te indicator of having a good fitness and strength level can be measured by the amount of energy we have. To fit everything into our busy lifestyles we need high energy levels. When we have loads of energy we tend to be happier and more enthusiastic, more motivated to be active and in turn can enjoy an enhanced quality of life.

Constantly being tired and having low energy levels can lead to apathy and the blues, which in not favorable to getting the most out of life.

What if you have no energy to exercise? Without exercise you will have no energy causing a vicious cycle. But breaking the cycle with a proper balanced exercise program is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself.

Exercise is more effective at giving an energy boost than even prescription stimulants. It has been proven time and again that regular exercise increases your energy, vitality, mood and your whole outlook on life. As strange as it seems, exercise will actually give you energy rather than take it away.

The human body when it’s in motion has to produce energy through various metabolic processes. When we’re not in motion, those processes simply slow down. Exercise contributes to higher energy levels by increasing oxygen flow to the brain which thrives on oxygen. As your heartbeat increases with a vigorous workout, more blood surges through the brain; more oxygen gets absorbed by your brain cells, which helps relieve fatigue. Also boosted are the body’s feel good chemicals, the endorphins and you feel more mentally alert, energetic and have an overall happier disposition.

The number one way to boost your energy levels is to perform strength training exercise. This will get you stronger which in turn will increase your metabolism (this is the rate your body burns fuel). This increase in your metabolism is the key to keep you feeling energized throughout the day. Your better conditioned muscles will make every task that much easier, regardless of body weight.

However, just as regular exercise creates an upward spiral of good spirits, loads of motivation and tons of energy, not getting any or enough exercise can toss you into a pit of low energy and little motivation. So what do you do when you’ve hit a slump, haven’t been active in a while and are having a hard time even scrounging up enough energy just to get out of bed in the morning?

Make your personal fitness a priority in your life, not only in getting started, but also in keeping it going. If you’ve got too much on your plate, it might be necessary to turn down offers to happy hour or dinners out, or less TV if it means having time to exercise. Be prepared to learn new skills to make your journey as easy as possible. Enlist the help of a fitness professional or trainer to help you get started and to have someone to check in with every few weeks to keep you on track.

Consistency is probably the most important part of your exercise program. The more consistent it is the more you will get out of it, and the more you will enjoy it. Improved strength and fitness, like life is a journey and all you have to do is take the first step. Your energy has got to be high on your priority list. If you have no energy, you will not be able to enjoy your life to the fullest. Making good choices right now will not only boost your energy, it will rejuvenate your life.

There is one therapy that can you help ward off addictions, depression, stress, anxiety and even Alzheimer’s, all the while keeping you strong, slim and feeling great. That mental-health “treatment” is of course a proper exercise program. Research reveals that exercise supports the intimate connection between the health of the body and that of the mind. Since exercise is the body’s key method of staying healthy it also appears to be crucial to mental health as well.

Our busy lives don’t come without stress which is just a build up of inactivity, of over thinking without release. Modern life has us performing constant intellectual thinking tasks and we need a reprieve from these. Proper exercise is the tool that will give you that release stimulating a healthy release of the body’s natural chemicals that have a soothing and calming effect.

If this stress is not dissipated thinking becomes disordered leading to “stinking thinking” which can then lead on to depression. These bad negative thoughts can soon be chased completely away with a good solid exercise session. Mood is quickly improved and the risk of becoming depressed is lessened.

The time spent on your exercise session is also a bit of “me” time. This can provide a time for reflection and some alone time to contemplate thoughts or problems. It can be a special time to re-center yourself and get in touch with the real you which tends to be put aside and lost in the busyness of our lives. You will feel more in control of your life.

Exercise will get you active in a productive manner which the human body is dependant on to be able to stay healthy and well. The brain will send out the good chemicals signaling a happy pleasant state of mind both during and after the exercise session. This will set you up for the day enabling you to deal more effectively with problems or challenges that otherwise might have caused you significant levels of stress.

The brain is the “muscle” of conscious intelligence and just like the muscles in the rest of the body develops and gains strength during youth. As we get older we can maintain the strength of our brain or we can allow it to degenerate and become weaker diminishing its capability and thinking power.

Your exercise program needs to contain at least 60% strength training exercise and is an important factor in maintaining mental fitness. When you exercise and raise your heart rate this increases blood flow to the brain which in turn leads to enhanced memory, and better intellectual capacity and mental function.

Another important benefit you will experience is that you will feel so much happier within yourself; which could be defined as an inner sense of well-being. This will in turn give you a better outlook on life, seeing your cup as half full rather than half empty. If you are not already appreciating all of the good things in your life then you just might start.

If you have previously been living a no exercise lifestyle you will feel a huge boost in your energy levels. Exercise gets your blood pumping, pushing life giving oxygen into every cell and system keeping you youthful and vibrant. There is nothing worse than a sedentary lifestyle to make you feel tired, apathetic and listless with low motivation levels. You simply don’t feel like being active.

Learn to lean on your exercise program to pull you up and out of this situation if necessary. Think of it as a tool to move you beyond life’s challenges and make it part of your mission for better health and well-being.

oper strength training exercise will trim your body not bulk it up. It is strange that someone who is overweight would choose to believe the opposite when their body is already ?bulked? up from excess body fat. A proper exercise program that includes strength training exercise is the only long term permanent solution to the problem of being overweight.

A restrictive diet combined with the wrong type of exercise will make excess body fat loss very difficult if not impossible long term. This combination works against the body not with it and will only lead to frustration and disappointing results.

Loss of muscle tissue is an important factor in weight gain as we get older. Muscle tissue demands eight times the calories that fat requires so, if we lose muscle mass, we lower our metabolism (the rate the body burns fuel). This can happen even if the weight on the bathroom scale does not change.

Someone who is overweight has an unhealthy body composition (muscle/fat ratio) and restricting food intake without proper exercise will only make this worse. The focus must be on correcting this underlying problem right at the source. Building back the muscle tone will increase the metabolism which is the body?s engine so it burns more calories.

Some people especially women think that they have this genetic curse of ?bulking up? overnight if they even look at a weight. But that is not correct, lets repeat it ?proper strength training will trim your body not bulk it up?. Adding muscle tissue to the body is not easy, especially for women as they have approximately 18% the testosterone levels of men, the primary hormone related to muscle building. These levels drop in men and women as they age, an additional reason that muscle mass drops naturally with age unless you work to keep it.

For excess body fat loss any program that does not include strength training exercise will cause muscle loss and a subsequent reduction of metabolism. Ultimately, the dieter cannot sustain the lower calorie intake and thus slowly gains the weight back and usually adds some extra as well.

But is doesn?t have to be this way. The solution is two fold ? a proper exercise program that contains strength training exercise and a balanced food intake that contains enough food to prevent hunger and enough energy to be able to perform the exercise program with enough intensity (degree of difficulty) to product results.

If you are new to exercise it is important that you seek the help of a fitness professional to set up your program and teach you correct exercise technique. This could save you months if not years of wasted time and effort.

The reason for all this weight gain in our population, however, is not an aging metabolism – it can be attributed mainly to our lifestyle activity levels or rather the lack of them. Inactivity results in loss of muscle, and a loss of muscle, not an aging metabolism, is the primary cause of creeping obesity that has become epidemic in our population. The muscle tissue that remains on a person is as metabolically active as ever, but in the majority of people as they get older they simply have less of it.

A well planned and executed exercise program set up by a fitness professional can be a virtual fountain of youth. There aren?t any tricks or short cuts, but the benefits are numerous including, decreased risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, cancer and metabolic conditions.

You can feel better, look better, and have better control of your body weight and your health by making fitness a part of your life. It is never too late to start, but the sooner you start the sooner you can reap the benefits.

Below follows a description of some basic exercise principles that needs to be understood before effectively engaging in any exercise program.

The main forms of exercise dealt with here are:

Cardiovascular exercise

Strengt training

Sports-specific training

Three basic principles

In order to be specific in your exercise goals it is important to understand a little bit about how exercise affects various systems in your body . The next section intends to explain some of the main responses in your body to different form of exercise.

There are three basic principles that needs to be applied to any form of exercise in order to be successful

These three main principles are:

Specificity

Progression

Overload

Specificity

The specificity principle can be interpreted and applied in many different ways depending on what you want to improve ,specificity can apply to muscle groups,energy systems or specific movements or activities.

You can break down and apply the principle almost any way you like to fit your specific goals within and exercise program. However, in its simplest most general form specificity means that in order to get better at any type of skill or activity you need to perform that activity, this means that if you want to get better at swimming you need to swim,if you want to be a better runner you need to run, throwing darts you need to throw darts etc..

Overload

The principle of overload states that a greater than normal load is required if adaptation is to take place. The body will then adapt to the increased stimulus of the specific tissue or system we want to affect. When the body has adapted, a greater and/or different stimulus is required to continue the adaptation process. In order for a muscle (including the heart) to increase in strength, it must be gradually stressed by working against a load greater than it is accustomed to.

Progression

The principle of progression refers to the rate of which overload is applied. In principle there exists an optimal rate of which to apply overload to achieve optimal results. Overload should not be increased too slowly or improvement will not take place. In the event that overload is increased too rapidly it will result in injury or muscle damage and most certainly no improvement. For example, an athlete that exercises only sporadically and with too much overload violates both the principle of overload and the principle of progression and will not achieve good results.

As you can see, these three principles are highly interconnected and are reciprocally dependent on eachother. They also relate strongly to additional principles like those of adaptation and individual differences.

Aerobic and anaerobic exercise

Aerobic exercise is a term used to describe the forms of exercise that utilizes oxygen as the main source of energy. Aerobic exercises are generally speaking exercises of a cyclical and repetetive nature over a reatively long period time, such as jogging, cycling and swimming.

Aerobic exercise makes the heart work harder to pump the required amount of blood through the body at a faster rate. This is a direct response to the working tissues increased need for oxygen . As blood is pumped faster through the body it must also be reoxygenated at a higher rate, which is why respiration frequency will also increase.

Aerobic exercise strengthens the heart muscle and increase the vital capacity of your respiratory system. Low intensity aerobics include walking and swimming. Running, tennis and dance are examples of high intensity aerobics.

Anaerobic exercise on the other hand consists of short duration, high intensity activities, which last up to about 2 minutes. There are two types of anaerobic energy systems, the ATP energy system, which utilize creatine phosphate as the main energy source, and the anaerobic glycolysis system that use glycogen when oxygen is not present. Intense exercise that lasts up to 30 seconds mainly uses creatine phosphate as an energy source and from 30 seconds and onwards the glycolysis system takes over. glycogen is mainly derived from carbohydrates and glucose. Examples of anaerobic exercises include weigth lifting, sprint and other non-endurance exercise activities.

Cardiovascular Exercise

Cardiovascular exercise refer to exercises that target the cardiovascular system. These types of exercises are mainly aerobe. Examples of cardiovascular exercises are running,cycling and swimming

Strength training

Strengt training is a form of anaerob exercise that has the goal of increasing the strength of skeletal muscles. It can be utilized for both rehabilitation and fitness purposes as well as in sports specific training. In this section follows a basic description of som of the main principles of strength training.

Strength Training Principles:

There are three fundamental elements to a successful strength training program

Overload: To experience gains in strength the muscle must be loaded more than it is accustomed to.

Progression: The active muscle must work against a gradually increasing resistance in order to meet the overload.

Specificity: Gains in strength are dependent on the muscle group used, and movement pattern performed

Gains in strength are not necessarily due to increased muscle size or cross sectional area. This is particularly true in the very first phase of starting a new strength training program.

The changes that takes place in this very first phase is mainly due to the nervous system adapting to new stimuli. The centers of the brain controlling movement learns to recruit the neural pathways of the specific movement more efficiently. As a results increased strength and load-bearing capacity is achieved . The principle of specificity particularly applies in this respect.