Doing even just a few minutes of a warm up is an excellent way to prepare your body for the workload ahead. It helps to increase your circulation, warm your muscles, and reduce the shock on your system that can occur when you go from inactivity to strenuous activity
suddenly. It is a great way to protect yourself from everything from excessive cardiovascular stress to muscle strains.
Some of our workout videos include a short warm up session and others do not. On days where you are doing a workout video that does not have a warm up or cool down period built into the routine, we will direct you to one of our warm up or cool down videos.
How do you calculate calories burned for each workout, and why is there such a wide range in the estimates?
That is why there is so much range in each estimate – weight, fitness level, exertion level, gender, one’s proficiency at a specific exercise or workout, lean muscle mass, and age are just a few of the many
things that influence each individual’s actual burn. I am not losing weight, what am I doing wrong?
If you have been attentively following the workout program for more than 3 weeks and are not seeing changes in your scale weight, it is very likely that your diet is the culprit.
A lot of people erroneously believe that a workout is a free pass to eat whatever they like. As nice as that would be, it’s just not how it works. Here’s one way to put it in perspective in terms of calories consumed & calories burned exercising; take note of the calorie estimations for each of the Fitness Blender workout videos that you do as part of this program. For instance, it takes a lot of time, sweat, and hard work to burn 300-500 calories.
Now think of the snacks and meals you eat, and how quickly extra snacking adds up to the same amount of calories. Being aware of how hard it is to expend that same amount of energy that is so easy to consume can help remind you that you need to be mindful of both creating a caloric deficit, and of keeping that deficit throughout the day while you are making your food choices.
On the flipside, there are many other things that you should be looking at to determine whether or not you are making “progress”. For example, if you have been following the plan as instructed, it’s highly unlikely that you have not made changes in your body’s measurements (inches lost), body fat percentage, strength, or cardiovascular endurance.
Do yourself a favor, especially if you are brand new to exercising, and don’t define “success” as weight loss and weight loss alone, because
Is this a program for men or women, or both?
This is a workout program for both. Gender specific workout routines are really not necessary and tend to facilitate the breeding of the misinformed concept that our bodies are different enough that one set of exercises works well for women while another works better for men.
What if I don’t have the equipment one of the routines asks for? If you are serious about replacing a gym membership with home workouts, you should invest in these simple pieces of equipment (the same equipment that we use in the routines that make up this
program): a set of dumbbells or resistance bands, and a good exercise mat.
If a routine we have used in this program requires a piece of equipment that you do not own, you can sometimes get a little creative in order to make it work anyway. For example, if you don’t have a physioball you could use a bench (or even a table – I have been known to do chest presses lying on our coffee table in the living room). Depending on your strength & fitness level, dumbbells can be replaced by cans of soup, or inexpensive, easily stored resistance bands. A medicine ball or kettlebell can for the most part be replaced with a dumbbell, and so on.
Whatever you do, don’t balk at any routine in this workout plan just because it uses a piece of equipment you don’t have. There are always easy modifications that allow you to use another option. You could even pass on a routine completely if you wanted to and search our extensive database of full length workout videos in order to find one that has the same focus in terms of muscle group or training type, but without the piece of equipment you are missing.
Strength training leads to increased bone density, a higher
metabolism (muscle burns more calories than fat), more graceful aging, and improved coordination, balance, and mood – just to name a few of the many perks.
Women especially tend to shy away from lifting weights for fear of adding unwanted mass, but in doing so end up cheating themselves out of the only scientifically proven method of raising the body’s resting metabolism – building lean muscle.
The videos in this fat burning workout program will not make women bulk up – not without supplementation and/or some seriously heavy lifting.
If I am still very sore from my last day of working out, should I