Making Fitness or Martial Arts Part of Your Life

Pick up a newspaper or turn on the local news on any given day and you are liable to hear a report on how Americans are getting fatter. Government statistics tell us that approximately 60 percent of Americans (127 million people) are overweight. Many women who enroll in martial arts or fitness clubs have a primary goal of losing weight. Unfortunately, some expect instant results. If they don’t see immediate weight loss they become discouraged and inpatient. Some even drop out altogether.

In my 20 plus years of training men, women and children of all shapes and sizes, I have learned that diets just don’t work. If they did, we wouldn’t have an obesity epidemic. The diet industry continually makes promises that they can’t deliver and is fleecing the public at the tune of $40 billion dollars a year. The diet industry doesn’t want to tell you the truth. And why should they with the kind of money they’re taking out of people’s misery? The truth is that weight loss is difficult for many people to achieve. Weight loss is a personal struggle, complicated by an individual’s upbringing, eating habits, metabolism, genetics and psychology. Yo-yo dieting and subjecting the body to strange eating regimes is much more detrimental to one’s physical and mental health than maintaining a steady weight.

I’m not here to sell you the same bill of goods as the diet industry. What I will do is encourage you to develop a healthy lifestyle and feel better about yourself. When you train, go with the attitude that you want to move, breathe and stretch. What’s important is that you focus on wellness. According to Steven Blair, director of research at the Cooper Institute for Aerobics Research in Dallas, Texas, “There is a misdirected obsession with weight and weight loss. The focus is wrong. It’s fitness that is the key.”

Fitness is also a word that has been presented to the public at large. Go to any gym in America, what do you see? Weights and cardio machines, not much more. The only thing you can do is train strength and endurance; that’s not enough for true fitness! And how about the gyms with Yoga classes? Great, add flexibility to the list, if your lucky. You see Yoga teachers are a dime a dozen in America, especially in fitness gyms. Finding a good teacher is like finding a needle in a haystack, and they’re not at your local “Fitness” Center! Truth is many of the “Yoga” instructors in gyms don’t know a great deal and could actually end up hurting you.

Fitness is far more in-depth then most people are looking at. If your not improving in all areas of human performance: strength, endurance, flexibility, coordination, balance, body unity, grace, speed, hand eye coordination, reactions (and the list goes on) you are not completely improving your fitness.

You will notice that with a good well rounded system of exercise, you will start having more strength, more endurance, and more flexibility, and all the other benefits mentioned above. If you want to lose weight, it will take patience, exercise, sensible diet changes, and sacrifice. There is no way around it. Focus on fitness, moving, breathing, stretching, feeling strong and enjoying your martial arts or fitness routine.

Watch the video related to Healthy Lifestyle Art

www.FatlossLifeStyle.com for Free Stuff When & How Should I Warm-Up, Stretch, Exercise, and Cool Down? Welcome to my Advanced Stretching Video # II. I get tons of questions about this topic. There seems to be a lot of confusion about stretching. We all seem to not have enough time in the day for all that we need to do. So it is logical that most of us skip stretching. But that is a big mistake. I know it seems counter intuitive but more time not working out intensely will get you to your goals faster. You will become more flexible and lower your risk for injury. You will be able to stay more consistent to your work out schedule thus obtaining better results. The proper sequence of an intense work out should be: •Warm up •Light stretching •40 50 minutes of intense resistance training •Intense stretching the last ½ of the intense resistance session •Cool down Warm Up- It is very important to transition into an intense work out with 10 minutes of a low level cardio vascular activity. Some modes of exercise that work well are jumping jacks, jump rope, martial art kicks, squat thrust, or any full body callisthenic type exercise. However my favorite mode is power walking on the treadmill. Starting speed is nice and slow. I (I am 59) start at 3.5 mph and increase the speed by .1 mph every minute. Over the course of the 10 minute warm up I will go from 3.5 mph to 4.5 mph. Due to limitations in space here if you want this full special report on stretching go to FatlossLifeStyle <b>…</b>

Help answer the question about Healthy Lifestyle Art

What’s a good Super Fantastic Prize for a lucky 6th grader?
My friend and I are working as a team in STAMP (Stay Tobacco-free Athlete Mentor Program), for our school’s SADD club. So we’re teaching a 6th grade class & we just gave them some homework. We asked them to work in a group, no more than 3, and design a anti-smoking poster for next monday at our next session. The class and ourselves will be judging these posters and at our last session (we only hold four sessions one every monday) they will get a “Super Fantastic Prize”. Well, we don’t know what our “Super Fantastic Prize” should be. We have a few ideas, but I was wondering if anyone had anymore?
Here’s our ideas:
• Buy a bike at a garage sale and paint it real cool
• Buy plushie lungs, or some sort of plushie thing
• Buy a cool jump rope and a hoola-hoop and paint them nice

We both love art and music and would like the prize to either be tied into staying tobacco-free or staying active and living a healthy lifestyle. Thank you everyone for the help!

About Author

Calasanz Martinez -
About the Author:

Calasanz is the creator of a system of exercise called Physical Arts. Movements based on his understanding of the martial arts that improve strength, endurance, flexibility, coordination, balance, body unity, weight loss, and tone. Physical Arts exercises are available at http://www.interdojo.com