Exercises for You and Your Kids

The purpose of this guide is to help women develop basic fitness body awareness; tone upper-body muscles; increase endurance; reduce body fat percentage and increase overall health and well being. Whether or not these exercises prove beneficial, is entirely up to the trainee.

Ideally, you should abstain from working out more than two, three times a week. Also, be careful when following a diet low in carbohydrates. Low-fat diets are acceptable, as long as you eat enough carbs and your body has enough vitamins and protein to sustain prolonged psychical activity.

Use common sense to accurately measure your optimal caloric intake, and adjust your diet accordingly. Here are some of the basics any fitness enthusiast has to master before moving on to more serious training.

Dumbbell Curls

Contrary to popular belief, dumbbell curls are not just for big sweaty body-builders. But there is still a fundamental difference between the muscle-building curls for men and the arm-toning curls for women.

This exercise targets the arms – most notably the biceps. Body-builders tend to lift heavier dumbbells, but do less reps in general. What we want is to do more reps with less weight, to get those arms into shape.

Push-Ups

Newcomers love push-ups! It is an easy and efficient exercise that will strengthen your pectorals; triceps and forearms. It is the perfect way to get into ‘relative’ shape. Push-ups can be done in variety of different manners; targeting specific muscle groups respectively.

Another great thing about push-ups is even if you can’t do a lot of reps at first, as time goes by you will become more and more adept; your chest will tone and you will gain significant upper body strength.

This exercise is usually done as a part of a bigger training program, or as a warm-up exercise before more serious work-outs.

Chin-Ups

So what is a chin-up and how is it different from a pull-up? If we had to explain it in a single sentence it would go something like this: chin-ups are for women; pull-ups are for men.

You might have guessed that chin-ups are the ‘easy’ version of pull-ups. Pull-ups require a tremendous amount of back-strength; while chin-ups are not so demanding. Most women can’t make even one chin-up, no matter how hard they try.

I will tell you a technique that is sure to enable you to do at least one chin-up. First you must find a high-enough bar (you should hang loosely, without touching the ground). Next step is getting a chair and placing it under the bar. Climb the chair so your forehead touches the bar.

Grab the bar and step off the stool/chair. Try to hold your body as much as you can, before your muscle succumb to your weight. Do this every day and soon enough you will be able to do chin-ups all by yourself.