Help in developing an effective ''body shaping'' exercise pr

micarla1

Hi All,

So I have lost nearly 2 and a half stone - have exercised throughout my weight loss which has been a steady 1-3lb weekly loss. Majority of my exercise is home exercising - with about 20 workout DVDs, weights and other fitness gadgets I have for the time cancelled my gym membership as I seem to be doing something right. As I'm getting closer to my goal I am keen to ensure my exercise routine is not only time effective but effective in what it sets out to achieve. At present I workout 4-5 times each week - each workout entails of a cardio section - usually interval training from several workout DVD's normally around 30-45 mins. Then I do my resistance/toning work where I again utilise my exercise DVDs (Ministry of Sound, Davina Fit (all the Davinas!) etc). My resistance work tends to involve lots of squats - lateral, side, sumo - the whole kit and caboodle, lunges - walking, static, press ups, arm toning, ab work. I tend to spend more time on resistance as i find I enjoy this aspect most.
So I wanted to get some advice from anyone in the know on what is the best way for me to exercise. My main areas are under arms, inner thighs and tummy and waist. I want to ensure that my body gets lean - my quads have bulked up but im sure its better to be a bit bulkier than to be flabbier!?! lol

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Carla

micarla1

Sorry forgot to add have lost my weight slowly - have been doing this since october to give my skin time to ''recover''!!

missy1970eb

hi, for under arms and tummy area, use a gym ball

micarla1

Thanks Missy - I have a donut ball and gym ball but how do you do arm exercises on gym ball - tricpep dips I guess??

micarla1

Does anyone else have any good advice on exercise routines??

ak247

i'm new to this site, but i have a wealth of knowledge of fitness, strength, nutrition and martial arts.
i joined purely for the feature of tracking my ingestion of food online and using their database of stored foods. (previously i had it in an access database)

to my current knowledge and what is widely accepted as scientific fact, you can not target where your body will lose fat.

genetics determines where fat is lost and stored within people, so doing a bunch of situps daily will probably never get you a flat tummy. the muscles will get conditioned and harder but that "layer" of fat there will always be there till other deposits of fat have been depleted. this could be from your thighs, arms, lower back and many other places. (you could be lucky though and the first place your body decides to use the fat is from the desired area

don't let this put you off however. the body losing fat in the way it does helps keep your body in proportion, no point having a flat tummy if you got flabby thighs/arms/neck/face/shoulders etc. also it does not lose fat one place at a time, rather it burns a little fat from each place, more from some and less from others.

moving onto nutrition - you should have this under control, for weight loss you need a negative net calorie diet - which means you your RMR(resting metabolic rate) + exercise burned calories should be bigger than the calories you ingest, giving you a negative result. as your already losing mass i think you have that under control.
one thing to note though is muscle atrophy, where your body breaks down it's own muscle due to insufficent calories. this will make you feel weak and tired. a way to help reduce this effect is to ensure adequte protein is eaten. you will need to find out how much is ideal for you. i'm guessing below 100grams a day (myself i have 300-400 grams a day and 3200-4000 calories a day but i am weight gaining, your doing the opposite)


onto your actual exercise, what you said your doing seems alright, but i think after a while, you might reach a limit with what you can do interms of resistance training, unless you go and buy more equipment, which i feel is a waste.
girls generally have an extremely hard time building muscle due to the lack of testosterone and it is not present in women in great quantities (and for good reasons) but it is still possible. just don't expect to look like some of the female "body builders" that are around. that body development is not possible to attain unassisted in a reasonable amount of time.

weight/resistance training should be your main portion of exercise. 3 or 4 times a week with a bit of cardio is helpful. the reason for this is it raised your RMR value. studies have showed that cardio elevates RMR for about 2 hours after exercise, where weight training will raise it for 8hours and up. this means you will be burning more calories each day due to recovery of muscles.

when you do cardio a muscle is not worked to failure, you deplete it's energy stores (glycogen and glucose) and build up metabolites which cause you pain so you stop. that is not failure.

with weight training your will do 6-10 reps of a weight have a brief 30-60 second break and do another set. you do this for 3-4 sets. the idea behind this is you deplete the energy stores of a muscle from the weight and also overwork the muscle to the point of microfibre damage. the break in the sets allows for oxygen to enter the muscle so you respire aerobicly and this reduces metabolite build up. exercising this way will make you reach a failure point, where you don't feel pain from metabolites causing you to stop, but the inability to tense the muscle enough to move the weight. that is what failure of muscle is. where you can not physically move the muscle due to fatigue and not metabolites.
this form of exercise will harden the muscle moreso than cardio and also make it appear fuller. for girls they will generally not get any bigger than they already are.

if you or anyone wants help on exercises to do, nutrition help or self defence message me on here or at frostitution69@yahoo.co.uk (don't worry about spam or anything on that, it's just a general account of no importance)

on a side note, there is no such thing as "toning a muscle" you either make it bigger and harder or you reduce overall body fat so they appear more.

underarms = tricep
tummy = central area is abdominals and sides is obliques

you will lose weight much more effectively and quickly if you follow what i have said and use a proper training programme, which i would happily help make. try it for a month, if it doesn't work then maybe it's not for you, but i'm 90% sure you will see an advantage in this way. if possible you would go gym 3-4 times a week and workour for 50-80 minutes, depending on how busy the gym is


if anypart of this is wrong please let me know and i'll take it out, this is my knowledge of how the body works and reacts to stimulus, energy consumption and general biochemistry. i've been using this theory myself and it does work for me. a year ago i was 75kg 6ft1, dropped to 70kg and 8% body fat by mistake due to not enough calories and protein, now i am at 89kg with 13% body fat, my goal is to reach 93kg and then i'll start reducing my body fat to below10% which should be pretty easy given my age, height and exercise regime

ak247

someone reply if they find this helpful or something is missing. also would be helpful if original poster replys.

micarla1

Hi AK,

Thanks for your input. You have given some really good tips there. I am aware that I can't spot train but I try to include all over resistance work to help my body to shape up. I have noticed definition in my upper abs - light definition may I add! Recently my weight loss has slowed but I feel that my body is definitely getting smaller(measurements etc). I have also been increasing my repitions to around 15-25 for most of the body weight and dumbell exercises. I will be going back to the gym but think I will focus on classes that incorpirate interval training and resistance maybe body combat or something - After my workouts I've been doing over the last few months I don't think I would get the most out of treadmills and cross trainers like that of a gym class.

In terms of nutrition I'm on a low fat, low cal diet. I am considering taking some whey protein on my workout days too. I have restricted carbs but I personally enjoy carbs so planning an excpetionally low carb diet would not be realistic for me. I have so far managaed to stick to my new life chanegs since October so something is working.

Most of all I would like to be able to get smaller (lots of cardio) and leaner without becoming too muscular, however I would rather be a little too muscular that too wobbly!!

Thank you fro your advice will take it on board.

Carla

PS delayed response probably due to time difference I am in the UK most here seem to be from the states.

micarla1

Also AK I would be very interested in a work out plan if you could devise one for home workouts?? Thank You

ak247

i'm in the UK aswell, west london.
hmmm, my diet consists of about :
950grams of chicken (bbq) about 1300-1400 calories
2 servings of phd synergy (vanilla) 237calories each
1 serving of serious mass (chocolate) - 1250 calories
200g of cinamon grahams cereal - 800 calories
500g of oven baked chips about 1500 calories
(i eat other things randomly, but that is generally what i have each day, give or take a few 100grams in each place depending if i've run out of that food)
from this, i find it easy to stack protein and have trouble loading carbs into me, so i use a supplement (serious mass) chicken is a good way to get protein without carbs and is relatively low calories, about 127 calories per 100gram. it seems like a wonder food, pretty much no carbs/fat, good amount of protein, low calorie. i would try this before investing in a whey protein supplement.

also as i said, as a women you wont get muscle at all unless you really go crazy at it, take lots of different supplements and train harder than i do, which is just not going to happen if you have anyone of importance to you.

15-25 repititions seems a bit much to be honest, i get the feeling your not feeling tired of fatigued after doing your set and you don't reach a point where you struggle. if you could increase the weights you do so that you find it hard to reach 12 and ideally you should fail at about 8-10. (personally i fail at 6-7 but at that point i'm screaming like my arms have been cut off)

for an exercise plan, ideally you seperate your muscle groups into 4 or 5 workouts
back and biceps
chest and triceps
shoulders
legs
core - adbominals and lower back

let me know what equipment you have and i can tell you some exercises to do. ideally if you have a good dumbbell set, curling/barbell and a bench you can do a lot of things, also you may need a pullup bar of some sort to work your back out properly. (bent over rows get boring and are not as effective as widegrip/military pull ups)