Strength Building Exercises

Strength building (weight bearing) exercise reduces the risk of osteoporoses. It also trims inches off of your body. Work at least 2 sessions of into each week, with at least one day off between work-outs.

You could join a gym, if you prefer and you have the money, but it isn’t necessary. You don’t need to spend any money to get strong. Go to the library and find a book on getting strong. Or you might find a magazine with an article that contains strength building exercises. You can use soup cans for hand-held weights. Find about 8 exercises that target your abs, biceps, triceps, calves, thighs, upper body, and back.Some suggestions:

Abs: Set ups or crunches are strength building for the body core.
Upper body: push-ups or wall push-outs
Thighs: partial squat
Calves: Toe raises (stand flat, then raise heels and stand on toes. Lower slowly).
Arm exercises can be done while you are walking. Carry one pound weights, soup cans, or small rocks on your walk. Do bicep curls and other arm toning exercises on the move.

Recent research has shown that jumping exercises actually add mass to bones. Your rope jumping session might serve as both aerobic and strength building. Don’t jump on your toes. The heel needs to be hitting the floor for this to work.

If you don’t jump rope, hold on to the back of a chair for support, raise up on your toes and let the heels hit the floor. Repeat 50 times. Apparently it is the jarring that causes the bone to build more mass.

What's the Proper Way to do Sit-ups?

a reprint from Dr. Mirkin

Sit-ups can strengthen your belly muscles, but doing them incorrectly can hurt your back. Sit-ups should be done while

you lie on your back with your knees bent enough for the soles of your feet to touch the floor. Place both hands on your chest and slowly raise your head off the ground. Raise your shoulders about one foot and then lower them to the ground. Do this slowly ten times, rest a few seconds and then do two more sets of ten. After a week or two this exercise will feel easy, so add a light weight held behind your neck or on your chest. As you become stronger, you can use heavier weights.

There's no need to do more than 30 sit-ups in one workout. To strengthen your belly muscles, you increase the resistance, not the number of repetitions. Keep your knees bent to protect your back. If you do a sit-up with your legs straight, you place a great force on the iliopsoas muscles that increase the arch in your back, which can damage the ligaments and joints. If your belly muscles are weak, you are likely to arch your back excessively when you sit up and increase the chances of injury. If you are doing sit-ups to flatten your stomach, you need to raise your head only about one foot because going higher than that uses the quadriceps muscles in the front of your upper legs, not your belly muscles.

How to Become Stronger

a reprint from Dr. Mirkin

Would you like to become stronger? Pick 6 to 10 weight-machine exercises and do them in three sessions a week. In each exercise, try to lift the heaviest weight that you can lift comfortably ten times in a row without hurting yourself. When an exercise becomes easy, increase the weight. In five months, you should be able to increase your strength significantly and be proud of your larger muscles.

You now decide that you want to become even stronger. Would you increase your strength more by increasing the number of repetitions or by increasing the weight that you lift? For example, should you try to do three sets of ten for each exercise or stay at one set of ten, just try to lift a heavier weight once a week? Dr. Michael Pollock of the University of Florida in Gainesville divided recreational weight lifters into two groups. In one group, they tried to do three sets of 10 three times a week. In the other group, they did just one set of 10 three times a week, but tried to lift progressively heavier weights. Those who did one set of ten with heavier weights three times week were stronger than those who did three sets of ten without increasing the weight.

Exercise does not make you stronger. If it did, marathon runners would have the largest muscles of all athletes. The single stimulus to make muscles larger and stronger is to stretch them while they contract. When you try to lift a heavy weight, your muscles stretch before the weight starts to move. The greater the stretch, the greater the damage to the muscle fibers and when they heal after a few days, the greater the gain in strength. The results for this study give a clear message. You become stronger by lifting heavier weights, not by exercising more. If you do too much work, you can't lift very heavy weights and you do not become stronger. When it comes to becoming very strong, less may be more.

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