Staying at a healthy weight

     Maintaining a healthy body weight depending on your size and age is important to feel well emotionally and physically. To control body weight, exercise and good eating habits have to be implemented in your daily life. This doesn't mean that you have to exercise heavily or go on a strict diet because this doesn't make your body weight stable. Instead, it makes your weight increase and decrease drastically, which is not healthy.

First of all, use this link and find out what is your BMI (Body Mass Index) in order to find out whether or not your weight is healthy.
http://www.runnersworld.com/cda/bmicalculator/0,7155,242-242-306-314-0-0-0-0-0,00.html

Here are important and easy exercising and nutrition tips you should  try to feel better.
Exercise tips>http://kidshealth.org/teen/your_body/take_care/healthy_weight.html#
Good Eating habits>http://kidshealth.org/teen/your_body/take_care/healthy_weight.html#

A new routine for slim, toned muscles

           Last week, I followed a new routine to challenge my body a little more by trying new exercises. As a warmup, I jumped the rope for 15 minutes. Jumping rope helps with coordination, agility, timing and endurance. It turns out that jumping rope develops lean, long muscles and tones muscles in the entire body.  After this warmup, I did a routine with the stability ball to strengthen many different muscles, especially in the arms and abdominals. The routine was made up of movement 3, 5, and 6 of the workout within the link of the last post (Great abs for girls).

For a perfect workout:

• Jump tope for 15 minutes.
• Do one repetition of each exercise (3, 5, and 6).
• Rest for 5 minutes.
•  Repeat each exercise once more.
• Rest for minutes.
• Repeat each exercise one more time.
• If you can, add 10 minutes of jump rope before repeating the exercises.

This workout, combining jumps and stretching, can have excellent results on your body if they are practiced with regularity (not every day, but at least twice a week). It forms slim, sturdy muscles!

Great Abs for Girls

http://www.womenshealthmag.com/fitness/get-rock-solid-abs

     This link provides an extraordinary abs workout for girls. Many wish to obtain a hard core and eventually a six pack, but it is not easy. The stability ball and the dumbells help strengthen all the core, or the stomach muscles, as well as the spine. This though, will not allow your abs to develop if a healthy diet and a cardio workout is not implemented. . This specific workout for girls is based on stability, rotational strength and balance, which are excellent factors to strengthen the core. One of the key factors in doing these exercises is to be patient at the "peak" of the exercise, holding the position which is the hardest to maintain. Staying at this position long enough is crucial in the workout. For example, in the matrix, increase the time you hold the reclined position little by little for better results.

RUNNING BAREFOOT

      The other day, I went running barefoot on a golf course just to experience the feeling of running without shoes or socks. It felt pretty good, but I decided to do some research to know if it was healthy or not. I was glad to find out that going barefoot has many benefits.
     First, it helps you improve coordination, balance, perception and develop the foot muscles that are usually not used because of the tennis shoes.
     It has also been discovered that going barefoot helps to release psychological stress. During the day, our body accumulates positive electrical charge and with excessive physical, emotional, and mental work; this charge could exceed the limits of what our body can handle. To "discharge" our body, the electrical activiy has to return back to normal. Running barefoot on the ground allows to release the excessive energy and returns our emotional and mental condition back to normal.

 
      This is why wearing shoes with rubber soles sometimes result in psychological break down after a long time using them.  Try exercising barefoot on smooth surfaces sometime, you will feel better!

Boxing for Fitness

Most of the people who are seeking to be fit in short periods of time look forward to doing cardio. Boxing is an anaerobic exercise, where oxygen is used up more quickly than the body is able to replenish it. Boxing provides you with a full body workout that helps you burn calories faster and also gets you heart pumping. If you are tired of your regular cardio workouts like running or aerobics, I suggest you try boxing. It is a fun way to release your energy and strengthen your body muscles.

Boxing is an anaerobic exercise that results in lean muscles because of the type of training. Boxers fight and train in rounds lasting from 2 minutes to 3 minutes. The training done to earn resistance for this is at high intensity. The training equipment also demands you get lean because of the way the bags have to be worked.

If you want to start off with this type of training, go to:
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/other8.htm

The Benefits of Yoga

http://www.healthandyoga.com/html/yoga/Benefits.html

Yoga is an exercise that benefits the organism, mind, and body. Especially for women, yoga is a useful tool to lose body weight. Muscles that are never worked on get stimulated, increasing metabolism. Yoga tones the muscles without the need of weight lifting or other strenuous exercises. I think people who want to lose weight or control their diet should start practicing yoga at least once a week. It is unique because strength and speed are not included in the workouts, and similar body results are obtained with this relaxing practice.

Yoga ≈ Meditation

It is important to get the mind to work in sync with the body in order to defeat stress.

China-Brazil Basketball game ends in a basket-brawl

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11531996

       

The China-Brazil basketball game on Tuesday resulted with kicks and punches. The referee called a foul by the Chinese players, and this occasionated protests from the Chinese players and coach. The Brazilians refused to continue playing after the huge fight. The Chinese Basketball Association has apologized to the Brazilian side for the incident which caused serious consequences. Penalties will be given to the Chinese players and many will be penalized. These players are attending to classes about sportsmanship and will reflect about what they did. Meanwhile, there is no word from the Brazilian federation.

Comment:

The behavior of the Chinese on Tuesday's basketball game against Brazil was unacceptable. What makes the case even worse is that it wasn't even a championship game or for competitive gain, but a "friendly" game. The Brazilians, on the other hand, defended themselves; which is probably what any other team would've done. What was also surprising in the game is that the Chinese coach also complained to the referee, instead of calming and handling his players. With their wrong behavior, the Chinese have earned a bad reputation for their team and there may be a possibility for their exclusion to more important games, against other international teams.

The only positive side of the incident was that the Chinese team is attending to classes on good sportsmanship and the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) has recognized their mistake, apologizing to the Brazilian side. The Brazilians have stayed quiet; they must be disappointed to have the game stopped because of the brawl. They might not consider the Chinese anymore to play against them, especially after being the visiting team and getting attacked on their way to the locker room.

Running outdoors vs. the treadmill

          The weather and daylight are two factors that may require the use of a treadmill instead of running outdoors. Both benefit your training in different ways, but at least 60% of it should be outdoors, advises the famous marathonist Mindy Solkin. The best option is to compose your training with outdoor runs and treadmill runs. This applies to all types of training, short-distance and long-distance. The greatest benefit of practicing outdoors is that all races occur in outdoor fields like pavement, grass (cross-country) or dirt; training in these places will help your body get used to the tracks.    The number of calories burned is another benefit of outdoors running. Running at speeds under 9 miles an hour (6:40 min-mile-pace) in a treadmill burns about the same number of calories as running at this same pace outdoors. If you ran faster than 9 mph, you'll burn fewer calories on the treadmill. There can be a difference of up to 8% with the amount of calories burned. Indoors, there is no wind resistance or curves to overcome.Factors like this are important to burn more calories and get more strength on the legs.  After all, the treadmill belt does propel you along a bit.

          It is always more interesting to look at nature. The trees, lakes, birds and flowers are better things to watch than a wall or machines at the gym. However, when it's raining, snowing or there is high humidity, it's better to make use of the treadmill and even better if these are long runs, instead of fast runs. If weather forces you to do more training indoors than out, jus do it: Christine Clark, a runner from Anchorage, Alaska, won the 2000 women's Olympic marathon trials after doing the majority of her training on the treadmill.