minutes. Why walk? It will reduce the stiffness in your calves, and 40 seconds won't alter your heart rate much.


I think I've covered the basics and helped you, I'm sorry about the lenght. I'm not good enough to explain more simply, I hope you sticked through this post and read it all. I hope you'll use it too, I highly recommend this exercise, which can also be done outdoors, actually combined with jogging!


I thank you for your read and hope you leave a comment with your experience, as it's always interesting for everyone to read.

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Daily tip #8| Water

Water. Have you ever thought about how useful water is? Probably not, since you use and drink it every day, it seems to be taken for granted.

I can't strees enough how important water really is to you. Your water needs depend on many things, your health, how active you are, and how much and what you eat.

No single formula truly fits everyone. Though, knowing more about your body's need for fluids will help give you an idea of how much water you need to drink daily.

Okay, before jumping into your daily water intake, lets start with 'why?' to intake it. Water makes up about 60 percent of your body weight. That's more than half of you! Every single system in your body depends on water. Water is great. It helps remove toxins out of your organs, it regulates your body temperature, it carries nutrients to your cells and it moists up your ear, nose and throat tissues.Water also protects your joints and organs. . Blood is mostly water, and your muscles, lungs, and brain all contain a lot of water.

Water water water. It's more than a half of you, and there's still such a thing as dehydration? Sounds a bit silly, doesn't it?

You lose water through urination, respiration, you lose close to an additional liter of water a day through breathing, and if you are very active, sweating.. Caffeine pills and alcohol, result in the need to drink more water because this makes you lose a lot of fluids. Symptoms dehydration ( mild)  include pains in joints and muscles (after a good work out this doesn't apply), lower back pain, headaches and constipation. A strong odor to your urine ( yep, stronger than normal ), along with a yellow or amber-like color, means that you might not be getting enough water. Note that riboflavin, a B vitamin, will make your urine bright yellow. Some medications can alter the colour too.

Now, how much water do you need? About twenty percent of the water you need comes from the food you eat. The rest will come from drinks. Water is probably the best choice, obviously, because sodas have sugar and calories, which if you were to drink the daily norm of water with soda, you're way better off eating two or three chicken breasts and actually gaining high quality protein, rather than empty 'soda' calories.

A little over two liters of of water a day ,together with water from your normal diet, will typically replace your lost water. The Institute of Medicine advises that men consume about 3 liters (13 cups) of total beverages a day and women consume 2.2 liters (about 9 cups) of total drinks a day.

You should make sure to have a bottle of water with you no matter where you are, at work, camping, driving a car, exercising. Water does sound a bit unexciting, and I bet you'll get bored soon. To fix that, you can add a little flavour to it, some lemon maybe. You can experiment, but make sure to watch for calories, you don't want to drink a lot of them, start gaining weight and not realise why you're gaining weight if your diet is the same.

In the end, the biggest indicator of the need for water is thirst. It's there for a reason afterall, isn't it?

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Daily tip #7| The saturday aftermath

Aaah, saturdays! You wake up to a beautiful green morning of lazyness. Unless you like to go out and drink on friday..

If you haven't read my friday's tip, here it is. If you've read it and still went out to get a nasty hangover, shame on you. But since you're here, I suppose I'll help you nonetheless..

Hangovers, aren't they nasty? You shouldn't care, because if you've read my past article, you should realise, that drinking is not a great activity.

First of all.. What exactly is a 'hangover'? A 'hangover' is your body trying to get out the poison (alchohol) out of it. All the throwing up and the headaches are direct signals from your body to YOU, telling you STOP WHY ARE YOU POISONING YOURSELF? After a long night it might start cussing too.



The first and most important tip is to drink water.  Dehydration is very likely after a night out drinking session. The majority of the effects of any hangover come from the dehydration of your body, caused by alchohol and caffeine. So if you're planning to attend a wedding, or a birthday which you can't miss and you know you'll be talked into drinking, you should start preparing yourself.



Drink loads of water. Water helps with dehydration and will lessen its effect when it does happen. You should be drinking over 2.5 litres of water a day. Research tells that water is what the body needs to function properly, from your brain working properly, to cleaning your body.



Eat something. Eating  something  before drinking should ease the effects of alchohol. If you like to drink more than on occasion, you probably knew that drinking on an empty stomach is not a good idea.


Do not take pain killers. Alchohol plus medicine might equal death. Wait until the day after to take any medicine (probably pain reducing, won't it be?).


Stop drinking. Stop drinking at least an hour and a half before going to sleep so your body could atleast try to get some of the alchohol out of your system before you crash.

Just STOP. You really shouldn't drink as much as the others do, do you? Are they literally forcing it down your throat? They might be encouraging you, but you have your own head on your shoulders, they shouldn't think for you. By the way,  if they are actually forcing it down your throat, you should find new friends.



These are the tips. I recommend you don't drink enough to get a hangover. If you're at an event, a few glasses of wine or beer out of respect for the organizer are fine. Well, unless you attend something like that everyday.

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