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This Week's Tip
Engage in Personal Development for a Better You!
 Here, we talk a lot about wellness from the physical standpoint, meaning that we look at diet, exercise, and the physical things we can do to contribute to our wellness, but we don't want to neglect the mental and spiritual side of things either.
The best way to address your mental and spiritual needs is to engage in personal development by reading a good self-help book, or listening to a CD or tape on personal development. Bookstores have entire sections devoted just to personal development, so finding something that interests you is the least of your worries. If you need suggestions, please feel free to email us at selfhelp@choosefitness.com, and we'll be happy to provide a list of our recommendations.
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Today, you can even get your personal development hunger satisfied online through streaming audio and video offerings, right from the convenience of your computer. A company called Mastery Television offers one such service, where for as little as $9.95 per month, you can access personal development videos anytime of day from your computer.
We recommend that you read at least a chapter per day in a good personal development book, or at least 30 minutes per day on a tape or CD. Commuting time is a great time to fit this into your schedule, and you'll be a better and more fulfilled person for the effort.
If you come across any gems in your travels, be sure to pass them along. We'll ad them to the list for the benefit of our other community members.
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Featured Articles
Muscle Pain Relief: An Overview
 Muscle Pain Relief: An Overview by Eddie Tobey
After an auto mechanic spends hours under a car or a writer spends all day in front of a computer, their muscles later complain at this overextension. Everyone gets a muscle ache once in a while, but chronic muscle pain can be a debilitating condition that deteriorates the quality of life of sufferers. Muscle pain may be the result of a specific injury, a spasm, or a condition that affects ligaments and connective joint tissue, or it may be only one symptom of a broader condition, usually arthritis. It ranges in intensity, from infrequent aches to chronic, disabling pain. Many therapies promise muscle pain relief, and choosing between them depends on the cause of the pain, it's severity and duration, as well as the preference of the patient.
Over-the-counter and prescription medications, including acetaminophen (Tylenol) and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen, help alleviate muscle pain. Certain nutritional supplements may also provide muscle pain relief. Emu oil, for example, which is sometimes used to treat arthritis symptoms, may reduce muscle stiffness and tension.
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Advocates of massage therapy claim that it can soothe aching muscles by releasing tension and allowing muscles to relax. The ancient tradition of acupuncture employs needles to achieve the same ends. Chiropractic may help ease muscle pain by correcting improper vertebral alignment that puts added pressure on back, leg, and neck muscles.
At-home treatments such as ice packs relieve muscle aches, as do physical aides such as back braces or wrist wraps, which reduce muscle strain by helping to hold joints and bones in their proper positions.
Specific exercises designed to increase muscle strength and flexibility may be prescribed by a doctor or physical therapist. A course of physical therapy will also educate patients on the importance of employing ergonomic tools, such as padded chairs and even sharper kitchen knives, in order to reduce muscle strain. A therapist will also teach proper methods of walking, sitting, lifting and performing repetitive movement that will prevent future problems.
About the Author
Pain Relief Info provides detailed information on arthritis, back, joint, lower back, natural, chronic, neck, sciatica, knee, fibromyalgia, and muscle pain relief. Pain Relief Info is the sister site of Acid Reflux Web.
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The Number 1 Way For Obese People To Lose The Fat
 Copyright 2005 strength-training-woman.com
The number one way for obese people to lose fat is the exact same for those that are only 20 pounds overweight. Strength training is the best way to cut through fat and burn through calories. There's no difference between strength training for the obese and strength training for everyone else.
When we strength train, we add lean muscle mass to our body. This lean muscle mass burns through 35-50 calories per pound of muscle every single day. Let's take a look at that number from a different point of view. If we have 5 pounds of lean muscle, that muscle will burn about 250 calories a day. Here comes the fun part. If we have 10 pounds of lean muscle mass, then our muscles burn about 500 calories a day. Hopefully you can see why adding lean muscle is the best way to lose fat.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention state that we are obese if we have a BMI (body mass index) of 30.0 or greater. Being obese is not healthy. It leads to a host of diseases and illnesses. I'm almost positive you already knew that.
Obese and over weight people can use functional exercises to begin changing their health. Exercises like squats and bicep curls will help strengthen the muscles we use in everyday movements. Often these movements are difficult for obese people. Keep up your workout routine and you'll notice that getting in and out of the car, walking to the mailbox, going upstairs and simply lifting heavy boxes will all become less of a hassle.
Strength training for the obese is the same as strength training for slender people. The difference comes in the starting point. It's so important to talk with your doctor, get the go ahead to workout, and then create a routine that you feel suits you best. Take one step at a time and before you know it, you will have taken 5,000 steps.
About the author:
Lynn VanDyke is the proud owner of http://www.strength-training-woman.com . She is a certified personal trainer, yoga instructor and nutritionist. Her site is quickly becoming an essential strength training destination.
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Cardio Enthusiasts: Discover a More Effective Training Method for Fat Loss and Heart Health!
 It is common to hear fitness professionals and medical doctors prescribe low to moderate intensity aerobic training (cardio) to people who are trying to prevent heart disease or lose weight. Most often, the recommendations constitute something along the lines of "perform 30-60 minutes of steady pace cardio 3-5 times per week maintaining your heart rate at a moderate level". Before you just give in to this popular belief and become the "hamster on the wheel" doing endless hours of boring cardio, I'd like you to consider some recent scientific research that indicates that steady pace endurance cardio work may not be all it's cracked up to be.
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First, realize that our bodies are designed to perform physical activity in bursts of exertion followed by recovery, or stop-and-go movement instead of steady state movement. Recent research is suggesting that physical variability is one of the most important aspects to consider in your training. This tendency can be seen throughout nature as all animals demonstrate stop-and-go motion instead of steady state motion. In fact, humans are the only creatures in nature that attempt to do "endurance" type physical activities. Most competitive sports (with the exception of endurance running or cycling) are also based on stop-and-go movement or short bursts of exertion followed by recovery. To examine an example of the different effects of endurance or steady state training versus stop-and-go training, consider the physiques of marathoners versus sprinters. Most sprinters carry a physique that is very lean, muscular, and powerful looking, while the typical dedicated marathoner is more often emaciated and sickly looking. Now which would you rather resemble?
Another factor to keep in mind regarding the benefits of physical variability is the internal effect of various forms of exercise on our body. Scientists have known that excessive steady state endurance exercise (different for everyone, but sometimes defined as greater than 60 minutes per session most days of the week) increases free radical production in the body, can degenerate joints, reduces immune function, causes muscle wasting, and can cause a pro-inflammatory response in the body that can potentially lead to chronic diseases. On the other hand, highly variable cyclic training has been linked to increased anti-oxidant production in the body and an anti-inflammatory response, a more efficient nitric oxide response (which can encourage a healthy cardiovascular system), and an increased metabolic rate response (which can assist with weight loss). Furthermore, steady state endurance training only trains the heart at one specific heart rate range and doesn't train it to respond to various every day stressors. On the other hand, highly variable cyclic training teaches the heart to respond to and recover from a variety of demands making it less likely to fail when you need it. Think about it this way -- Exercise that trains your heart to rapidly increase and rapidly decrease will make your heart more capable of handling everyday stress. Stress can cause your blood pressure and heart rate to increase rapidly. Steady state jogging and other endurance training does not train your heart to be able to handle rapid changes in heart rate or blood pressure.
The important aspect of variable cyclic training that makes it superior over steady state cardio is the recovery period in between bursts of exertion. That recovery period is crucially important for the body to elicit a healthy response to an exercise stimulus. Another benefit of variable cyclic training is that it is much more interesting and has lower drop-out rates than long boring steady state cardio programs.
To summarize, some of the potential benefits of variable cyclic training compared to steady state endurance training are as
follows: improved cardiovascular health, increased anti-oxidant protection, improved immune function, reduced risk for joint wear and tear, reduced muscle wasting, increased residual metabolic rate following exercise, and an increased capacity for the heart to handle life's every day stressors. There are many ways you can reap the benefits of stop-and-go or variable intensity physical training. One of the absolute most effective forms of variable intensity training to really reduce body fat and bring out serious muscular definition is performing wind sprints. Most competitive sports such as football, basketball, racquetball, tennis, hockey, etc. are naturally comprised of highly variable stop-and-go motion. In addition, weight training naturally incorporates short bursts of exertion followed by recovery periods. High intensity interval training (varying between high and low intensity intervals on any piece of cardio
equipment) is yet another training method that utilizes exertion and recovery periods. For example, an interval training session on the treadmill could look something like this:
Warm-up for 3-4 minutes at a fast walk or light jog;
Interval 1 - run at 8.0 mi/hr for 1 minute;
Interval 2 - walk at 4.0 mi/hr for 1.5 minutes;
Interval 3 - run at 10.0 mi/hr for 1 minute;
Interval 4 - walk at 4.0 mi/hr for 1.5 minutes;
Repeat those 4 intervals 4 times for a very intense 20-minute workout.
The take-away message from this article is to try to train your body at highly variable intensity rates for the majority of your workouts to get the most beneficial response in terms of heart health, fat loss, and muscle maintenance.
About the author:
Visit http://truthaboutabs.com to discover dozens of powerful strategies for losing body fat and bringing out your hidden muscular definition. Several free bonuses are yours to keep just for stopping by.
Michael Geary is a nationally dual certified personal trainer (NCSF-CPT, AFAA-CPT), and author of "The Truth about Six Pack Abs" ©2004-2005.
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