How to recover quickly after your workout

You heard already you should do some stretches, drink water; here a powerful nutritional tip you should put into practice.

Get a recovery drink just after your workout: this recovery drink has to be composed with proteins and carbohydrates to accelerate the recovery process.

The timing is important: there is a metabolic window full open to receive the essential nutrients your body needs, take your recovery drink in the next 15 minutes after you finished your workout, never later than 30 minutes.

If you train early in the morning and go right after your workout to your business, you need to optimize the quality of recovery to get ready for your day.

Here a suggestion I use with boxers and personally:

Mix some whey protein with a banana: use water, skim milk or fruit juice according to your calorie needs. Personally, I use more often water. Whey proteins are very digestible and ease the absorption of carbs in the muscles for a better recovery (muscle repairs and glycogen synthesis).

Choose a quality whey protein powder with all essential amino acids, vitamins and minerals. Look at the glutamine, which is crucial for a good recovery.

Prepare your drink and bring it in a sport bottle with you.

One more tip: your workout doesn’t have to be long: it’s often a big mistake people do. Your recovery will be more effective with short workouts; I doesn’t mean easy workout, it can be very intense if you are already in a good shape.

Using short workouts + recovery drink and your energy level will be at the peak.
Try it.

Do you really want ripped abs?

Many people working out in health clubs are looking for ripped abs; so they do many crunches, leg raises and others specific abs routines; they do also some cardio to burn fat: therefore they will get soon the ripped abs they want...maybe or maybe not...

This “look nice” approach of training is it really effective?

Many people struggle for getting the results they want. Look at some athletes: boxers, sprinters, soccer player, basket ball player… they are lean and sometimes have very ripped abs; they don’t do hundreds of crunches, they train in a functional way to improve their performance in their field.

These athletes have very functional and conditioned muscles. Many people in gyms have counterfeit muscles: it’s not functional, it’s for the look, it’s artificial. Nothing wrong with that if it is your choice, but if you train like athletes do, your results will skyrocket.

Take a look at the exercises and routines in “The 3 minutes Gladiator Fitness Conditioning Program”; as a former elite athlete (kayaking) and now a trainer, I have used for years these exercises for total body conditioning. It works!

And you’ll get maybe ripped abs…but for the fastest results you’ll need also a nutritional strategy. Take a look here: Precision Nutrition.

Free report: a 30 seconds energy solution!

In our busy life, lack of energy is often a recurrent problem. By experience it’s not so easy to find healthy solutions, but it’s critical for the long term!

How energized do you feel when you wake up in the morning? If you need several cups of coffee before you start, you need to read this report: you’ll learn a natural way to boost your energy level in only 30 seconds!

I tried it, it works! Nothing magic but you’ll be able to feel the difference!

You can download the free report here: 30 seconds energy solution.

You can use this powerful tip to boost further your energy level: do right away some exercises, even for a few minutes; you’ll wake up your mind and body for a very positive start of your day. And I bet you your productivity level will be increased along with your focus.

If you need some quick workout routines, pick up “the 3 minutes Gladiator Fitness Conditioning Program”, it’s for all level, it’s simple, it’s effective. You’ll find the perfect workouts for the early morning and you’ll not feel exhausted doing it, only more energy…

Rotate your trunk for low back mobility

This is a simple and basic movement everyone should do. Trunk rotation is a warm up exercise every athlete has in his routine: you move the core of the body where all forces are transmitted from the lower body or the upper body. Therefore a particular attention has to be made on this body part to avoid injuries and improve performance.

This is a very effective exercise for improving mobility and flexibility in the low back. We know that back problems increase with a lack of mobility, and we have to be aware it becomes worst over the years if we do nothing!

This is a very simple and easy exercise; and remember, this is often the most basic and simple things witch are the most effective!

Bend the trunk on the side and rotate to the front and opposite side. Keep your back straight. This exercise works all the waist muscles: abdominal, oblique, low back. Inhale in the starting position and exhale when you rotate. Be comfortable in the range of motion, increase it progressively.
Do a set of 10-15 repetitions, then switch direction and do the same.
Resources: "The 3 minutes Gladiator Fitness Conditioning Program"

For a tight waistline

If you have to lose some inches on your waistline you should know that doing abs like crunches and side crunches are not effective. You have to integrate in your program some full body exercises (burn more calories), some cardio and a proper nutrition.

Anyway there is a terrific exercise to tight your waistline in record time; forget all these gadgets seen on tee vee, get a stability ball and do lateral crunches: this is a complete exercise, working your abs, obliques and all stabilizer muscles to keep the balance.

Start with a full lateral stretch and crunch without rotate your torso. Use a complete range of motion. Your legs have to stabilize your body; if you have some difficulty, block your feet against a wall, bur personally I prefer to play the balance with the feet on the floor.

Try this exercise, you’re going to love it. It provides also a nice lateral stretch of the spine.

Abs: a few seconds strategy

Abdominals are very functional muscles and, when well trained, they give you more energy, protect your back and give you a flat stomach.

By the way, did you take time today to train your abs?

Not yet? And you don’t have time! It’s not in your schedule…well, it’s your choice! But I have a solution for you:

Here an exercise you can do in just a few seconds: you can do it in a standing position or sitting on a chair.
Take a full inhalation and let expand your abdomen as much as possible.
Then, exhale deeply and bend slightly forwards, contract the abs and try to push upwards your intestines and stomach. Hold 2-3 seconds, relax and inhale again, letting go your abdomen.
Repeat 3 to 5 times and you’re done in 30 seconds!

This abdominal breathing exercise is very effective if you do it regularly; no need to go to the gym and you can do it anywhere: in your car when stuck in the traffic, at your office…
Just do not forget to do it: maybe you can put a magazine picture showing good abs in a strategic place, so you’ll not forget!

This exercise is combined with deep breathing; it’s very healthy, improving digestion and elimination with a “massage” of the organs. Also it helps to focus more because your oxygen intake is higher, you get additional energy.

Not bad for a few seconds exercise! Try it, do it everyday and feel and see what happens after a while.

Let me know!

PS: here an excellent resource about breathing exercise: Tai Chi Breathing

6 rules to get fit if you are too busy

In our busy life, this is often the workout which is “sacrificed” because something “more important” has to be done right away. Follow these simple rules and never cancel your workout anymore:

- Schedule everyday your workout: consider it is a part of your business, this is a professional meeting with yourself, this is one priority among others so schedule it and be professional.

- Systematize your workout in short routines, do few exercises and focus on them. Go from 3 to 20 minutes.

- No cell phone call rule, no talking rule during the workout!

- Have a stopwatch for optimizing the exercise sets and recovery time.

- Have your workout simple, get a routine and stick with it for a while, make it a habit; change one exercise every 2 weeks and rotate with a few others.

- Always start and finish with a few deep breathing exercises and a glass of fresh water.

No more excuses, everything is up to you…

Master your own bodyweight!

It's definitly something we forget today.

Most people getting a membership in a gym want the latest equipment, the full line of machines to work every muscles, plenty of cardio machines with the tee vee in front!

In these gyms you learn how to master the equipment, not your body!

Something is wrong!

To get results and feel your body full of energy, you need to master it. Of course it's better to learn when we are kids but it's still possible to improve with a step by step program: just start with basic exercises as I teach in Part 1 of the "3 minutes Gladiator Fitness ConditioningProgram. Get the free ebook by subscribing.

If you are already an accomplished athlete, look at this video and master your bodyweight, this is your test! Go ahead!

Rotator cuff: do external rotations exercises

Many people having shoulder problems have very weak rotator cuff: they are small muscles in the shoulder joint responsible for joint stability.

It is a common injury with athletes in some sports like tennis, boxing, base ball, golf; all movements with throwing action put at risk the rotator cuff.
Strength trainees doing a lot of bench presses may have major problems in the shoulders.

The reason is the main muscles which act with power (front deltoid, pectoralis) are internal rotators: the imbalance between internal and external rotators leads to problems, pain and injuries.

The solution is to strengthen the external rotators: here are 2 exercices.
1- External rotation on a inclined position; you can do it also flat. Keep the elbow in contact with the body. Use a light weigth.

2- Seated external rotation: use a band for resistance. Keep your elbow very close to the body.

Do 2 to 4 sets of 12-15 reps; switch arm each set.

Do these exercises before you feel disconfort and pain, even if you are not an athlete. If your fitness program does not include these exercises on a regular basis, I'm telling you straigth: something is wrong!

Here an excellent resource: The Ultimate Rotator Cuff Training Guide.

Strengthen your wrists

The wrist is composed of 8 small bones and many small ligaments: these ligaments may be overstretched and the joint become unstable: the bones lose their safe alignment. Movement and pressure on the wrist become painful and the grip is weakened.

It can be a problem in the practice of sports, doing some exercises as well as in the daily life activities.

It means if you have weak wrists it is critical to strengthen the tendons and muscles around the joint to improve stability.

One exercise you can do: hold your hands at shoulder height; then tense your fingers and forearms like you want to grab something. Maintain the tension 5 to 10 seconds and relax; repeat 5 to 10 times.

This exercise strengthens fingers, wrist and forearms. If you do it everyday, your wrist stability and strength will improve, and it takes only a couple of minutes!

Are pushups effective?

I’m going to be straight right away: if done properly, this is one of the best exercises you can do.
The problem is a very few people do it right: we have to understand this is a full body exercise, not only for arms and chest, even if they ate the primary muscles involved.

This is also a core exercise: you have to maintain your alignment by tensing your all body, from the fingers to the toes; the abs and butts have to be under tension all the time to avoid a drop and bad alignment of the spine.

There are many ways to do pushups and it has not to be boring. If you are a beginner, pushups are for you, if you are an athlete, pushups are also for you!
There are pushups for all level of fitness, men or women, kids and seniors: my dad, who is 82, does perfect pushups in his workout routine!

When I see a guy at 30, who is not able to do a correct pushup, I’m sad for him: how a body can be out of control when you are young! Perfect body posture (you need it for pushups) and strength mean more energy in all aspect of your life: relationships, self esteem, business…you name it.
Commit to do some pushups several times a week, tense your entire body, improve your energy, I do it every day, so do you?

Pushups are in action in the "3 minutes Gladiator Fitness Conditioning Program".

3 big mistakes people do when starting an exercise program:

1- You have to do strength exercises: strength is a major key for boosting your energy and feel comfortable in the movements. Start with very basic strength exercises like body weight squats and pushups: you do not need anything and you can do it anywhere.

2- Many people in gyms start with too long workouts: it burns you out and you need time to recover. At the end of a strength workout you need to feel more energy and never exhausted. Always bet on short workouts!

3- For getting quick results, you have to use partial range of motion then progress, step by step, session after session, to greater range of motion. You’ll put less stress on the muscle fibers and they will adapt progressively to the load.

And do not forget, squats and pushups are full body exercises, therefore they are very effective. There are many ways to do these exercises and do not believe they are only for beginners, I often put elite athletes to pain with some variants!
You’ll find some simple but highly effective routines of strength exercises in my
“3 minutes Gladiator Fitness Conditioning Program”: go ahead…

Chinese female boxer: workout video

I want to share with you this nice video: it's about a young chinese boxer. She is the only professional female boxer in China and her last fight (she won) has been watched by 140 millions of spectators!!!
The video shows a conditioning workout, she trains at this time in Valence, France, preparing for her next fight. She is coached by my friend Nicolas Riffard who has trained already World champions! Enjoy!


63542548.avi

Forget your boring workout: shadow box!

Why so many people give up after just a few months of training?

Boring workouts!

A workout has to be exciting, challenging.
It doesn’t have to be very long: a long workout becomes very boring if you do not have a very high motivation. From a few minutes if you have a very busy schedule to 20 minutes, it’s all it takes to get an effective workout.
Changing often your routine and the exercises keep your focus: focus is a key.

Now one more suggestion: if you want to spice up your workout, add some shadow boxing; everybody can do this, it’s simple and fun; for example, between 2 strength exercises, go for 30 seconds of shadow boxing: throw punches and breath, and if you push yourself it’s excellent for cardio conditioning.
Go for it!
It's what I teach in the "3 minutes Gladiator Fitness Conditioning Program", Give it a try!

Breath more to lose weight!

Many people are concerned by losing weight, sometimes for different reasons, but the bottom line is always the same: better health, better energy.

Losing weight mean losing body fat, no muscle mass because you have to maintain (or increase) it to speed up your metabolism: if you have a good lean mass, your body burns more calories at rest. This is important to be aware of this and it’s a good motivator to enter in an exercise program for strength.
So it means that a strength program will speed up your metabolism.

To lose body fat you have also to breath more. According to physicist Richard A. Muller, to lose weight, eat less, or breath more:

“…Let me address this issue by invoking another physics principle: conservation of mass. More specifically, let me talk about the conservation of carbon atoms. When you digest food, its carbon atoms enter your blood. Unless they are expelled from your body, they add to your weight. But here is the salient observation: the only effective way your body has to get rid of digested carbon is to combine it with oxygen to form carbon dioxide, and then expel it through your lungs. Unless you breathe out the carbon, you gain weight….”

The best way to lose weight is to combine both: eat less and engage in an exercise program that is enough intense to breath more.
Intensity is the key, not long duration – low intensity workouts, except maybe if you can afford many and many hours of training… but not everybody have time to train for the Tour de France!

For your spine, do this exercise everyday!

Here is another very easy and simple exercise you can do everyday. Stretching the spine is critical, but what is the last time you did it?

The spine is the core of your body and we have to be aware that the commands of the nervous system which control posture, automatic movements of the daily life come from there.
We have to take care of it! Animals, like cats and dogs do that several time a day, it's instinctive: observe if you get the chance.

The problem is we lost this instinct, we have always more important things to do, we are always in a rush...and we forget to take care of our more important asset: our body.

Do this simple exercise and your spine will be glad:
This is a flexion and extension of the spine. Focus on moving your spine, keep the arms straight. Arch your back and inhale, then flex, push upward and tuck in your chin, exhale in the same time.

The worst and best about abs

There are many abs exercises, some good, some bad, but let’s go to the basics for now: crunch and sit up.
Sit up is a standard but everybody knows the problem it involves: a very important recruitment of the hip flexors. It means 2 things:
- You work more the hip flexors (about 70%) than the abs (about 30%).
- You may get low back problems due to the overload of the hip flexors.

So the fitness professionals popularized over the year the famous crunch: of course it’s safer, but here a little surprise: for people with low back issues, it’s doesn’t solve the problem because the hip flexors are still involved.
Also this exercise become quickly ineffective except if you commit to do hundreds of reps: personally I do not have time for that!

The great alternative is the Janda sit up: this is a variation of the sit up but you put a great tension on your abs while your hip flexors are inhibited, flexing your hamstring. It means you work your abs 100% with only a few reps per set.

This exercise is the safest and the more effective: if you have a very limited time and want to train your abs, this is the perfect choice.

Specific equipment for the Janda sit up: Own the Rolls Royce of Ab Machines

Pull up for upper strength and decompress the spine

To be able to pull up his own weight should be easy for most people, but is it the case?
Probably not. Pull ups are among the best exercises for upper strength, but I will agree with you, it's difficult and very few people use it. If you carry extra body weight, it's really challenging.

Pull up is the king of exercise for developing back and arms strength. I have my pull up bar in my basement and I use it everyday in my workout routines.
Also the suspension phase help to decompress the spine, I insist on it a few seconds at the start and end of each set: it is an excellent way to prevent back problems.

This exercise is one of my favorites: it's not easy but if you are in a decent shape, give it a try!

Are you a fitness warrior?

If you are, you are going to enjoy this video; if you are not, watch and you'll be amazed by what are able to do some guys!
Do not try these exercises if you do not possess a solid athletic background. But kettlebell exercises are not always extreme: kettebells are a great way to build in a record time an athletic body, just learn and use the basics and you'll be on your way for quick results.
Kettlebells are perfect for a total body workout, and if you are (or want to become) a fitness warrior, it's for you!

Kettlebell X - Kettlebell Workouts - Online Training Resource

For a healthier back

If you are a "cough potatoe", watching the Tee Vee several hours a week (I bet a lot of us do that!), you are at risk for poor posture and back problem.
If in addition you work in front of a computer and have no more activity (I mean physical activity) than walking a few minutes to your car, you really need a wake up call!

Your back and your spine are the core of your body, and when something is wrong, you have not this freedom of movement anymore: movement is life, so you have to prevent this kind of problem by moving; make some exercise your habit.

The best way to do that is to start with with very short routines, like 3 minutes, first thing in the morning. Stick with it for 3-4 weeks and exercising will become a new habit by this time.

You can get for free my 50 pages ebook where I describe 3 minutes workouts. Do that and feel your energy flows.

Healthy Back Workouts - Online Training Resource
Part of the WorkoutPass Network - Click Here