Muscle Fitness Workout
Physical Fitness Includes Muscle Fitness
Physical fitness includes muscle-strength
and muscle-endurance, along with cardiovascular endurance and body flexibility.
So if you want to improve your fitness level, include some muscle training
workouts in your overall exercise program.
How to Increase Muscle Strength?
In order to make muscles stronger, you need
to work them against some form of resistance, either resulting from weights
or gravity. Try exercises such as weight-lifting freeweights, barbells
or dumbells (for upper-body muscle-strength) or weight machines like a
leg-press machine (for lower-body muscle strength). Lifting weights (freeweights
or via machines) boosts muscle strength as well as bone-strength, by placing
more strain on muscles and bones than they are used to. During a weight-lifting
workout, the muscles are compelled to work harder to balance/overcome
the resistance offered by the weight being lifted or moved.
How to Improve Muscle Endurance?
Useful exercises to boost muscle endurance
and stamina, include push-ups (to improve endurance of arm and shoulder
muscles, like biceps, triceps and deltoids), or squat-thrusts (to improve
endurance of gluteal, quads and lower-thigh muscles). Alternatively, try
cardio-aerobic activities such as stepping, power-walking, exercise-biking,
squash or jogging to improve lower-body muscular endurance.
More Muscle Tissue Burns More Calories
Although weight training, or strength training,
is anaerobic, it still burns calories. In addition, by improving your
muscle-to-fat ratio, thus decreasing your body fat percentage, it helps
to raise your metabolism. This is due to the fact that muscle is more
metabolically active (uses up more calories) than body fat. So regular
muscle fitness workouts help you to continue burning extra calories even
at rest. According to some fitness experts, for every pound of muscle-mass
you gain, your body burns an additional 35 to 50 calories per 24 hours
at rest.
Muscle Fitness Doesn't Need Supplements
Contrary to popular practice among muscle-builders
and bodybuilders, neither protein nor other nutritional supplements are
essential to develop, strengthen or build muscles. In a series of studies,
the US Centers for Disease Control, reviewed hundreds of self-proclaimed
body-building, energy-releasing, and muscle-enhancing products. None of
these supplements were found to have any positive effect whatever on muscle
size or strength. Also, doctors state that more protein doesn't equal
more muscle formation. Extensive research proves that adequate calorie
intake, combined with exercise, is what really strengthens and builds
muscle.
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