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Stamina Building Exercises are Important

When we think of physical fitness and exercising to achieve our fitness goals, strength training is often the first thing that comes to mind. However, we also need to examine and enhance our stamina. Stamina exercises are just as important as strength training. Many sports, such as cycling, running and so on, require a higher stamina level. This enhanced stamina will improve performance for an entire competition or training session.

Cardiovascular (Cardio) Exercises

It does not matter what type of sport or physical activity you engage in; or which group of muscles you want to focus, your stamina level is based on your cardio fitness. You should engage in exercises such as swimming, ellipticals and running as part of your fitness routine, as these will help you increase your cardio stamina levels.

High Repetitions on Low Weights

When you are concentrating on strength training, there are a lot of higher weights with lower number of repetitions involved. However, you should reverse this to increase your stamina level. Try working out with half your strength training weights at twice as many repetitions. You will be increasing your exertion level and time.

Workout Consistently

Because stamina is a building block concept, every time you make improvements during your workouts it has a cumulative effect. If you don’t work out consistently or there are long periods of time between workouts, you are effectively starting over each workout. You should be training and working out not just once a week, but many times a week. Try to stick to the same schedule. However, if you are just starting, don’t do to many days at first — work up to a full schedule. If you start out too fast in a short period, you risk burning out or too tired to stick to your schedule.

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Stamina Building Diet Tips

Ahhh the lovely siren’s call of junk food — candy, cake, soda, chips — almost every one of us loves junk food. However junk food does not love us in return. These types of foods can play havoc all over our bodies’ energy level. These types of foods are digested very fast, causing that “energy burst”. But we all know what follows that energy — that subsequent crash.

Athletes or other people who are trying to increase their stamina either for competition or just everyday fitness and exercise can take heed of a few diet tips to increase overall healthiness as well as stamina levels.

• Avoid huge meals. This is the body getting too much fuel/food too quickly. Eating large amounts of food and drink is detrimental because the body just cannot digest all that food as quickly as it is being consumed. Guess what? What the body cannot digest, will get stored as fat and that, as we know, is not very healthy. Also, digestion takes energy so a higher level of digestion will cause low stamina and fatigue.

• Not eating enough. We all think that our diets should be monitored and minimal to lose weight or achieve our weight goals; however, eating only one or two meals per day is bad for your stamina level. This is especially important when considering breakfast. The human body will resort to what is known as “starvation mode” if it is not properly fed. The body is being deprived and will react by storing fat and reducing energy levels.

• To increase your energy and stamina levels it is highly recommended that you eat frequent, smaller meals all throughout the day. Your body will have an increased, stable level of stamina and energy. In addition, there is less likelihood that your body will be storing excess fat.

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Strength Training Diet Tips

To build lean, strong muscle mass there has to be a combination of caloric intake and a strengthening regime. Interestingly, this strength training diet requires a high number of calories for both tissue building and fuel. It is important that these calories are the correct type.

Carbohydrates

Carbs are the energy source required for strength training. Carbohydrates create the body’s fuel that supplies energy required for the intense type of fitness training. Carbs create glycogen which muscles require for longer, more intense workouts for strength training. If you do not consume enough of this fuel, you will lose energy and you won’t be able to power through the muscle contraction type of working out. Research indicates that about 500 to 600 grams of carbohydrates are required to keep the glycogen levels high.

Protein

Protein is considered to be the building blocks of muscle. Subsequently those on strength training programs will need to take in higher levels of protein that those who exercise at a lower level. People engaging in high-level strength training need about 0.6 to 0.8 grams of protein per pound of weight.

Fat

Believe it or not, fat is important to a strength training diet. However only a small amount is required — less than 30 percent of total caloric intake should be fat.

Water

We should all be consuming those eight glasses of water per day that is optimal for good health; however those on high-energy training programs will need even more. To remain hydrated, you should try to drink about 16 ounces of water about two hours before your workout. Then during your workout, you should be drinking between four to eight ounces about every 15 or so minutes. After your workout, drink another two cups to replace fluids lost during your workout.

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Martial Arts Training For All Athletes

Believe it or not, cardiovascular training techniques used by martial artists can be used across the board for anyone wanting to enhance their training — elite athlete or weekend fitness players.

Martial artists have found that their fights are more successful, not because they are stronger, but rather when their stamina or cardio strength was high. This allows athletes to maintain high energy levels, as well as being able to continue thinking coherently for strategy.

Here are a few types of exercise plans you can introduce into your own fitness routines:

Aerobic or Long-Slow Distance Conditioning
This is exercising for approximately 45 minutes while maintaining your maximum heart rate at 60 to 70 percent. These types of exercise include bike riding and running. Another positive about these types of exercises is they help reduce body fat as well as provide weight control aspects.

Anaerobic or Threshold Conditioning
These exercises entail a shorter time span, but a high heart rate. You want to go for about 20 minutes of activity with a heart rate at about 90 percent. A stair step machine or treadmill set on a “rolling hills” setting is a good exercise for this type of conditioning.

Sprint or Speed Training
This can be one of two types of training (or both). One is interval training where your exercise period is longer than your recovery period. Repetition training is short and faster with much longer recovery times in between. With either type you are trying to get your heart rate up to 95 to 100 percent for short periods of time, recover and repeat.

The goal of these type of exercise is to get your body trained to work hard at maximum levels while experience lower oxygen levels. Your system will also be better able to remove lactic acid from your muscles.

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Tips For Keeping Up Your Stamina

This is an empty can of Vixen Foxberry energy ...
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There are many ways you can improve your stamina. You may be an athlete training, or you just want a little more energy for your everyday routine. However, you should probably look at factors that may be causing your low stamina levels. You should look at your existing exercise routine, how well you are sleeping, your stress level and your overall diet. These factors can be inter-related: For instance if your energy level is low due to stress, changing your diet may not produce the results you are looking for.

Sleep is also an important factor in stamina levels. If you are not getting the proper amount of sleep each day, your body is not rested and has no energy reserves.

Exercise needs to be fit into your schedule if you are not already doing so. This is especially important if you have a sedentary job. Get up, talk a walk. Optimally you should do some sort of exercise for about 30 to 45 minutes each day.

Make sure you are eating three healthy meals each day along with your daily exercise. Try not to skip meals — breakfast is an especially important meal that should never be skipped. Skipping meals actually reduces energy and stamina because the body is trying to make up for the lack of nutrition. You can also eat a lot of smaller meals throughout the day.

There are many food items that can help improve stamina and energy. Interestingly a great energy drink is hot water, lemon and honey. Fresh juices and plenty of water are also great for stamina and energy.

Include foods that contain natural carbohydrates such as whole grains, yams and oatmeal. Avoiding foods with high amounts of processed sugars such as chips, candy and sodas is also advisable. These refined foods will cause you to actually feel slow and sluggish.

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Set Realistic Fitness Goals

Many of us want to “get fit. It may be due to a New Year’s resolution or just the realization that we need to get rid of a few pounds. Others of us may just be advancing to the next level of our exercise program. However, we all know that it’s really easy to talk about getting fit – doing it is a completely different animal.

Setting goals that are realistic and obtainable will make getting fit much easier. Here’s some ideas and tips to help you set those goals.

• Make sure you are grounded in reality. Many of us see those images presented to us in the media and want to be that runway model. The truth is most of us do not have the money, time or even ability to achieve that rail-thin body. Determine realistically what you need to achieve to gain health and happiness.

• Make sure your motives are logical. Your expectations should be to improve yourself both physically and mentally. If you are trying to change for any other reasons, such as to please another person, your goals are more than likely not going to be met.

• Examine your preferences, family history and your past as well. If you truly hate exercise and would really rather eat, take this into consideration when determining your goals.

• Make small changes. Don’t try to do everything all at once. Perhaps make a single change each week — for instance, stop drinking sodas one week, eliminate chips the next and so on.

• Put the scale in the closet and think about how you are feeling. What’s the point of losing weight if you are completely miserable? Again, you should work toward your goals gradually and achieve goals that are realistic and will bring you a happier mental state.

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Reducing Anxiety Before An Event

Anxiety can become a distraction if you are experiencing it before a competition or other sporting event in which you are participating. You should be celebrating and enjoying your skills as an athlete and anxiety can completely annihilate those feelings.

Emotional feelings of anxiety may bring feelings of worry, tension and doom. The physical effects include fatigue, sweating, increased heart rate and weakness. All of these anxiety symptoms will not be a positive effect for your sport performance. Some anxiety is normal, but we can try to eliminate a completely debilitating level that will not allow peak performance.

Breathing. Deep, rhythmic breathing is essential in both practice and performance. Combine this breathing with some simple meditation.

• Relax both your mind and muscles together. Take a moment to release your body’s tension from the top of your head to your toes one section at a time. Work at making sure that those areas of your body that feel especially tense gets extra attention.

Visualize. Imagine in your mind’s eye your perfect, peak performance before your event. Imagine every move and step that you want to do during your performance. This visualization can be done during breaks in the event as well. For instance, if you are playing basketball, you can visualize yourself making a perfect basket.

Do not allow yourself to think negatively. Use positive self-talk whenever you are practicing and especially during your sports events. Use encouraging words and sentences as mental fuel. Do not dwell on any mistakes. Dwell instead on the positive things that you do and have done, or about all the hours of practice you have put in.

Be sure to practice the anti-anxiety coping skills each and every time you train or practice your sport. You will get into the habit of reducing your anxiety.

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