Although kettlebell is a relatively new sport, it is quickly becoming one of the most popular workout routines around. Those who have never heard of kettlebell, or those who have heard of it but have never seen a kettlebell routine in action, may wonder “What’s all the fuss?” But, those who have tried it will tell you that once you try kettlebell, it’s easy to see why it’s such a powerful, effective method.

So what is it about kettlebell routines that makes them so great?

1. Shorter workouts – The old school belief about how to get truly fit was that you needed to do about 45 minutes or more of cardiovascular exercise five times per week, in addition to lifting weights a few times each week. But, who has that kind of time? And even if you do have the time, unless you truly love the exercise, it is going to be hard to keep motivation high to continue on at that pace. Researchers are now finding that prolonged exercise (more than 30 minutes at a time) can encourage your body to hold on to fat as an insurance policy that your body will have enough fat to keep going, since it knows you’re going to put it through more of those long sessions.

The beauty of a kettlebell circuit is that you get a full body workout in only 20 minutes. While using your muscles to lift and swing the kettlebells, your heart rate remains elevated, so you are getting a good cardio workout at the same time. The combination of increased muscle mass, improved cardiovascular fitness, and shorter workout times (so your body doesn’t think it needs to store fat), results in quick fat loss.

2. Full body workout – Each time you perform a kettlebell routine, your entire body is involved. You are not only working the larger muscles of your legs, arms, back, and chest, but also the smaller muscles in your feet, ankles, wrists, and hands (and all muscles in between). No other sport engages all of the muscles in such a complete and balanced way.

3. Doesn’t require going to a gym – All you need to start is a couple of kettlebells. You can do your kettlebell workout outside, in your house, in a hotel room, or at the office. You can create your routine to fit the space you have.

4. Develops quick reactions – Many kettlebell exercises, especially kettlebell swings, work the abs and the back of the body (the back, glutes, and hamstrings), which result in the explosive athletic power necessary to excel in sports.

5. Fast results – Because kettlebell exercises involve so many muscles of the body and give a cardio workout at the same time, you’ll see changes in your body quickly. Even after the first workout most people notice a change in their posture, as they walk taller and feel stronger. If you do 20 minutes of kettlebell three or four times per week, you’ll be amazed at the changes in your body.

Since kettlebell exercises are so powerful, it is important that they be performed correctly. It’s a good idea to receive training from a kettlebell instructor, or follow an established program before doing them on your own, as correct form is essential to a safe workout. Once you learn the basics you will be able to continually expand your routine to include new exercises, as there are many to choose from.

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Ideally if you are healthy and able to do it the dead lift should be included in your back workouts. The dead lift is commonly referred to as the king of back exercises. It will back muscle mass onto just about every part of your body, from your calves to your traps not just your back.

When should you perform the dead lift? There are two schools of thought concerning this. Some say you should do it first in your workout when you have the most energy. Others tell you to do it last as it the most exhausting. I personally prefer to dead lift first in my back workouts. The important thing is that you do it. To insure proper recovery make you never dead lift too soon before or after your leg workouts in which you should be squatting. These are both technical lifts and need to be done properly to insure your safety. Make sure you have your doctors permission as well.

If you have a legitimate reason you cannot do these two lifts don’t worry there are many others that you can choose from. But if you aren’t injured don’t make up excuses. The true beginner should start out light with there dead lifts. 3 sets of 5 or 5 sets of 5 not going to failure is a good place to start. It’s very important that you start out light and gradually work up in weight. If you start out too heavy you will stall your gains very quickly. So what should you do to complete your back workouts after you have finished your dead lifts. I would suggest you do about 20-30 pull ups, a couple of sets abdominal exercises and go home to rest. I don’t care how many sets or how long it takes you to complete your pull ups and I don’t care about your grip either. Pick a number and complete that many pull ups then next time it comes around to your back workout try to get a few more pull ups when you can get 30 easily in only 3 sets you can start adding weight. Do whatever you want for your abs. Some of my favorites are hanging leg raises, and incline crunches.

You can add more work later on but you may never need. Many very strong large guys do routines similar to this.

For beginners I usually recommend a very simple push, pull, leg split with one or two days off in between workouts. An example of this would be your chest workout on Monday, back workout on Wednesday, and your leg workout on Friday. There are many other variations and splits out there that work. The important thing for a beginner is to focus on the big lifts bench press, squat, and dead lift, and to not do too much work. Follow these steps and you are well on your way to having great back workouts and gaining muscle.

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Most people perform inefficient cardio workout routines. It is no wonder that so many experts have said recently that cardio is NOT an effective way to lose body fat. It isn’t that cardio is a bad way to lose body fat, it is simply that people are doing it in a strategic manner. If you want to get to low single digit body fat percentages, then this cardio workout routine will do the trick.

1) Don’t Touch any Calories 4-5 Hours Leading Up to Your Cardio Workout

You can eat a little or a light meal before cardio if you have a lot of weight to lose. If you are trying to get below 8% body fat, then you don’t have that luxury! You have to force your body to burn fat once you begin to creep to a lower body fat percentage. One way to force your body to burn off fat for fuel is to have every little bit of “food energy” out of your system. Don’t worry about muscle loss. Your body will produce a large spike in HGH when training in a fasted state. This will spare muscle while burning even more body fat after the workout.

2) Do Intense Interval Training for 10-15 Minutes

When you begin your cardio workout make sure you first begin by performing intense intervals. What this does is trigger HGH release and more importantly it releases fatty acids into the bloodstream. Intense intervals are much better at releasing fat from your fat cells, then slower steady cardio. Slower cardio is better at using these fatty acids for energy, which is why you will want to do this next.

3) Next Perform Steady State Cardio for 20-30 Minutes

After doing intervals on a piece of cardio equipment, hop on a treadmill (or elliptical) and go at a fast walking pace for 20-30 minutes. This should be a little faster than a typical walk, but not too hard either. To be honest, you can do this for longer than 30 minutes if you have the time. Since you are in a fasted state and free fatty acids are efficiently getting burned, every minute is extremely productive.

4) No Food Until An Hour After Cardio Is Completed

The intense intervals will release fat burning HGH and it will continue working magic for 1-2 hours after the workout has been completed. If you eat right after training it will spike insulin and halt the HGH release. It is best to wait an hour to maximize the effects of this cardio workout. There are so many poorly designed cardio workout routines, but this one kicks butt!

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What is the right amount of strength training that a tennis player needs? What kind of exercises do they need to do? I will try to answer some question on a specific tennis weight training program.

Specific tennis weight training program has to be completely incorporated in a tennis player schedule especially for advanced players. Tennis is an intense activity involving the repetition of explosive and intense movements. This is the kind of activity that could lead to overuse injuries or to strained muscles.

The first goal of a tennis weight training program is to help the players to prevent injuries. A tennis player has to work on his lower body but also on his upper body. Another very important art to train is the core strength that involves, back and abdominal muscles.

At the beginning of a weight training program players should workout 2 to 3 times a week. They need to wok on their total body and use light weights and a lot of reps. I usually use circuit training with around 12 exercises that work on shoulders, chest, back, biceps, triceps, forearms, quadriceps, hamstrings and adductors/abductors. Use one or two exercises for each muscle and do 15 or 20 reps for each of them. Once you are done with the entire circuit do a second set of everything. Finish the workouts with a lot of abs and lowbacks exercises.

After a few weeks of this kind of training the player will have a good strength foundation.

It is time now to work more on his hypertrophy and strength. Use now higher weights with at least 3 sets and 8 to 12 reps per set. Advanced level players should workout at least 3 times a week. You can design your weight training program in different ways. An easy and good way would be to do one session upper body and next time only lower body.

Once the player’s strength level is getting better, more and more weight can be added. Use more sets again and less repetitions in order to work more on the maximum strength of the players. Strong players will be more explosive and powerful on the court.

Once the player has a good strength level, it is time to be very specific to tennis, meaning using explosive workouts. You can use Olympic weight lifting methods as snatches and cleans or you can execute basic exercises in an explosive pattern. At this level I will advice players to do explosive workouts twice a week. An extra two to three times should be spent in the gym working on their general endurance strength in order to maintain a good total body strength. This should be done with light weights and less rest.

A tennis weight training program is complex because you need to keep switching the intensity in order to be as efficient as possible. Do not use heavy lifting more that 5 weeks or your player will be burn out. It is always good after 4 to 5 weeks of training to change the routine. You should add or decrease the weights and intensity depending on the improvements and what the player was doing in his cycle.

Do not forget to work on every muscle even once the player has a good strength level. Only working on bench press or squat will not be enough and will lead to injuries.

This is why a good weight training program is a key to become a good tennis player

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Weightlifting is a topic that we think that we know, today there is a lot of misinformation everywhere and its hard to know what is correct and what isn’t.

I got to read an ancient article not to long ago, it was from a magazine that came out before world war 2 in the 1920s and it contained some advice from great bodybuilding legend Charles Atlas.

The advice in the article was some of the best that I have ever read and whats great about it is that it still holds up today as well as it did back then, I don’t think that any of today’s experts can give advice as good as this, here it is.

1. Set A Definite Goal

We hear a lot of this advice from self help gurus today, before WW2 self help didn’t exist and yet this same advice is given.

Basically you must know what your end result is and work backwards from it, know how much you will weight and what you will look like than follow a program that corresponds with your goals.

2. Never Miss A Single Workout

Charles Atlas was a guy who never gave up, he worked hard to become what everyone back than called “the worlds most perfect man”.

The thing is that in the beginning we are excited to start working out but as time goes by we get too caught up in the process, get bored with it and quit, completely forgetting what we wanted in the first place.

Point is never miss a single workout, always remind yourself of the reason why you started working out.

3. Treat Your Body Like Your New Car

When you buy a new car do you throw some mud into the engine and expect it to run smoothly? yet the engine is made of steel, we are not made of steel and yet we abuse our bodies with all kinds of junk and expect ourselves to get results from working out in the gym.

Treat your body like a new piece of equipment that you just bought, take good care of it by putting only the best food in it and you will be rewarded with better results.

Sleeping enough is also what will help you gain muscle, the old article that I read mentioned that even back than people had a bad habit of sleeping less than 8 hours.

4. Completely Focus On The Task At Hand

When you come to the gym you might notice that there are people that came there to talk to others and when they finally do work out they seem unfocused.

Your job is to work out, when you come to the gym you must completely focus on what you are doing and avoid letting outside noise distract you.

5. “Never Exercise Beyond Fatigue Point”

When you are tired from working out you should stop, in my teens I used to force myself to continue even when I couldn’t, this led to overtraining and stagnated my results.

You can’t force your body to grow faster than it can.

6. Keep Stress To A Minimum

Today we have scientific proof of how stress can prevent muscle growth, when were under stress out bodies release a chemical called cortisol.

Cortisol breaks down our muscle tissue and bones, too much stress can even lead to an early death, I’ve heard stories of guys in their early 20s who had very busy lives getting heart attacks.

So basically try to look at the finer parts of life and be a bit more positive.

7. Get Enough Water And Air

Charles Atlas advised not only drinking a lot of water but also getting regular baths to unclog your body’s pores and let the body breathe.

Speaking of breathing Atlas also advised going outside to get air, we tend to forget that hours of sitting at home can have negative effects on our health and it can even slow down muscle growth.

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