Sex It Up! Training Makes it Better in Bed!

Yup. I'm pitching that working out and training hard makes for a better sex life. Own it! Don't shy away! The benefits of exercise are well-known and it shouldn't be surprising that those benefits extend into the bedroom. It's been said that our most powerful sex organ is our brain and if you're feeling better about yourself, a big benefit of exercise, you'll feel better in bed. This is not about being at 7% body fat or having rippling muscles, it's about what exercise can do for our metabolism and self-esteem.

The benefits of exercise are proven:

Improved Cholesterol Levels
Prevention of Type II Diabetes
Improved Mobility and Endurance
Stress Reduction
More Restful Sleep
Improved Self Esteem

In men, testosterone plays a big role: weight, age, and fitness level are factors. While there's still much research to be accomplished it's clear that exercise improves testosterone levels. All exercise helps to improve testosterone levels but lifting weights and other types of strength training have more pronounced effects! This doesn't mean just working your chest and biceps, it means getting many muscles groups involved by doing full-body workouts. Push yourself to use heavier weights and do lower reps with brief periods of rest in between sets.

Be honest with yourself and clear about your goals and enlist the help of a personal trainer for new workout strategies. A trainer can help with new routines, how to lift safely, and discuss healthy eating. Have fun and you'll leave the gym feeling great with lots of energy for other activities!

Your Fitness Journey. Creating a Map for Success!

One month into working on your New Year's fitness resolutions , it's time to make an assessment of your progress. Don't be hard on yourself but use this time to take an honest look at where you've come from and where you're headed. Oh, you say you really didn't set any goals except that you know you wanted to shed a few pounds. Oh, you say you didn't really have a plan to get to the gym. Eating plan? What eating plan?

I worked at Costco and we had a saying: Plan the work and work the plan. But a plan is just a car running on empty unless you put a goal in the tank, a motivator. Your goal needs to be specific. The more specific a goal the greater chances of success. Don't just say you want to lose a few pounds, put the number in writing.

Is your goal measurable? That is, how do you plan to measure your activity? A scale? Tape measure? Amount of weight lifted? Many of my clients would never consent to body measurements, let alone get on a scale while I was standing there. They preferred something more subjective and for them, less intimidating. The most common was how they looked or felt in their clothes. Fair enough!

Can you attain this goal? Maybe it's not a case of wanting but needing. If you've just come from your doctor and been informed that your cholesterol and blood pressure are elevated and that you need to lose weight, that changes the dynamic. In fact, it becomes more urgent and hopefully more motivating than simply wanting to lose weight.

How relevant or connected is your goal to you? Your desire to try powerlifting may not fit with an overall goal to lose weight. In fact, the reverse may happen and you'll find yourself buying larger clothes.

And finally, when is this all going to happen? Adding the element of time to goal-setting is a powerful motivator. It can be any arbitrary date in the future: Perhaps a calendar holiday or vacation getaway (yes, fitting into a square-cut swim suit is a good motivator).

Goals: Specific. Measurable. Attain-able. Relevant. Time-bound - SMART. Set yourself up for success and enjoy the journey!

Muscle for Muscle: Do Machines Stack Up?

When I initially began working out in the Eighties at the regional junior college in Cost, Utah, there were no machines in the health club. The weight-training area was a hodgepodge of dumb bells and barbells strewn all over the room with a couple rickety weight benches and a squat rack. The only mirror in the gym was one of those framed things you purchase for $7.99 and lean against a wall. You are able to imagine there was a ton of competition for that mirror. I was in heaven!

As I progressed from that little university health and fitness center to bigger fitness clubs I started to see more sophisticated machines. The most complicated hulks of metal I have certainly ever before experienced were the early 80's Nautilus circuits. At this specific health club I registered, members were not permitted to make use of these machines without an instructor since they required numerous modifications and settings to match up with your joint alignments. As the years passed, the engineers who produced these breasts made them even more user friendly allowing practically anybody to jump on and do a few sets all by themselves. To the club owners these machines clicked: The equipment stayed in one spot, the limited range of movement helped assure members were less likely to damage themselves, and the high-priced "furniture" offered the location a sense of authority.

Nowadays when you, stroll into a gym or health club, what you'll see are mostly machines. Rows and rows of them - and having a couple of free-weight racks thrown-in as an afterthought. However does that strength you obtain on a machine convert into something functional off of that machine? In other words, if you have the ability to leg press 720 pounds, could you squat an equivalent amount of weight? Probably not. Most individuals that train solely on machines are not fully functional outside of that atmosphere. Many assistive muscles that are called into play during free-weight training aren't called into play when using many machines. What reps they're able to complete on a particular piece of equipment does not translate into equal useable strength in daily functional movements.

I'm going to get off my soapbox now but intend on revisiting this subject. Would love to hear your reviews, pro and con, so leave a comment.