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You might have heard of Low Volume Training, as it is a popularly followed routine in weightlifting and mma training. In low volume training or high intensity training, you rest your body in sessions involving higher volume and maintain your muscle mass as well. It is based on the concept that rest would improve the efficiency of your weightlifting routine as it increases strength and promotes growth. There are a number of things you must know about low volume training before you incorporate it into your regimen –

1.The Basics Of Low Volume Training – The number of repetitions or reps in low volume training is minimum in number and this is what Low Volume Training is based on. These limited reps are seamlessly blended with traditional weightlifting to create a successful regimen. Hence, you would be allowed to increase the weight as you progress through your routine. The routine starts with more reps that slowly keep reducing. Thus, after your four-week cycle, your muscles would have experience the descending rep routine with increasing weights.

2.The Routine To Be Followed In Low Volume Training – The pattern suggested by experts for the four week routine is as follows –
• First Week – Not less than eighteen and not more than thirty reps
• Second Week – Not less than thirteen and not more than seventeen reps
• Third Week – About twelve reps
• Fourth Week – Not less than three and not more than seven reps

You have to use higher weights on your low rep weeks. The idea is that when you finish your set, you should be exhausted. Hence, when the weights are low, the sheer number of reps would tire you out and when the reps are low, the weight will compensate for the exhaustion. Take some time off after you finish about 3 cycles (consisting of four weeks each) because your body needs to rest before your routine begins again.

3. The Kind Of Weights To Use – It is recommended that you take the professional guidance of a trainer for this step because it is crucial to both your mma training and your health. Particularly during the heavy weight- low reps period, it could cause serious injury if you make a mistake regarding the right exercise. The trainer will teach you about simple but important things like hand placement or the right machine to use

4. Other Important Things To Take Care – Don’t think that low volume training is easy because it isn’t. It requires strength and resolve and is pretty difficult. Make sure that you are working out your entire body and not just one half of it. Always count your repetitions when you work out specific halves of your body to make sure that they are both getting equal attention.

Tools like exercise log are available in the market that make matters easier for you and keep count of the reps and weights you work. Make a proper plan and write it down to prevent confusion.

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“Damn this weight loss plateau! I eat right, I exercise regularly and still I’m stuck at the same number since 2 months. What the hell am I doing wrong?” I’ll tell you what. Maybe it’s your facts more than your actions that are constantly deterring you from moving closer to your weight loss goals.

Sometimes hearsay is unquestioningly accepted as universal truth by majority, simply because it has been passing on from generations. Millions of people end up being a victim to these myths and get caught in the rut, losing all their motivation and finally giving up because even though they’re putting in their best efforts, they hardly see any results.

Of course, you do not want to add onto the statistics of these people. Given below are some of the popular weight loss myths that play culprit for derailing the efforts of a huge majority of weight watchers:

1. “Strength training will make me bulky”

To start with, let’s clarify one thing. One pound of muscle doesn’t weigh more than one pound of fat. They weight just the same, however muscle definitely takes up less space and is denser in comparison to fat. So, two people with same weight can look very different, if one has a higher lean muscle mass to fat ratio. Muscle weight makes a person look more fit, firm, and small. Good muscle mass also enhances metabolism, helping you stay lean.

Strength training makes you optimally burn calories throughout the day and heavier weights can give you the best result of your efforts. The research team of the Washington University School of Medicine found that using heavy weight for the workouts improves the sleeping metabolic rate of exercisers’ by almost 8%, even if you do only 3 to 6 repetitions. This means that you can lose almost 5 pounds more every year even when you do nothing else.

2. “All calories are the same, so what I eat doesn’t make much of a difference as long as my calorie count is right”

For decades people believed that all calories are the same. You eat 500 calories of cake or cereals; they will be burned or stored by your body the same way. It has now been scientifically proven that calories are not at all alike when it comes to losing weight.
Certain foods require more work in eating than others, like chewing whole grains, vegetables or fruits. But these are also the foods that have calories that are more easily burnt when you’re trying to digest them. The mere act of chewing has been known to improve the calorie burn by almost 30%.

A Japanese study also revealed that women who ate food that require more work had better waistlines than the ones who ate foods that are easy to eat. It is actually the protein and fiber in the former that require the effort to digest, which causes your body to not absorb much of their calories.

If you avoid processed foods, your body’s ability to burn fat continues to be high all through the day, so you keep on losing weight and still not feel hungry.

3. “Don’t eat at night, else you’ll gain weight”

NO snacking at night. It’s all logical you know – it’s the time when you’re least active, so you shouldn’t eat too much at that time. Even a study in the Journal named Obesity in April 2011 said that you’re more likely to be obese if you eat after 8 p.m. Why? There are really no clear-cut reasons that have been suggested. And the topic still remains a debatable one, since ages.

The truth is – it is more about how much do you eat, instead of when you eat every day that decides your weight gain. Most people are in the habit of consuming more calories during the night just because they’re bored, or because of negative emotions, like loneliness or any other, and not because they are actually hungry.

This usually makes them exceed their calorie limit for the day and often gets stored in their body as fat. Sometimes these people may also wake up the next day with little or no appetite for breakfast, the meal that regulates our metabolism as well as our calorie intake for the entire day.

Although sleeping early does help, but if that’s not an option, you can try eating your dinner an hour later than you usually does, to avoid the nighttime snacking, suggests a spokesman for American Dietetic Association. Nevertheless, even if you postpone your dinner, make sure that you have it at least two hours before you sleep. This is helpful in avoiding mindless snacking in the evening.

You can try the best weight management program that there is or even buy the most raven weight loss devices for yourself (like this belt) but if you’re trapped in any of the myths mentioned above, you’re sure to reach a stage when you’ll be clueless about how to cross that dreaded plateau. At that time, you’ll know that it was probably one of these myths that were holding you back.

This is why it is important that you do not just accept things on their face value and question the reason behind what you hear. Only then will you be able to debunk these myths and know what’s actually right for you. After all, there are a lot many myths that surround us than the ones that are mentioned here.

Marcia Calleiro is a vegan and a work-from-home mother. Calleiro usually orders from any healthy meal delivery or diet meal delivery service as they serve fresh, tasty and nutritious food. She combines this with her waist trimmer device for overall fitness. She is currently a contributor to Health Care Information Website, a site that educates its readers about various health and weight loss issues. In her free time, she likes square-foot gardening, playing games on her Xbox, and spending time with her family.

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Nothing beats exercising outdoors with the wind blowing and the feeling of being free of confined spaces. Working out in a gym may have a lot of benefits, but outdoor workouts can be equally beneficial if you do them the right way. Burn calories with these 4 great outdoor exercises:

1. Run On The Beach – There are many advantages of living close to the beach. One of them is the feeling of being free when you run on the sand with the feel of wind on your face the sea spraying on your hair. Run barefoot to make your exercise more fun. Your body will adjust to the rhythm and foot pattern naturally. All that you have to do is to do a few warm ups for your ankles before you begin with your run.

2. Park Plyometrics – The next time that you go to a park, be ready to do a challenging workout called Plyometrics. You need a 6-12 inch wall to help you with your exercises.

(a) Jump Off With Single Leg – Stand with a foot on the ledge and ensure that your heel is near the edge. Push off with the foot on the ledge and extend your leg. Try to get enough height and swing your arms up as you push off. Repeat this 10 times.
(b) Jump With Double Leg – Stand before the ledge with your feet apart at shoulder width. Place your hands behind the head. Your elbows should face out. Squat a little, jump up and land on the ledge softly. Repeat this 10 times. It must be mentioned here that plyometrics are not for beginners. You must practice strength training and should have good core strength before you attempt plyometrics. Incorporate these exercises into your routine at least two times a week.

3. Climbing Stairs – This is a great exercise for burning calories. Having a park or a stadium close to your house where there are stairs, helps, as working outdoors is more fun. Begin with jogging to warm up. Follow this with stretches, focusing on your calf muscles. Now take the stairs at a run and walk down so that you do not injure your knee. To stretch your calf muscles, stand facing a wall and lean towards it, as if you are doing pushups. Now stretch till you can feel it in your calf muscles. This stretch help prevent calf injuries when you are climbing the stairs at a run.

4. Inline Skating – This involves balance, core stability and muscle coordination. The motion of skating gives your gluts and hips a good workout. When you are doing inline skating, wear protective pads so that you do not hurt yourself if you are unable to keep your balance and fall.

Keep yourself fit by following these outdoor workouts. When working out outdoors, there is a fun element added to a routine and this fun ensures that you enjoy what you are doing.

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You want to know the future of the weight loss industry? Simple! It’s rooted in bringing about the behavioral changes in people to help them achieve their long-term weight loss goals and keeping those unwanted pounds off for years to come.

With most fad diets having hit rock bottom in their popularity charts, more and more people are now realizing the need to bring about the crucial lifestyle and behavioral changes in their lives in order to fight this trying obesity battle. They now understand better than ever before that success of weight loss goals go a lot beyond just the right exercises or diet. That there are many other factors that can influence our hormones, the environment around us, and our body composition and influence our journey to lose weight.

While we can control a lot many of these factors, there are some factors that cannot be controlled by us. To ensure our success, we can try to identify these events or behaviors that are beyond our control, be proactive about them and prepare ourselves to deal with them.

Friends and Family Impact Your Weight

A study conducted by the University of Michigan revealed how behavior modification and peer pressure can affect the lifestyle/eating choices made by female freshman roommates. The results clearly showed that roommates who had bulkier partners are likely to gain a lot less weight (one-half pound) in comparison to those who had slimmer roommates (two and a half pounds, on an average) in the first year.

For sustainable weight loss, lifelong behavior modification is important. And our family and friends, to a great extent, influence what we’re eating as well as when/how frequently we’re eating them.

Quite understandably, researchers were of the opinion that bulkier roommates are, more often than not, on some kind of exercise routine or low-calorie diets, which catches on with their roommates, making them gain less and avoid the defamed ‘freshman 15.’ Behaviors of heavier roommates make their roommates more conscious about their nutrition and diet and modify their habits for the good toward weight reduction and healthy eating.

There are certain behavior changes that you can implement in your life to achieve your weight loss goals:

Switch to a Door-to-Door Meal Delivery Service Instead of Heading to a Fast Food Joint – It so easy to find a meal delivery service that provides healthy and delicious freshly-cooked food while keeping your calories in check. You can try this service or this one, to start with, which are two of the most popular meal delivery services in America. Stick to them and you’ll not have to get into the hassle of counting calories again. They do it all for you.

Aim to Change Your Habits Permanently, Not Temporarily

When you set unrealistically high goals for yourself, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment from the very start. Keep your focus on changing your habits rather than reaching out for a number, after which you long to get back to your “normal” habits, only to gain all of your lost pounds all over again.

Establish small goals for yourself while altering your habits. Try aiming for weight that is somewhere between your current weight and your final weight that you want to achieve. Give your body some time to metabolically adjust to every new weight loss plateau and accomplish your goal in small steps than just trying to take a giant leap.

Ask Your Peers for Help

Health-conscious behavior is contagious in social surroundings. We all more or less know about the basic negative and positive habits of people around us. When people who surround us indulge in healthy eating habits that encourage weight loss, it doesn’t seem too difficult to resist temptations and most of us often follow suit, only to see excessive pounds disappear in no time. Modify your lifestyle and eating habits and at least some in your peer group are sure to follow suit.

Reward Yourself for Your Small Achievements

Remember how your parents used to get you that coveted toy to reward you for scoring high in class? It was a great way of keeping you motivated to do better every time. Nothing much changes when you grow up, except that you need to reward yourself now.

Apply this to your weight loss journey. Maybe you wanted to buy that expensive watch that you thought is extremely extravagant to spend on. So set a milestone for yourself and if you successfully achieve it, go buy that guilt-free. After all, you’ve worked hard to earn this for yourself. Such small rewards can be a great positive reinforcement to motivate you to stay on track. The only thing you need to be careful about is, don’t reward yourself with any food items and you’ll be fine.

People and environmental factors that surround us can make a great deal of difference in our motivation and mindset to reach our weight loss goals. Try staying with positive people who share the same belief system and are trying to achieve the same weight loss goals and it would all begin to look as effortless as it could be.

Marcia Calleiro is a vegan and a work-from-home mother. Calleiro usually orders from any healthy meal delivery or diet meal delivery service as they serve fresh, tasty and nutritious food. She combines this with her fitness program for overall fitness. She is currently a contributor to Health Care Information Website, a site that educates its readers about various health and weight loss issues. In her free time, she likes square-foot gardening, playing games on her Xbox, and spending time with her family.

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