Exercising/Toning Advice for Women

[Lbelle]

sry in advance if this is attn. whoring, apparently all my posts are now?

Elison made a thread a while back about wanting to tone down/lose weight/build muscle etc. There were some good posts in his thread, but I want something a little different. I don't need to lose much weight, but I do need to get toned. Particularly in my arms, they drive me crazy, it's my most annoying feature, and I don't know what to do. A little weight loss never hurts either, but really I'm more interested on what to do for my arms (while overall looking better too).

RakEx said

Try something like:

10-20 minutes Elyptical
10-20 minutes Treadmill
10-20 minutes Stairclimber etc.

Feel free switch them up and do them in any order.

This has really worked well for the people I know who have used it. Not only does it work well but it takes away a bit of the monotony of doing cardio on one machine for 45 minutes. Do it 3-5 days a week and work your way up from 10minutes. Something like week 1 10 minutes, week 2 12 minutes increasing by 2 minutes every week. Throw in some light weights and you'll be shredding weight.

And I thought like that sounded do-able. I just want to know what you would all suggest, and what the best way for a GIRL to tone is.

[Tyche]

Index finger + throat

[Cheerios]

Advice: Don't be lazy and decide to give up after not seeing results for only 1 week.

[Elesirdur]

Low-resistance, but high repetition exercises for your triceps, shoulders, and upper back are your best bet to deal with your arms. Chest flys are good too, as they work both the strength in your arms and the chest.

By low resistance, I mean the 5 lbs mini-barbells for 3 sets of 20+ reps on each arm. Move up the weight only when you are no longer feeling a good workout on the muscles. The high repetition will help tone the muscles and prevent a lot of bulk from building up.

Here are some decent exercises, and photos; http://exercise.about.com/cs/weightlift ... tricep.htm Good luck!

Cardio is great to keep your body trim and burn calories, but unless you're actively exercising your arms through resistance training, those won't see any change.

[Tyr]

Advice: Don't be lazy and decide to give up after not seeing results for only 1 week.

I always see results in that 1st week after hiatus.

Mmm hiatus.


Also, my best advice for losing weight = STAIRS.

Always. No escalators, no elevators, no bullshit. Stairs. I'm starting to lose the ghetto bootay I inherited.

[Melchiah]

As mentioned, low low resistance(weight) and more repetitions.

I am male, but I lost 30 lbs in 6 weeks by adopting a diet and exercise plan outlined in the Bowflex literature. I do three 30 minute workouts a week, and I do 3 15 rep sets for each muscle group.

You will never be able to target specific fat storage areas, your genetics determine that. Dealing with underarm flab, as I understand it, is a huge issue with a lot of ladies, and I can understand why. My only advice would be to utilize whatever facilities/training options UF offers you, and speak with a trainer. I'm sure UF has some on staff. Remember, bulk comes from high resistance and short sets. Definition/tone comes from low resistance and longer sets.

[Remyo]

MMA training

[Tekki]

MMA training

[Bratt]

Swim as much as you can.

[Sigi]

start swimming everyday. It's great cardio, and let's face it: Summer + Gainesville = FUCKING HOT! Bonuses include less impact on your joints so you are more likely to KEEP exercising.

[berticus]

eat less lasagna and more soybeans, plus 1000 reps of light weight. you'll be super model hot in no time.

[Fhqwghads]

Parasites are good too.

[isladar]

Yoga is incredible for muscle tone, as well as muscle strength without bulking up. The low-weight high-rep suggestion is good as well.

[Aeromyth]

Squats, Lunges, Lat pulls, Rows, Pushups, Chest Flys, Incline Bench Press. Muscle burns fat. By building the largest muscles in your body first, you can lose the most fat.

The low weight high rep thing is a myth. Shit, it doesn't even make scientific sense.
Higher weight, fewer reps, longer rest. The leanest women at the gym, 9 times out of 10, are the ones pushing those weights that seem to threaten the manhood of guys around them. There should be almost no exercise you do that you need to resort to the pink weights. You're not doing aerobics, keep the reps under 15. You have 2 (or 3 depending on how you classify the one group) types of muscle fibers distributed over your entire body. Just as doing a single rep with a really high weight only targets the fast twitch muscle fiber, doing more than 15 reps of any exercise means your almost exclusively working endurance muscle. Its far more effective to target both. If you're doing the exercise with a weight where you could do 20 reps, up the weight and do 12 instead.

Weight training is hard, its not something you stop doing as soon as you struggle a bit, or start to feel a little bit of soreness. Mentally pushing yourself past what your body wants to let you do is one of the best ways to gt results.

Ignore the changes in that first number on the scale, you cant see your weight, you can see your body fat%. Muscle weighs more than fat. As a woman, you just don't have the hormones to "bulk up" so you don't have to worry about looking like a man a man if you train like one.

Take a lesson from the placebo effect, if you believe it will happen it is far more likely to. Believing that you will change can actually have a profoundly influence the physical result
Dont try to restrict your caloric intake so much, at least at first. Your body is going to need a lot of energy to change. You need to eat enough to allow your metabolism to increase. Once you've found a sort of equilibrium, try to limit the amount of restriction to that -500 calories a day.

Too much cardio and your body will start to eat its muscles for energy. By limiting the amount of time you train, and increasing the frequency you can see greater fat loss. In place of doing 10 mins of swimming, 10 mins of running, 10 mins of biking, all in one day, you can separate them into bouts of 20 mins of swimming one day, and 20 mins on a bike the next. Going past that 20 min point, and your body will run out of the stored sugar energy it has, and start looking for other sources (your muscle).

Theres a reason the Elliptical machine is so popular, its because its easy. Unless you're some 80 y/o recovering from a broken hip there really shouldn't be a need to go on one. Soreness is a good thing, it means you've done something effective. Your body will repair it, and make it stronger. Yes, they burn calories, but that is all they do, and there will come a time when those extra calories will be precious to you, because eating is hard, and expensive.

You can burn fat while you sleep if you eat the right foods right before. There are certain proteins that are not broken down by your digestive system, and need to be metabolized in your muscle tissue. Their presence tells the body that those muscle are active, and as a result, in stead of using a combination of your fat, and muscle to fuel itself through the starvation of sleep, it will use far less muscle. These are called Branched Chain Amino Acids (BCAAs) Leucine, Valine, Isoleucine.

Get the right foods after every workout. Walmart even sells clean whey protein powder now. Get one with lots of protein per serving. Look at the amount of Protein(g)/Serving Size(g). Little Fat, and little cholesterol. Lots of BCAAs. Under ingredients, the first ingredient should be Whey Protein Isolate, this is the fastest and best absorbed stuff, best for right after a workout. Whey Protein Concentrate is a slightly slower acting, and harder to digest form of it, but still better than nothing. Before bed, take a protein drink called micellar casein or something advertised as being "time release" so your body has what it needs to rebuild for the next day. Most muscle repair occurs in sleep, so having this available for your body helps it recover its fastest.

I'll think of more later.

[Creeps]

I vote for tape worm

[Remyo]

South Bronx Paradise Diet.

[Norelco]

Sorry to go off-topic. Maybe we can make a sticky thread about working out or getting in shape? This seems to come up once a month and there is some decent workout and nutritional information links buried somewhere inside.

[Einherjar]

As some have said, weights is the key. Running doesn't do shit for your arms. While it may burn calories it won't shift the overall look and make up of your arms for the better.

A middle routine near 10-12 reps that works strength and endurance is most ideal because your arms will become more tone and fit into the skin better if you lose a fair amount of fat off of them. Muscle burns more than fat, so if you increase your muscle mass you will naturally burn more calories too, making it easier to stay where you are at.

[dritero]

Squats, Lunges, Lat pulls, Rows, Pushups, Chest Flys, Incline Bench Press. Muscle burns fat. By building the largest muscles in your body first, you can lose the most fat.

The low weight high rep thing is a myth. Shit, it doesn't even make scientific sense.
Higher weight, fewer reps, longer rest. The leanest women at the gym, 9 times out of 10, are the ones pushing those weights that seem to threaten the manhood of guys around them. There should be almost no exercise you do that you need to resort to the pink weights. You're not doing aerobics, keep the reps under 15. You have 2 (or 3 depending on how you classify the one group) types of muscle fibers distributed over your entire body. Just as doing a single rep with a really high weight only targets the fast twitch muscle fiber, doing more than 15 reps of any exercise means your almost exclusively working endurance muscle. Its far more effective to target both. If you're doing the exercise with a weight where you could do 20 reps, up the weight and do 12 instead.

Weight training is hard, its not something you stop doing as soon as you struggle a bit, or start to feel a little bit of soreness. Mentally pushing yourself past what your body wants to let you do is one of the best ways to gt results.

Ignore the changes in that first number on the scale, you cant see your weight, you can see your body fat%. Muscle weighs more than fat. As a woman, you just don't have the hormones to "bulk up" so you don't have to worry about looking like a man a man if you train like one.

Take a lesson from the placebo effect, if you believe it will happen it is far more likely to. Believing that you will change can actually have a profoundly influence the physical result
Dont try to restrict your caloric intake so much, at least at first. Your body is going to need a lot of energy to change. You need to eat enough to allow your metabolism to increase. Once you've found a sort of equilibrium, try to limit the amount of restriction to that -500 calories a day.

Too much cardio and your body will start to eat its muscles for energy. By limiting the amount of time you train, and increasing the frequency you can see greater fat loss. In place of doing 10 mins of swimming, 10 mins of running, 10 mins of biking, all in one day, you can separate them into bouts of 20 mins of swimming one day, and 20 mins on a bike the next. Going past that 20 min point, and your body will run out of the stored sugar energy it has, and start looking for other sources (your muscle).

Theres a reason the Elliptical machine is so popular, its because its easy. Unless you're some 80 y/o recovering from a broken hip there really shouldn't be a need to go on one. Soreness is a good thing, it means you've done something effective. Your body will repair it, and make it stronger. Yes, they burn calories, but that is all they do, and there will come a time when those extra calories will be precious to you, because eating is hard, and expensive.

You can burn fat while you sleep if you eat the right foods right before. There are certain proteins that are not broken down by your digestive system, and need to be metabolized in your muscle tissue. Their presence tells the body that those muscle are active, and as a result, in stead of using a combination of your fat, and muscle to fuel itself through the starvation of sleep, it will use far less muscle. These are called Branched Chain Amino Acids (BCAAs) Leucine, Valine, Isoleucine.

Get the right foods after every workout. Walmart even sells clean whey protein powder now. Get one with lots of protein per serving. Look at the amount of Protein(g)/Serving Size(g). Little Fat, and little cholesterol. Lots of BCAAs. Under ingredients, the first ingredient should be Whey Protein Isolate, this is the fastest and best absorbed stuff, best for right after a workout. Whey Protein Concentrate is a slightly slower acting, and harder to digest form of it, but still better than nothing. Before bed, take a protein drink called micellar casein or something advertised as being "time release" so your body has what it needs to rebuild for the next day. Most muscle repair occurs in sleep, so having this available for your body helps it recover its fastest.

I'll think of more later.

This is bang on advice. Target those big muscle groups. You're not going to get "big." People don't realize how much work is actually involved in getting "huge." I would recommend a full body resistance workout 3 times a week, you'll be seeing results in no time.

There is also some great books out there with premade routines that will push you to your limit. The New Rules of Lifting and Home Grown Muscle are two examples.

The best way for a girl to get toned is the same as for a guy.

[chillin]

Index finger + throat

i know this was a joke, but he has a good point. if you want lean muscles high repetition exercises & most importantly not eating a lot of calories is how you're going to get it. my ex didn't work out at all and she just looked fantastic b/c of her mia, but thats a really bad idea.