Dancing is a great aerobic workout. For those of you that don’t konw how to dance go take some dancing courses and learn. It could be fun learning how to ballroom dance like you see on dancing with the stars. All that movement really works your core muscles and legs while giving you a good cardiovascular workout and making you sweat. You can see on dancing with the stars how some of the stars end up losing some weight by the end of the show. This is a good fun way to exercise. You can take a partner such as a girlfriend or boyfriend, or even just a friend and sign up for a dance class. It’s probably a lot harder than you think it is. The dancers on TV make everything look so smooth and simple when they’re really working hard on doing all of those moves. It’s just a thought that I thought I would throw out there just so maybe some of you could give it a try. I’ve never done it myself but I always told myself that I would one day just to see what it’s like. Wouldn’t you want to look as cool as they do on TV?

Cross training is a good way to increase your strength, fitness, and stamina. Cross training involves a little bit of everything. You would do cardiovascular workouts, body weight workouts, a little weight lifting, and running workouts. This get’s your whole body involved and helps increase your stamina dramatically. A good example of cross training would me marine training. The marines do a lot of this. Those opstical courses they do is a good example of cross training. They use their body weight by pulling themselves up ropes and walls. They balance themselves as they run across balance beams. They even have to put their bodies in awkward postions when having to crawl through things. I know as college students you don’t have access to a obstical course like this but you can be creative and make your own using cones, ropes, and boards. There are even kits that you can buy that have a variety of different things such as this nike sparq kit http://www.sparqtraining.com/. Cross training should be very intese throughout the workout and ends up being a good cardiovascular workout.

This is mainly for the guys out there because the majority of the people who do steroids in this world are guys. This has become a major issue in many professional sports, especially baseball. But I know people who take these drugs just to achieve the look they want. This is obviously a terrible path to go down. People who do this are just hurting themselves in the long run. Steroids aren’t good for your body in the first place. They boost your testosterone levels and make your body and muscles work harder than they were made to.  They are terrible for your liver and make it work harder also.  They also affect with most peoples emotions. They can make people very irritable or even depressed in some cases. Then what are you going to do in the long run. You can’t take steroid your whole life. When your done taking them your body just goes back to being weak and almost everything you gained is gone. If you do it the natural way then everything you gain is there to stay as long as you keep it toned. It is also much safer and involves less stress on your body as a system. Just don’t get ahead of yourself and don’t cheat. It’s not worth it.

Intramurals at Texas A&M are a great way to do something physical. You can choose from basketball, softball, flag football, indoor soccer and many many more. Playing any sort of sport is a good fitness workout and it’s a good way to get involved with different people around campus. I haven’t personally joind any intramural team but I have heard that they can be really competitive in some cases. I think that joining a team would be a lot of fun and also be a lot of hard physical work that could benefit you in the end with your exercise routine. Like I’ve said in previous posts that any sort of physical activity throughout the day is good for you. Intramurals could be this activity and also be really enjoyable. It’s like your working out without even thinking about it. Here’s the TAMU intramural website if you are interested: http://recsports.tamu.edu/programs/intramurals/events.stm

So a lot of college students don’t have time to workout because of their busy schedules. Turbulance training is a great way to get a nice weightlifting workout in that will also get your heart pumping. Turbulance training is working out fast and efficient. You can go to the gym for 30 to 45 minutes and get a good wourkout in if you use all the time you have effectively. Do all your sets with a minimum resting period in betweeen. This means that you won’t be able to do as heavy of weight as you might have before. Supersets are sets between two different workouts at the same time. For example, say you are working out your triceps. A good superset for your triceps would be to do a set of tricep pulldowns followed directly by a set of over the head tricep extensions. When doing a supersets you want to have hardly any break time in between the sets and just keep your muscles working. Working out fast will also help you burn off calories and get your heart rate going. This is a good way to get a good, fast, effecient weightlifting workout in your day.

I know this might sound a little funny because when you think of workout videos you think of Richard Simmons or somebody like that, but workout videos can really be a good cardio workout or even sometimes a muscle building workout. Today there are many different and interesting types of workout videos that try to make working out fun. There is hip-hop-abs, or Turbo Jam which both use dancing to get the attention of the viewers. Then there are the real intense workout videos such as P90X and others like that. These really help you get that defintion look that you are looking for. Workout videos are good because you don’t have to go anywhere to workout. You can just do it in your living room. If you don’t have a lot of time in your day you can just put the tape on, do the workout for like thirty minutes or however long you want, stop it, and then finish it later. They are really convenient and easy to work with. The only thing that’s not good about them is that you have to be motivated to put them in and do them like you said you were going to when you bought the tapes. You always have to have that motivation to workout if you want to get your body in the shape you want it to be in. I have actually had a couple of friends use P90X and they got good results from it. One of my friends lost about 20 or 30 ibs by doing it and being consistent with it. Just stay motivated and you will accomplish your goals. Here’s a website that has some of these videos http://www.beachbody.com/jump.do?itemType=HOME_PAGE

Yoga is a great exercise for anybody. I know a lot of guys out there think that yoga classes are for girls and have a closed mind about them but this is not true. Yoga is hard. For any guy that thinks it isn’t I want to see them go and try it. I’ve actually tried yoga before and I couldn’t do most of the moves that the instructor was wanting us to do because I couldn’t bend in those directions. Yoga is a great exercise to do in order to increase your flexibility and it really works your muscles by putting yourself in positions where you have to balance and hold your body weight up. Balancing your bodyweight is a really good way to tighten your muscles. It is also a very relaxing workout that helps you clear your mind from all your life stresses. For me, it made me think about the stress I was putting on my body though.lol. I’m pretty sure they even offer yoga classes at the Rec if I’m not mistaken. If you ever get the chance go out and try it just to see what it’s like and see if you like it or not. It really is a good workout and the more you do it, the more flexible you become, and the better you get at it. http://www.abc-of-yoga.com/

If you think about it, you can go to a lot of different places and still eat healthy. In college station there are a lot of sandwich places that you can go to such as subway, firehouse subs, quiznos, jimmy johns and others that are always good. You can even go to wendy’s and be healthy if you just order the right thing. I know it’s hard to go out with your friends to somewhere like wendy’s or taco cabana and try to eat healthy. It’s probably the last thing on your mind when you go somewhere like this. But there are healthy things usually on most menus around town. For example, wendy’s has a chicken sandwich, chic-fil-a has a grilled chicken sandwich, and even KFC now has grilled chicken. The reason all of the things I mentioned are chicken is because this chicken is grilled not fried. Grilled is always more healthier than something being deep fried like fried chicken. Next time you go out to eat look for the healthy item on the menu. If you don’t see anything healthy then try to eat something that’s not too bad compared to everything else. Ya this is usually hard to do and if you have a high metabolism and don’t care about what you eat because it doesn’t matter then congratulations, but if you can’t just eat whatever you want without gaining some weight then try to do this when you go out to eat.

A lot of people think that going on a diet has nothing to do with what they drink. Ask yourself this…..How much pure water do you drink in a day? Probably not enough. Now ask yourself how many sodas, energy drinks, or coffee you drink in a day. Probably too much. Sodas, coffee, and energy drinks are really not good for you by any means. sodas and most energy drinks have tons of sugar in them and coffee has tons of caffeine. Even diet sodas have sugar in them. If you drink nothing but sodas throughout the day then most of that sugar that you consume is just going to turn into fat. I know this is not what you want if you are trying to get that summer body going. The best thing to drink throughout the day is water. Water hydrates you and does everything you need out of a drink. You don’t need all that sugar in sodas or anything else. Another thing people tend to do is drink gatorade anytime they’re thirsty thinking that it’s alright because it’s a sports drink. This is not true. Gatorade and other drinks like it are made in order to quench your thirst and fill your body up with electrolytes when you are in the middle of a physical activity or directly afterwords. It still has a good amount of sugar in it just like all the other drinks. So if you go around drinking gatorade or powerade all day thinking it’s alright, well you’re wrong. I personally try to drink water throughout most of the day but still having glasses of orange juice and milk. I also drink gatorade or some sort of sport drink while I workout. Just try to stay away from sodas and energy drinks. They’re not very healthy

I know this is a huge challenge for a lot of college students out there. There is not enough time in the day to complete all the assignments that have been assigned to you so you end up staying up real late in order to complete them. Or you just procrastinate until the last minute and do them. Sleep plays a major role in living a healthy life. Your body needs rest along with your brain. They are not made to function without sleep. I have even gotten sick before because I didn’t sleep enough. When you stay up late and only get 3 or 4 hours of sleep it wears down your immune system and it can’t fight for you anymore. If you want to workout and try to get muscular, then it’s not going to happen unless you get some sleep. Your muscles need rest in order to build. They say that a good amount of sleep for one night is 8 hours. This will give your body the rest it needs in order to function the way it’s supposed to. So try and get your rest and don’t stay up late watching tv or playing video games. Go to sleep!