Category: Fitness
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Taking Your Pulse
Long before the tools to listen to and measure heart rate were available, medical professionals were paying attention to the beat of the heart. In fact, the way the heart beats (fast or slow, regular or irregular) is so important that it is one of the things doctors almost always check during medical exams. Basically,…
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Using A Heart Rate Monitor
One of the first things you might realize is that the heart rate monitor provides a link between the body and mind. No more guessing at exercise intensity. No more stopping in the middle of an aerobic session to search desperately for a pulse, hoping to get a reasonably close count before your heart rate…
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Monitoring Heart Rate
Heart rate monitors were in the realm of science fiction not so very long ago. Researchers started checking heart rates around 1912 by using water buckets as counterweights in the first laboratory model. The first electronic heart rate monitoring tool, the electrocardiograph, was originally the size of a room. You would certainly not want to…
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Your Training Schedule
You’ll find all the exercises in this articles organized by Movement Categories: Pulling, Squatting, In-line Pushing, Perpendicular Pushing, and Bending. Within these categories, exercises progress gradually from easiest to hardest. Difficulty isn’t adjusted by adding a weight (as on a machine or with free weights) but rather by changing the intensity of movements through leverage,…
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Getting Started Your Fitness
Your first goal on this program will be to find the most difficult exercise that you can accomplish within each Movement Category for 12 reps. This is your initial evaluation. Once you know where to start, you can begin your first 4-week cycle. For each Movement Category listed on the schedule in this article, attempt…
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Staying Motivated
In a nationwide survey of nearly a thousand women from all fifty states, we found that “lack of motivation” was the second-biggest reason women do not work out (the first being “no time”—which my program conquers). Some said they needed a significant other to do it with them. Some said a group would motivate them.…
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Why Bodyweight Training Is the Key to Your Best Body Ever
There’s a common misperception out there that bodyweight-exercise options are limited. Push-ups, Pull-ups, Sit-ups—and not much else. Hmmmm… Did I mention that there are 125 different exercises or variations in this chapter alone, with many more in You Are Your Own Gym? Other people think it’s impossible to work certain muscle groups with bodyweight exercises.…
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What’s Keeping You from Having the Body You Want?
From talking to women all over the country about their fitness goals and their workout practices, it seems to me that one of the greatest obstacles to having a lean, strong body is a woman’s reluctance to focus on her own needs. Between families and/or careers, many women are busier now than ever before. They…