Incredible Upper Body Workout

July 16, 2015
Total Gym Direct
Health & Fitness / Workout Videos / Workouts
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Incredible Upper Body Workout

Fitness trainer John Peel joins us once again today on Total Gym Pulse to bring us his incredible upper body burnout workout using The Total Gym. This workout consisting of four different exercises working four different body parts with thirty seconds for each movement.

The first exercise John demonstrates in this series is the pull up. Lay flat on your stomach on the glideboard of The Total Gym and have both cables in hand. Make sure to keep your elbows wide and squeeze your back as you pull yourself up. This is the same motion as a regular pull up and you can modify the intensity of the exercise by moving the level either up and down. Do this exercise for thirty second with no rest. (more…)

Are You Fit Enough To Finish The Total Gym Challenge?

The Total Gym Challenge

Are you looking for a dynamic and inspiring way to challenge your body, to reach a higher fitness level, and produce real results?

If you can say “YES!” to this question, then my friend, we have a goal! It’s not about being fit enough, it’s about having the will to commit and accept the challenge for YOU. Everyone will start at a different level of fitness and progress at their own pace. This is the exciting part about accepting a challenge for a set period of time and seeing how your body responds.

The workouts can be modified for any fitness level to accommodate a novice or a more experienced participant. So why not accept a challenge that is beneficial for your health and your fitness goals?

What Is The Total Gym Challenge?

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7 Overlooked BBQ Mistakes That Can Make You Sick

Avoid These Commonly Overlooked BBQ Mistakes That Make You and Your Guests Sick

Having a good old-fashioned BBQ can be lots of fun and makes summer cooking easy. However, there are cookout mistakes that can make you and your guests sick, so keep in mind these safety tips to avoid foodborne illness this summer.

Food Safety Tips for Barbecues

Wash Hands Often
Wash your hands before beginning any food preparation and keep washing them often, especially if you touch raw meat. Germs linger in many places, so something seemingly harmless like touching a doorknob then touching ready-to-eat foods like fruit, chips or the veggies and dip can lead to foodborne illness. Properly wash hands with soap and warm running water. If you hum “Happy Birthday To You” while washing (approximately one minute), you will know that you’ve washed long enough to remove most harmful germs from your hands.

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Total Gym’s 8 Do’s and Don’ts To Tighten Your Stomach After 40

July 10, 2015
Maria Sollon
Health & Fitness / Workout Videos / Workouts
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How Get A Flat Belly After 40

Life after forty can be fabulous and fit rather than fat and flabby.

Some may say that the second the birthday candles are blown out, their metabolism went on vacation! Was it the extra cake? Or was the culprit the aging process taking over? How do we prevent this from occurring, knowing aging is inevitable?

If you are over 40, at some point or another, you may have developed a middle age pouch either from lack of exercise, a poor diet, or post-baby. Even though a tummy tuck may sound like a good solution, there are good and natural ways to slow down the fat-storing process, such as eating healthy foods, performing intense core workouts, and having the goal to make it happen!

The 8 Do’s and Don’ts:

Having a flat and firm core after forty takes patience, effort and knowledge of some important facts. A tight tummy is more than just for looks. Here are some ‘core truths’ that can help you banish belly fat and get a flatter, tighter, and ageless midsection!

DO Strengthen Your Core To Improve Your Overall Health– Core muscles support the back, protect vital organs, and allow daily functional movement. Ignoring the core and allowing extra fat increases the risk for coronary artery disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes. (See the workout at the end of the article!)
DON’T Go Crazy On The Crunches – Performing traditional crunches have value, but doing hundreds will not lead to a tighter midsection! Abdominal muscles often stay hidden underneath a thick layer of belly fat, so the key is to train your abs a few times a week with a variety of core movements and burn fat with cardio sessions. More isn’t better!
DON’T Ignore Cardio and Strength Training- A solid combination of cardio and strength training plays a vital role in melting the excess fat the body holds onto. To get a flat tummy and muscle tone, you need to burn off the top layer of fat in order to replace it with lean muscle from strength training. (more…)

Fat Burning Workout Day 3

Miss Fitness America Sherry Goggin joins us on Total Gym Pulse to conclude her 3 day fat burning working program using The Total Gym!

Sherry begins by sitting on her knees on the glide board with cables in hand as she prepares for a bicep curl. Sherry demonstrates a regular bicep curl, alternating bicep curl and hammer curls throughout this position.

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Total Gym’s Most Comprehensive List of Pilates Moves To Burn Calories

July 8, 2015
Elizabeth Leeds, DPT
Health & Fitness / Workout Videos / Workouts
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Sculpting Pilates Moves That Burn Serious Calories

Want a leaner and stronger body? You can transform your Pilates workout into cardio, strength, or combination workouts, by changing the pace (tempo), incline level (intensity) and repetitions. These alterations can provide enough tweaks to change the body without having to learn a large repertoire of exercises. Increasing your pace and adding explosive Plyometric moves will help to raise the heart rate, while slowing down the movements and adding increased resistance will focus more on muscular development.

Click here to download the Total Gym Cardio Pilates Exercise Table

Tips and Recommendations for This Pilates Workout:

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Fat Burning Workout Day 2

July 7, 2015
Total Gym Direct
Health & Fitness / Workout Videos / Workouts
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Fat Burning Workout Day 2

Miss Fitness America Sherry Goggin joins us once again on Total Gym Pulse to bring us day 2 of her 3 day fat burning workout series on The Total Gym. Today Sherry is going to focus on the lower body to help you develop those lean legs and firm butt you desire!

The first exercise Sherry demonstrates works the inner and outer thighs. With your chest out and back straight, place your feet inside the cables towards the top of The Total Gym. Move your legs in and out for a total of 10 reps and be sure to keep your breathing controlled as you go.

Next, Sherry tells us to raise the level on the machine and detach the pulleys for the next exercise which is squats. Place your feet on the squat stand shoulder width apart and sit at the end of the glide board. From here, squat all the way down and on the way up be sure to squeeze your buttock muscles. Make sure to keep your movements slow and controlled. Do 10 reps on this exercise as well.
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Move It So You Can Lose It: Why We Shouldn’t Sit For More Than 3 Hours

The Truth About the Balance Between Eating, Rest, and Moving

It is a well known fact that obesity is on the rise and we are not making much progress with battling this epidemic. It is also well known that activity burns calories and helps us to lose or at least maintain our weight. Knowing that an active body is a healthier body, what are the benefits of moving more and how can we achieve our 10,000 daily steps?

The health benefits of regular activity are far reaching. When we consume foods, especially those high in sugar or fat, our bodies secrete an array of compounds designed to help us either synthesize energy to fuel our cells or as building blocks for things like muscle protein. The resources we consume but don’t need for immediate use are then stored as FAT. When we are more active, either while we eat or while we work, the items we consume must be burned for fuel. The bottom line is if you don’t move it, you will gain it and ultimately lose it—the battle of the bulge that is!!

Yes, the endless fight we all seem to have to battle is our metabolism. When we eat, we raise our insulin levels in our blood stream to help us use and store sugar. Activity can help to lower the sugar surge and thus the insulin surge that follows. The trick to outsmarting our fat cells is to lower our insulin levels and only eat for your immediate fuel needs.

In prior centuries, before food was so plentiful and readily available, it made sense for our bodies to be excellent at storing sources of fuel. Our bodies are exquisitely designed to conserve energy. When we go too long between eating or eat too much at once, the delicate balance of metabolism shifts and we store fat! Getting off balance will leave us at risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, as well as for heart attacks and strokes.

Exercise and activity are perfectly designed to counter fat cells by helping to burn recently consumed fats and sugars for energy, which releases less insulin into our blood streams and stores less of energy as fat. The simple fact is that the less we move, the slower our metabolism becomes as we adapt to needing less calories. So merely restricting calories tends to have an adverse effect by actually lowering metabolism. The trick to weight maintenance and eventual loss is to move!

Some Facts in The Sitting Vs. Moving Debate

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Fat Burning Workout Day 1

Miss Fitness America Sherry Goggin joins us again on Total Gym Pulse to show us how to get a bikini body by doing some amazing fat burning exercises in a three day program using The Total Gym. In today’s workout Sherry will demonstrate how to work on your back, shoulders and abs.

Begin by sitting on your knees on the glideboard. Squeeze your back and do a low pull bringing the cables to your midsection. This isolates your muscles and works the lower back. From here, Sherry transitions into what she calls an “X” exercise by pulling the cables apart diagonally – then alternating each hand up and down. Sherry says to work your way to do 3 sets of 10 for each exercise in this series.
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What’s In Your Workout Closet?

Workout Clothes: Essentials Vs. Fads

If you are one of the few people left who think that trendy workout clothes only belong in the closet or in the gym and not on the sidewalks, in coffee shops or roaming around shopping malls, you may be in for a shock.

Popular brands such as Nike, Under Armour, Lululemon, Gap’s Athleta, Urban Outfitters, and even Costco’s Kirkland brand, are out to extend workout clothing into every nook and cranny of life they can find.

Those keeping an eye on this industry estimate that the U.S. athletic apparel market could grow by 50% in the next six years, hitting $100 billion in annual sales. The denim manufacturers do not like this too much. The trendy look of gym and yoga clothing on the streets is being blamed for a decline in denim sales, which fell 6% in 2013.

This isn’t a fad where the novelty falls off in a year or two. No, this is a trend, growing for more than a decade with widespread popularity continuing to take hold among celebrities, athletes, CrossFit followers, bootcampers, everyday gym rats, at home workout folks, members of Silver Sneakers, and even the two thirds of American that struggles with “overbesity” (overweight and obesity) find comfort in “plus size” workout clothing.

Business casual in many companies has come to mean any variety of Lululemon’s Find Your Bliss Jacket, All You Need crops, Easy Breezy Pant, The Principle Tank, No Limits Tank, Pure Balance Sweater, a scoop back tank, a Vinyasa scarf, and maybe even a pair of Minnetonka Moccasins.

The trend, it seems, is definitely on a brightening trajectory, not just in bright, daring colors, but in technology as well. I’m wearing a pair of workout pants lined with antimicrobial silver and a compression shirt, both quick dry, odor controlling and moisture wicking. I thought about wearing those compression shorts but after a weekend of visiting (ok, eating our way through) the San Diego County Fair’s fried food extravaganza, the workout pants were a better choice. Oh, and a shirt I just ordered is all set to “talk with” my Apple Watch — only thing is I don’t have one of those. Yet. Accepting all gifts, however.

My wife, a personal trainer, loves the Gap Athleta line for everyday fashion and workout comfort, but also pulls out her Nike, Adidas and Under Armour head band when she’s really pumping up a new Les Mills routine. She just told me about a company called Naked Sports Gear that makes sports bras that promise that UV rays will get through to ensure an “all-over” tan.

While we aren’t seeing the legwarmers of the 80’s any longer, yoga pants and leggings have taken over and show up everywhere—literally, including in Houses of Worship, weddings, formal dinners, all with the latest fabric technology, of course.

Trends in Fitness: Sneakers

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