5 Myths Women NEED to Ignore

Champaign, IL (PRWEB) February 22, 2012

Women often subscribe to fitness fads, hearsay, and offbeat diets to get fit. According to top trainer Irene Lewis-McCormick, women must stop succumbing to pop culture in order to see greater strength and muscle definition. “It’s staggering the amount of misinformation that surrounds women and exercise,” says Lewis-McCormick. “With respect to the myths and misinformation, it’s no wonder women are so confused regarding what they should and should not do to achieve a strong, lean, healthy body.”

In her forthcoming book, "A Woman’s Guide to Muscle & Strength" (Human Kinetics, February 2012), Lewis-McCormick dispels five common fitness myths and explains why strength training should be a part of every woman’s fitness regimen.

1. Lifting weights creates bulky muscles.
Contrary to many women’s concerns, strength training using heavy weights won’t result in a manly bodybuilder-type physique. “Men and women who train similarly have the ability to increase their muscular strength, but because women have lower levels of testosterone and fewer and smaller muscle fibers than men, they do not have the ability to increase muscle size the way men do,” Lewis-McCormick says.

2. Weight loss requires more cardio and less strength training.
“Many women believe it’s necessary to include cardio only when they have a weight-loss goal, but nothing could be further from the truth,” Lewis-McCormick says. To lose weight, both cardiorespiratory exercise and strength training should be part of an exercise program. “Cardio exercise ups the ante on caloric expenditure and improves the health of your heart, blood vessels, brain tissues, and other vital organs,” Lewis-McCormick adds.

3. Workouts must be in the fat-burning zone.
Perhaps the most popular myth about aerobic exercise is that there is a specific range of heart rates in which people must exercise to burn fat as the primary fuel source. Lewis-McCormick explains, “Even many cardio machines display a fat-burning zone on their panels, encouraging people to exercise in a specific heart rate range to burn fat specifically.” For losing fat (and therefore weight), what matters is the difference between the number of calories you expend and the number of calories you consume. It matters little whether the calories burned during exercise come from fat or carbohydrate.

4. Trouble spots can be specifically targeted with strength training.
“Spot reduction is a mythical concept that encourages fat loss in a specific area or muscle group on the body,” Lewis-McCormick says. “Fat is lost throughout the body in a pattern dependent on genetics, sex, hormones, and age.” Overall body fat must be reduced in order for you to lose fat in any particular area. Although spot reduction isn’t possible, spot training can be done to strengthen a specific muscle group through aerobic activity and resistance training.

5. Certain exercises burn more calories than others.
“Just because you sweat more in a particular workout doesn’t necessarily mean that you are burning more calories than you would in another kind of workout,” says Lewis-McCormick. “It is the consistency of the exercise that causes weight loss.” When you select exercises, it’s important to understand what determines how many calories a body burns during exercise and why the body obeys certain rules that dictate the magnitude of caloric expenditure. With this knowledge, you can create realistic goals with respect to fat loss, increased lean mass, and selection of exercises. “Bottom line, the harder you work, the more calories you will expend, and you have to do this on a regular basis,” Lewis-McCormick adds.

“Strength training is one of the only forms of exercise that offers so many benefits to health and fitness, which makes it a solid choice of regular exercise,” Lewis-McCormick says. “If anything, strength training is especially important for women because it provides maximum opportunity to control weight and achieve many other long-term benefits.”

For more information on "A Woman’s Guide to Muscle & Strength"

6 week beach body plan

Overview What does it really take to get your body ready for the summer? It's certainly not endless hours spent on the treadmill-at least that won't work if you want to look good fast. What you need is a weight-training routine that will activate as many muscle fibers as possible, and force your body to change in as short a time as possible. How short? This routine was developed so that you could turn in your current body for a better one in just six short weeks. Following the plan to a T will not only make you look better, you'll also be stronger and more confident in every way possible. How to do this Workout ? This routine consists of two workout days, Day 1 and Day 2. You will train 4 days per week. Make sure you alternate these workouts, making sure that you never train on back-to-back days. For instance, you might lift weights on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. When you see a number with a letter next to it-such as 1A and 1B-it means the exercises should be performed as a superset. Do one set of the first exercise, rest for the prescribed amount of time, and then do one set of the next exercise in the group. Repeat until you've completed all of your sets for each exercise, and then move on to the next group. Circuit : Do 1 set of each exercise in a group consecutively, without rests in between. Once these exercises have been completed, repeat the circuit again - doing 1 set of each with no rests in between. Continue until prescribed number of total sets are performed Strength : Complete all sets of an exercise at the same time with rests in between. Then move to the next exercise. Superset : Two moves done consecutively (like a circuit) with no rests in between. Overview What does it really take to get your body ready for the summer? It's certainly not endless hours spent on the treadmill-at least that won't work if you want to look good fast. What you need is a weight-training routine that will activate as many muscle fibers as possible, and force your body to change in as short a time as possible. How short? This routine was developed so that you could turn in your current body for a better one in just six short weeks. Following the plan to a T will not only make you look better, you'll also be stronger and more confident in every way possible. How to do this Workout ? This routine consists of two workout days, Day 1 and Day 2. You will train 4 days per week. Make sure you alternate these workouts, making sure that you never train on back-to-back days. For instance, you might lift weights on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. When you see a number with a letter next to it-such as 1A and 1B-it means the exercises should be performed as a superset. Do one set of the first exercise, rest for the prescribed amount of time, and then do one set of the next exercise in the group. Repeat until you've completed all of your sets for each exercise, and then move on to the next group. Circuit : Do 1 set of each exercise in a group consecutively, without rests in between. Once these exercises have been completed, repeat the circuit again - doing 1 set of each with no rests in between. Continue until prescribed number of total sets are performed Strength : Complete all sets of an exercise at the same time with rests in between. Then move to the next exercise. Superset : Two moves done consecutively (like a circuit) with no rests in between. read less PRINT DAY 1 WORKOUT A DAY 2 REST DAY 3 WORKOUT B DAY 4 REST DAY 5 WORKOUT A DAY 6 REST DAY 7 WORKOUT B SUPERSET SETSREPS/TIMEREST (S) 1A Barbell Deadlift Barbell Deadlift 43120 1B Chinup Chinup 35120 SUPERSET SETSREPS/TIMEREST (S) 2A Dumbbell Bulgarian Split Squat Dumbbell Bulgarian Split Squat 36-8120 2B Overhead Barbell Press Overhead Barbell Press 36-8120 SUPERSET SETSREPS/TIMEREST (S) 3A Face Pull Face Pull 21060 3B Standing Cable Crunch Standing Cable Crunch 3860 BROWSE STRENGTH WORKOUTS Workouts For Building A Stronger Back Top Workouts To Get Flat, Sexy Abs Workouts That Focus On Your Upper Body Workouts To Shape You Up From Head To Toe Workouts For Building Your Shoulders

Playboy Playmate Bodybuilder

REBEKKA ARMSTRONG – THE ALL-TIME SCARIEST PLAYBOY PLAYMATE December 3, 2009 6:21 am‚ By JOE KINSEY D-CUPS GIRLS 1 0 g258258f3a5aa2150184ef06833ce5cdbddb4f6117cfbb8 Busted Coverage famously risked having our nuts ripped off by the Scariest Women of the 2008 Olympic Games and is treading back into that water today. Meet Rebekka Armstrong, once known as Playboy’s Miss September 1986, is now better known as the woman who can bench press your puny ass and break you with one smart-ass comment. She also has AIDS. Combine the outer and inner attributes and you have “The All-Time Scariest Playboy Playmate.” DSC00485 The former Hef find was just 18 when she got naked for Playboy. Three years later her doctor had news that she’d contracted AIDS. 20 years later. Ms. Armstrong was at Kent State University this week for AIDS Awareness Day and spoke on how she turned her life around. She hit the weight rack. By 2002, Armstrong was fit enough to win her first bodybuilding competition, at California’s world-famous Muscle Beach. “I started doing this to stay alive, but then I thought, ‘Hey, I want to show it off,’ ” she said. Armstrong said she eschews steroids. “I don’t want to look like a man,” she said. “I want to look feminine and graceful on stage.” Um, look, Rebekka, you LOOK LIKE A MAN FROM THE NECK DOWN! Take out those giant implants and you could be Brian Urlacher. We hate to be mean, but c’mon. Are we jealous of your giant gunboats? Yes. Are we jealous of those forearms that can break skulls? Maybe, a little. Don’t hate us. Just understand how shocking it is for a woman to go from appearing in Playboy movies such as Ultimate Sensual Massage to ripping of massive sets on the squat rack. Busted Coverage doesn’t handle such news very well. We prefer to remember you from the appearance in Wet & Wild. That’s all. (We’re not sure if you’ll see Rebekka naked on her web site so we aren’t joining. If you do and want to give us an honest review, hit us up: mail@bustedcoverage.com) [RebekkaArmstrong.com] DSC_0043 DSC_0038 dumbellrows1 DSC00490