Answer Fitness®: Practical Fitness Advice for Everyone

Body Fat Calipers | Fitness and Exercise Gadget Reviews

When It Comes to Measuring Body Fat, Forget The Fancy Electronic Scales and Instead Reach for The Body Fat Calipers

In my mind, there is no single piece of fitness, bodybuilding or health equipment that more useful than a good pair of body fat calipers.

Yes, they are made out of plastic. Yes, they take a little bit of practice to get right. And yes, they won’t give you instant,  flashy digital results (which are usually inaccurate anyway.)

If you want high tech, go ahead and fork over $50 for an electrical-impedance body fat scale. Chances are you’ll get different body fat readings each time you step on the scale — even if that’s five minutes after your took your last measurement.

Or you could try to convince your doctor to order a hydrostatic body fat test, which is considered the gold standard in body fat measurement, but is unlikely to be covered by your insurance or employer (unless you are LeBron James) and will set you back hundreds of dollars for just a few extra percentage points of accuracy.

So unless you are an elite athlete with a cadre of sports trainers at your beck and call, you should be able to get along fine with a single-measurement reading from a quality body fat caliper.

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How Many Calories Are Burned Weight Lifting? | Ask The Fitness Nerd

Can You Burn Meaningful Calories Lifting Weights?

Dear Fitness Nerd,

How many calories are burned during weight lifting? I ask because I lift weight 5-6 days a week, but really hate doing cardio. If I’m trying to keep body fat off, are the calories burned through weight lifting enough? Or do I have to do cardio on top of it? – Adam  (Waco, Texas)

The amount of calories you burn weight lifting depends on your weight, the intensity of your weight training, and the duration (and your age, to some extent, but this is less important.)

A 180 lb male performing 60 minutes of  weight training with vigorous effort (meaning little or no rest periods between sets) and at an intensity that causes your heart rate to remain somewhat elevated during exercise would burn approximately 400-475 calories weight lifting.

If you tend to take long rests between sets and your intensity is lower, the same person can expect to burn around 250 calories weight lifting for one hour.

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8 Ways to Break a Weight Training Plateau | Weight & Resistance Training Tips

Hit a Plateau with Your Weight Training or Resistance Exercise Routine? Use These Proven Techniques to Jump-Start Your Training and Get Back On Track.

Training plateaus are inevitable.

Anyone who has been exercising or weight-lifting for an extended period of time will eventually hit one. It’s never an issue of will I plateau, but when. 

It doesn’t matter if you’re a casual gym goer, a highly-conditioned athlete, an amateur body builder or a professional fitness model. You will hit a plateau eventually if you are exercising and training on any kind of regular basis. 

Training plateaus can be particularly frustrating because they will typically occurr when you feel the strongest or following a period of rapid progress. So psychologically, they can be demotivating because they take the shine off from all of that progress you’ve made over the previous weeks or months. You’ll feel like you are spinning your wheels and going no-where fast, and it can make working out less rewarding.

The good news is that there are a number of proven techniques that you can use to break through a weight training plateau.

In some cases, you’ll be able to break your plateau fairly easily with just one or two of these techniques.

In other cases, especially if you’ve been training for for several years and are already in a very good physical condition, you may have to try multiple approaches or some of the more advanced techniques.

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Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) | Preventing & Treating DOMS

Muscle soreness after exercise can put a real kink in your training. Find out what DOMS is, how to prevent it and what you can do to ease delayed onset muscle soreness if you get it.

Nearly anyone who works out regularly has experienced sore muscles after exercise. Sometimes you’ll feel it later that night, or the next morning … and in some cases, you may actually think you’re out-of-the-woods, only to wake up two days later with stiff, tender muscles that feel as tight as rubber bands.

It’s known as Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (also called “DOMS”), and it’s both loved and reviled by exercise fanatics. Loved, because many people view DOMS as a sign that yesterday’s workout was effective, but hated at the same time because in severe cases, Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness can prevent you from comfortably hitting the gym again.

And in the case of calf muscle soreness — which plagues runners as often as weight lifters — it can literally make going down a flight stairs in the morning a three minute ordeal.

Symptoms of Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness

You probably have a case of Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness if you experience any of the following symptoms:

• Muscle tenderness
• Muscle soreness
• Stiffness
• Swelling
• Pain
• Loss of mobility or reduced range of motion
• Muscle tenderness, including when the muscle belly is pressed with the fingers
• Loss of strength
• Acute muscle twitches or spams

The extent and duration of these symptoms may vary from person-to-person and are largely dependent on the amount of resistance — especially eccentric resistance — placed on the muscles during exercise.

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Perfect Pushup Review: Is The Perfect Pushup Hit or Hype? | Fitness & Exercise Gadget Reviews

The Perfect Pushup promises to help you achieve better results from your pushup workouts. But is the Perfect Pushup a hit or a just a bunch of hype?

Product Reviewed: Perfect Pushup Basic
Manufacturer: BodyRev/Perfect Pushup
MSRP: $39.99
Place of Purchase: Dick’s Sporting Goods 

Perfect Pushup Pros:

• Ergonomics protect against wrist strain associated with flexion at wrist during standard pushups
• Well-constructed, sturdy; foam hand grips are comfortable
• Rotation may protect against shoulder strain
• More challenging from a stabilization standpoint than fixed-position pushups
• Novel and fun; breaks up the monotony of the usual pushup

Perfect Pushup Cons:

• Price may be a little high for some people
• Perfect Pushup workout plans are limited with the basic model
• Perfect Pushup routine included on the poster required some deciphering
• Marketing claims that you’ll “get shredded” with the Perfect Pushup are unrealistic

Ratings (1-4 Scale: 1 = poor, 2= fair, 3= good, 4= excellent)

Construction: 3
Comfort: 4
Durability: 3
Price: 2
Does It Do What It Claims? Yes, with qualifications
Would You Buy It Again? Yes, with qualifications

Overall Rating: 3

Perfect Pushup Review 

When it comes to bodyweight exercises, the standard pushup is pretty much already perfect.  Not only does it help strengthen and condition the chest, triceps, shoulders and back, but it also improves core stability, improves balance, and can even help contribute to a tighter mid-section.

So when the Perfect Pushup says that for $39.99 (less, in some places) it’s improved the lowly, but already wicked-effective pushup, it’s difficult to not respond with some skepticism. And it doesn’t help that the Perfect Pushup gained much of its initial fame courtesy of “As Seen On TV” type advertising and infomercials — a label that’s been attached to countless useless fitness devices and gadgets ranging from the Thigh Master to Tony Little’s Gazelle.

But here’s the thing: People who have rolled the dice and actually bought the Perfect Pushup uniformly have good things to say about it.  So in the interest of making myself a human guinea pig so you don’t have to be stuck with a basement full of ineffective fitness contraptions, I decided to spring for the $39.99 and put the Perfect Pushup through it’s paces myself.

The Standard Pushup Not So Perfect After-all?

Pushups should be part of every person’s workout routine, regardless of gender or experience level.

They are the ultimate portable body-weight exercise, and can be performed anywhere that you can find a 6′x3′ swath of open floor - whether that’s in your apartment, dorm room,  hotel room, living room or the gym. 

While pushups themselves are very simple exercises to perform, they are actually bio-mechanically a very sophisticated exercise, recruiting nearly every major muscle group in some way to support the body during the movement (provided you are doing them with correct form.)

The pushup is also extremely versatile, letting you emphasize certain muscle groups by simple changes in hand-arm positioning (wide versus narrow), incline or decline, or through elevation of the hands, which deepens the range of motion.

But even the nearly-perfect standard pushup has a kink or two.

The main sticking point with pushups is the strain that they can put on the wrists.

When you perform a pushup with standard form, you hands placed flat on the floor and bent at the wrist. While you aren’t supporting 100% of your body-weight with a pushup (the floor takes some of the load for you), you are balancing a fair amount of your total body-weight on your toes and wrists.  The wrists are actually quite strong when they are in a neutral position, but once you bend them backwards, they are weakened, and the risk of strain to tendons or Carpel Tunnel Syndrome is increased dramatically. In fact, many people simply can’t comfortably perform standard pushups because of the discomfort it causes the wrists.

The other point of possible strain or injury during a pushup is in the shoulders. While many people are able to comfortably perform pushups without any discomfort in the shoulder girdle, for some people, having the hands fixed in a single position in relation to the shoulders, can stress the rotator cuff. This is especially troublesome if you’ve had past shoulder injuries or if you perform the exercises with your hands position wide in relation to the shoulders.

Finally, the because the floor naturally limits your range of motion, if your goal is to maximize muscle recruitment during a push-up, you need to find a way to allow yourself to go beyond parallel — in other-words, allow your chest to move below the horizontal plane of your hands. This is typically accomplished by elevating your hands on platforms (or less safely, stacks of phone books as I’ve been known to do) or pushup bars.  The main issue here is around stability of the platform that you choose. Some of these elevation mechanisms can occasionally slip, causing potential injury.

The Perfect Pushup to the Rescue?

The manufacturers of the Perfect Pushup claim their device is designed to overcome these three issues associated with the plain-vanilla pushup, and then add a twist (literally) to how you perform pushups. This “twist” is really their “secret sauce” even if the other characteristics of the Perfect Pushup are really no different than what you could get with a pair of pushup bars.

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The Fitbit: Pedometer on Steroids? | Exercise Equipment & Gadgets

Will the Fitbit change the way you look at diet and exercise and give the lowly pedometer a run for it’s money?

Watch out pedometer, you’re about to have some new competition from Fitbit.

It’s called the Fitbit Tracker and its inventors are hoping that it will change the way people view activity, exercise, diet and sleep.

FitBit is the brainchild of entrepreneurs Eric Friedman and James Park. The company recently debuted the Fitbit Tracker and supporting website at the TechCrunch 50 conference in San Francisco, a yearly event that allows entrepreneurs and start-ups to pitch their products to investors and the media. I caught wind of the FitBit through a colleague who attended the event.

The Fitbit: Better Than a Pedometer

Here’s how it works:

Like a pedometer, the Fitbit Tracker is a small wireless device  (about the size of a small pack of matches) that you can clip to your belt, pocket, pants, shirt, bra or wrist. The device uses motion sensing technology to precisely capture moment-to-moment physical activity across the day and night — things like steps taken, distance, exercise intensity, calories burned and sleep. The Fitbit Tracker then automatically transfers the data via a wireless connection to your home computer, where you can see a holistic view of your activity via a website.

While the Fitbit Tracker does all of the things that a traditional pedometer would do, it adds a new twist by also tracking your sleep — or lack thereof. This is an interesting concept, since a flurry of recent research has shown that sleep quantity and quality can have significant impact not only on your energy levels, but also your weight and life expectancy.  

The use of wireless to automatically connect your Fitbit Tracker to your computer and upload your activity information to the Fitbit website is particularly ingenious. 

One of the reasons many people don’t consistently keep track of their activity levels is because the process of recording that information is manual and tedious. Even if you’ve ditched the traditional paper exercise log or journal for an online health and fitness tracking site like TheDailyPlate.com, Diettv.com or FitDay, you still have to manually enter your information each day. And you are still tied to a paper log at the gym.

While the Fitbit Tracker won’t keep track of details like exercises performed, reps, sets and weight; it will help you more accurately record and track your calories-burned during these activities. And more importantly, it makes transferring this data to your tracking site a breeze.

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Interval Training (HIIT) | Get Leaner with Less Cardio?

Can Interval Training help you strip off body fat faster? Learn how adding High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) into your cardio routine can reap big rewards in strength, power and fat loss.

When most people think of cardio, they think of endless hours on a treadmill, elliptical machine, stair stepper or jogging. But unless you enjoy distance or long-duration cardio (for example, if you are training for a marathon or are a running enthusiast) , many gym-goers dread climbing on that hamster wheel each day in the hopes of burning off that 400 calories and maybe losing a little body fat along the way.

But what if there was a way to burn nearly the same amount of calories in 30 minutes that you do in 60 minutes, stimulate fat burning after your cardio is complete, boost your stamina and endurance, and actually increase lean muscle in the process?

There may be.

It’s called Interval Training — also known as “High Intensity Interval Training” or “HIIT“, for short — and it uses periods of high-intensity cardio coupled with lower-intensity recovery periods in succession to shave time off your cardio workout and possibly more fat off your midsection than long duration cardio. And even more promising, Interval Training seems to do a better job than long-duration cardio of preserving lean tissue (muscle) while still burning fat.

Interval Training: What Is It?

Simply put, Interval Training is a method of cardiovascular training that has you perform the same amount of total work that you would perform in a longer session of cardio, but in a much shorter period of time by increasing the intensity of your workout.  

Interval Training is considered an advanced form of training and is popular with everyone from elite Olympic and professional athletes to body builders, fitness enthusiasts and recreational runners.  While the technique is advanced, it can be successfully modified to work for beginners as well, provided you are in good health and are free of any cardiovascular disorders that could make the routine unsafe.

Interval Training relies on the principle of rest and recovery to allow your body to do more work in less time. By alternating higher-intensity activity with short rest and recovery periods, you are able to cumulatively do more work in less time. And more work translates into more calories burned in a 30 minute session of cardio than if you did the same duration of cardio at a lower intensity.

Examples of Interval Training

High Intensity Interval Training can be applied to nearly any cardiovascular activity, whether that’s walking, running, rollerblading or biking.

For example, if you are fit and regularly walk as part of your exercise routine, you might incorporate short periods (between 1-2 minutes) of jogging into your walk between lower-intensity periods of walking. If you are less fit, you might simply walk faster for a few minutes, allow yourself to recover and than repeat the higher intensity walking. If you are more highly conditioned, you might add in sprints to your daily run or treadmill work.

The Benefits of High Intensity Interval Training

High Intensity Interval Training has a number of benefits that make it an effective addition to your existing cardiovascular training. These benefits include:

• Burning more calories in less time
• Improved cardiovascular endurance
• Possible increases in whole body fat burning (fat oxidation) versus solid-state cardio
• Reduced risk of Metabolic Syndrome
• Decreased muscle catabolism/increases in lean muscle mass
• Improvements in arterial elasticity
• Reduced boredom with your current cardio routine

Let’s take a closer look at each of these potential benefits, including some of the research behind them.

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