Something that I have been seeing around my apartment complex and around town lately are girls on rollerblades. I haven’t really seen people rollerblading so much since I was a little kid. This is another great way to get a physical activity into your day. Whether you are just going out with some friends and spending time together talking about who knows what, or you are actually going out on rollerblades to get a good sweat going. I mean rollerblading is probably not as hard as going out for a long jog or something but you will probably end up going a lot farther on rollerblades than you would if you were just running, and therefore you would end up getting an equivalent workout. I just thought it was interesting how I have been seeing rollerblades a lot more than I usually have. But they are a good way to get a cardiovascular workout in.

There are many magazines out there that give you good tips on how to stay healthy and in shape throughout your lifetime. They give good diet tips and good exercise tips and are usually real specific with the information that they share. One magazine that I like to buy is Men’s Fitness. They also have a really good website that you should visit; http://www.mensfitness.com/. This website gives you healthy recipes, gives a lot of good fitness tips, talks about sports, and even talks about relationships and sex. And for the women out there, there is also a website for women, http://www.womensfitness.com/. These two websites I don’t think are published by the same people but this gives great tips for how a woman can stay healthy. It gives good diet tips, compares weight loss programs, and gives good exercise tips for women. There is also a magazine/website for women known as self magazine or http://www.self.com/. This is another good magazine/website to go to for some good fitness tips.

The Rec Center is a great place to get a good workout in some way. There is a weight room, raquet ball courts, basketball courts, indoor soccer, cardio rooms, and they even have fitness classes. The only problem with the rec, that I have noticed, is that it is really crowded from like 3-7. A good time to go to avoid the crowd would be going in the morning or very late at night. If you are trying to use the weght room in it’s peak hours then you will probably end up waiting a while for the machine you want. If you just want to go and run on a tred-mill or even the indoor track that shouldn’t be a problem because there are plenty of tred-mills throughout the facitlity and the track is pretty open. They even have a rock climbing wall that you can climb up. Then outside there is a swimming pool and some sand volleyball courts. There are tons of fun activities that you can do there and all of them are good ways of keeping active and getting some good exercise throughout your day.

http://recsports.tamu.edu/

A way to get a good workout in without taking a long time is trying to workout just one muscle group a day. This way you can get in and get out pretty quickly.  A good way to do it is trying to do four or five different workouts for that muscle group and then you can be done. If you want to you can add an ab workout in between every workout in order to rest for a bit and fit the abs in. A good way to split the muscle groups is by doing arms (biceps and triceps), shoulders, chest, legs, and back. Do one of these groups a day throughout the week and you will end up getting a good workout. If you do it efficiently you should be able to get in and out of the gym in no longer than an hour. This may seem a little long for some people. If it seems too long then you could do the same muscle groups just by doing some body weight workouts like I talked about before. Those are always good also.

So it’r spring time and the weather has been nice outside. A good way to get a workout is to just go outside and be active. Go to the pool and throw the football and swim. You can go out and play basketball with some friends or even play a little sand volleyball. Any activity out in the sun is a good source for working out because it’s hot and makes you sweat. Anytime you sweat you are burning calories and losing fat. People who are on diets and such say to watch your calorie intake and such. That is true to do so but calories are a source of energy that you are putting into your body. Those calories that you don’t use  just end up turing into fat. So if you do eat a lot of calories then you should do a lot of active stuff. If you are trying to lose wieght then you should watch you calorie intake because you can use those calories you have for energy and burn the fat off your body. Just try to fit in some sort of physical activity in your day and now is a great time to do it with the beautiful weather outside.

There is a fifteen minute abdominal workout that we would have to do when I played baseball at Southwestern University that can really get your abs working. It all takes place on the floor so if you want to get a mat or something to lay on then that would be good. You then also need a ten pound weight(if this is too hard for you then try a 5 lb or 2.5 lb or nothing). This workout consists of six different ab workouts done two times each. You will also need a watch of some sort in order to time yourself. Alright, the first thing you do is sit on the lower part of your back/bottom with your feet up about 3-4 inches off the ground in front of you (you can cross them if you want for balance). Hold the weight in front of you and twist from side to side with your mid-section and having the weight go from one hip to the other. Do this for 30 seconds. Then wait for 30 seconds and do it again. After that you then wait for another 30 seconds and start the next workout. For the next workout you just lay back holding the weight in front of your chest and have your feet six inches off the ground and your shoulder blades off the ground. hold this postion for 30 seconds. Do this twice. For the third workout you lay on your back with the weight over your head holding it off the ground. Put your feet six inches off the ground and do “butterflys” meaning you just sort of kick your feet quickly without letting them hit the ground. The fourth workout is the same postion but instead of kicking your feet up and down you spread your legs out side-ways and then bring them back in. Do this for 30 seconds twice. So all four of those workouts you do for 30 seconds twice with a 30 second break in between them. For the fifth workout you have the same postion laying back with the weight behind your head and have your feet go from six inches off the ground to a 45 degree angle and do that 5 times. On the fifth one you hold it at the 45 degree angle and go from 45 to 90 degrees five times. On the fifth one of those you then hold it at the 90 degree and go all the way back to six inches and then up to the 90 degrees. Do that five times also for a total of 15 leg lifts. do this twice with 30 seconds in between. For the sixth and final workout you are in that same laying position and you bring your knees up to your chest while doing a crunch and pulling the weight from over your head  to meet with your knees. Do this 20 times twice with a 30 second break in between. This total workout is efficient and should last no longer than fifteen minutes. If you do it completely timed right then it should only last 12 minutes.

Jogging is another thing you can do that doesn’t take a lot of time. If you’re studying and you want to take like a fifteen minute break or something then you can put on your running shoes and go jogging for that amount of time and get your mind off studying. I do that a lot. Jogging can really help you clear your mind sometimes. Jogging is a great cardiovascular workout that can really get your heart pumping. They say that for every mile you run you are buring about one hundred calories. In College Station there are a lot of places you can jog. You can go jogging around A&M campus, at the rec center track, in a neighborhood, or even just around the city. I know a lot of people hate jogging and rather do something else. Well if you have access to an elliptical then that is also a good way to burn calories similar to how jogging does. It’s also a lot easier on the knees. I have not personally tried an elliptical but I have heard many good things about them and that they are a very good workout.

The most important part of staying healthy is watching what you eat. If you’re working out and trying to get a nice body, then you can do all the working out you want and you may not see the results you want if you don’t have a healthy diet. I’m not saying you have to count calories or not eat carbs but just try to eat healthy stuff that is not very fattening. I know you know what’s fattening and what’s not. The main thing that I try to stay away from personally is fried food. I try not to eat any fried food and I don’t drink cokes at all. Water is the best thing to drink. Those days that you don’t get a chance to go workout or do something physical, you can at least feel good about yourself because of how you ate if you try and eat healthy. For people who are working out trying to gain muscle you want to eat a lot of food with protein. I try to eat a good amount of grilled chicken, egg whites, and then some occasional red meat. Those are some good sources of protein. Those of you who are just trying to lose weight probably should eat light foods such as salads, sandwiches, soups, and some food with proteins such as grilled chicken. Defenetly stay away from foods with fat or sugar if you are trying to lose weight. Just remember that the diet is more important than anything else.

Another way to get a good cardiovascular workout throughout the day is to ride your bicycle. A lot of people ride their bikes to campus in order to go to class. This is actually a good way to get your blood flow going and get your heart pumping. Riding your bike to school helps you exercise without really thinking about it becuase it’s your mean of transportation. You don’t only have to ride it to school though. If you don’t have a lot of time in your day then you can go on like a twenty or thirty minute ride and burn off a good amount of calories. Try going up some nice big hills if you really want your legs to burn when you’re finished. In College Station you can always just ride your bike around campus or even around the city if you want longer distances. There’e a good amount of terrain that will get your muscles going around this city. A lot of people haven’t ridden a bike since they were a kid but it’s actually a great cardiovascular workout for grown ups. It really gets that heart pumping.

If you feel that you are so busy with school that you can’t go to the gym or anywhere that has any type of weight then you can always use the weight of your own body. There are many different workouts that you can do with nothing else but yourself and maybe a chair. One really good workout is push-ups. These really focus on the chest muscles, shoulder muscles, and even abdominals. Another workout that will workout the triceps are tricep extentions using a chair. You keep your heals on the ground, with your legs straight out in front of you, put your hands on the chair and push yourself up. Anouther really good body weight workout are pull-ups. In order to do these though you would need a bar of some sort. Pull-ups are where you just pull yourself up. Then there are always ab workouts such as crunches, six inches (this is where you hold your feet six inches off the ground with you back straight on the ground and your legs straight), leg raises, torso twists and others that don’t involve any weight at all.