Fitness Tips

4 Blogs to Follow for Great Women’s Fitness Tips

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5 Spotify Playlists For High-Intensity Workout

Women’s fitness is a booming industry right now, and that’s certainly a good thing. It means women and girls are thinking about their health — not just their looks and their bodies, but their lifespan and wellness. This is certainly important. Through fitness, we women can help lower our risk for heart disease, various cancers, diabetes and other physical ailments like obesity.

Fitness is a complicated issue because everyone’s body and journey is different. Are you looking for more information on fitness that takes into consideration the needs of women? Here are four blogs you need to add to your bookmarks bar.

Lift Like a Girl

Twenty, even ten years ago, “like a girl” was an insult popular among men and boys. “You throw like a girl,” “you hit like a girl,” and so on — it usually referred to how men were supposed to be stronger than their female counterparts. Fast-forward to our modern era — we’ve had rampant discussions about how harmful “like a girl” can be, and we’ve also showcased how strong women truly are. Lift Like a Girl is run by Nia Shanks, a strength trainer who aims to empower women through fitness motivation.

Black Girls Run!

In 2009, Toni Carey and Ashley Hicks looked at the growing obesity epidemic within the black community and asked themselves an important question: how can we help to solve it? Their answer was Black Girls Run!, a foundation and blog built on encouraging fitness and exercise among young black women in America. Black Girls Run! is now host to almost 200,000 members and discusses fitness, beauty, lifestyle and valuable nutrition information.

Fit Bottomed Girls

As women with full schedules and busy lives, we don’t always have time to work out. When we do find the time, sometimes it can feel like a punishment at the end of a long day. Fit Bottomed Girls is run by two women, Jennipher Walters and Erin Whitehead, who fit that description to a T. Instead of making exercising a chore, they come up with practical, fun approaches to fitness that are rewarding. They don’t just discuss fitness, either; Walters and Whitehead discuss their lives, motivation and other related topics.

Girls Gone Strong

Finally, Molly Galbraith recently became well-known on the Internet thanks to a body-positivity that went viral on Facebook. What you may not know is that her dedication to women’s fitness goes beyond that video alone. Her blog, Girls Gone Strong understands that fitness should be an issue of health, not an issue of attractiveness or thinness. She offers workout tips for women who want to shape their body and their life in a myriad of ways, from gaining muscle to eating better.

We all come from different places, have different body types, schedules, styles and genetics. These blogs look not just at women as a collective, but as individuals. Look for other blogs that speak to your specific interests. What fitness blogs do you recommend?

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4 Calorie Burning Cardio Exercises You Can do Every Day

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It’s a well known fact that cardio-centric exercises should be a part of every workout routine, but do we truly know why cardio is so good for us? There are some obvious standard lines of thought you likely go to, like “it can help me lose weight” or “it’ll help tone my body,” but cardio exercise is much more than a diet supplement. Cardio activities can help to lower stress, strengthen your heart and lungs, help promote better sleeping habits, relieve anxiety and depression symptoms and reduce the chances of heart disease and cancer.

What if that’s not what’s really holding you back from cardio, though? You know the benefits, but you just don’t have time for lots of running or going to the gym for fitness training. The good news is that cardio exercises are actually quite simple, which makes them easy to do every single day — whether you’ve got 15 minutes of time to spare or a full hour.

These four cardiovascular activities are easy to do, don’t require lots of equipment and don’t take up much time. Do as many or as few as you can and you’ll still be on the right track to heart health and a slimmer waist.

Aerobics

The best thing about aerobics is that as long as you aren’t incorrectly stimulating your muscles, there aren’t many rules. In general, aerobics is simply movement that gets your heart pumping continuously, and there are a variety of ways to make that happen. Something like dancing can be considered an aerobic exercise, or step aerobics if you want something more simple. The point is that 15 minutes of continuous movement that gets your pulse elevated can be considered a cardio workout.

Kickboxing

Kickboxing is best done in a classroom environment, but the beauty of the Internet is that you can learn pretty much anything online. Find some credible workout videos on a fitness site or YouTube and get to practicing! Kickboxing is an excellent form of exercise that can tighten your core, build up your upper body strength and can be used as self-defense in sticky situations.

Jumping Rope

Remember that playground game you used to love as a little girl in school? There’s no age limit to jumping rope, especially considering how great it is for your health. Put on some music and get on a flat, outside surface. No need to get fancy and play Double Dutch — just have fun jumping for a few minutes at a time. You’ll be amazed by how invigorating it actually is!

High Knees

You can get all of the cardio benefits of running while you stay inside — and in the same place! High knees only require that you lift your legs up as high as they can go while jogging in place. This exercise helps with flexibility, heart stimulation and builds up your leg muscles. It can be exhausting, but the long term results are well worth it.

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The Fitness Don’ts That You Probably Fall Victim to Every Day

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We all have dreams of getting fit, or we may even already be on an amazing fitness journey. No matter what step of the path you’re on, we all have ideas about what it takes to be fit. Some fitness myths are more well-known than others, like dieting alone isn’t how you become healthy. Others, however, are much more specific and not as discussed.

Whether you’re currently on your fitness journey or considering your options, keep these fitness don’ts in mind – in fact, you may have already feel victim to a few of them!

Never Skip Breakfast

Ironically, the most important meal of the day is the one we most often take for granted. We get up late, grab a granola bar and then don’t think about food again until a late lunch break. Those trying to lose weight may skip breakfast to fend off a few extra pounds, and it’s easy because it’s a meal you can almost sleep through.

This is a big no-no. Breakfast is a meal where we get most of our daily energy, and it’s actually the perfect opportunity to load up on carbs and nutrients you need for energy.

Don’t Aim too High

If you’re new to fitness, setting a realistic goal like walking 30 minutes every Saturday and doing 10 crunches before bed during the work week is actually a good thing. We sometimes feel like in order to get fit or lose weight we have to go to extremes and exercise until we pass out. Instead, building strength and falling into a routine are two of the biggest components of fitness.

Also, setting your expectations too high is a good way to fast track yourself to failure. You’re more likely to become disappointed and give up when you don’t meet your goals, but the truth is you never could have met them in the first place.

Don’t Focus On Pounds

Most reality shows about weight loss put a big emphasis on losing a certain amount of weight in a set span of time. This is actually very unhealthy – don’t do it. If your doctor tells you to lose 30 pounds, that’s fine; but your workout routine shouldn’t be a question of a math equation. Work on promoting better habits and changing your lifestyle instead of picking out a target weight number. Otherwise you might make it to that number and quit because your only motivation is out the window.

Don’t Compare Yourself

Everyone’s fitness journey is different, just like everyone has a different body type and weight threshold. You may not ever fit into a size 4 because your hips or big, or maybe your weight gain is a bad medication side effect – simply put, we all have different setbacks and experiences.

It’s important that we don’t look at others and measure ourselves based on their successes and appearance because we aren’t them – and we never will be. Fitness is something that’s very personal, and your failures and successes should be measured by your own merits, no one else’s.

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4 Common Fitness Myths That Have Been Debunked

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If you’re looking to get fit and/or lose weight, it’s likely that you’ve researched quite a few online articles on the subject. The reason why is obvious – we all want to know the quick secrets to getting slim and staying fit. The problem is that unless you’re getting this information from a credible source then it’s likely false.

When it comes to online info about weight, use this rule of thumb: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Here are four common fitness myths floating around out there – as well as the truth behind them.

“You must work out to lose weight.”

Many men and women often think the secret to slimming down their waistline and getting rid of those love handles is to keep exercising and exercising. Don’t think that exercise isn’t part of getting fit; that isn’t the case at all.

The reality is that losing weight deals primarily with what you eat, not how you work out. Getting lots of exercise can help expedite the weight loss process, but eating the right foods and eating correctly sized portions are the real secret to losing pounds.

“You can choose where you lose problem fat.”

Articles are out there that tout certain exercises that help you get rid of fat in certain areas. Exercise is how you help tone a muscle, but exercise alone doesn’t get rid of fat.

For instance, doing squats and sit-ups can help you tone your glutes and your core, respectively – but these exercises alone won’t actually help to eliminate those extra pounds. Some scientists believe there’s no true way to target fat in a specific area, as much as we wish there was a miracle solution.

“It’s okay to eat whatever you want if you work it off.”

If you eat 2000 calories and burn off 3000 calories, it’s all good right? Even if those 2000 calories consisted of cheeseburgers, French fries and a chocolate shake? Wrong.

It’s common that people rationalize their workout routine as a means to eating the wrong things – as long as they work off the calories that they consume it’s okay to eat whatever. The reason this is false is because calories aren’t the only reason we gain weight. You can work out all you want but that doesn’t always help to expel the toxins and bad fats found in junk foods.

“Breaking a sweat” is a good thing.

Sweating can help your body release toxins and it’s often therapeutic, which is why saunas are so popular in health centers. Sweating isn’t unhealthy by any means, and this may be why you think the more you sweat during your workout the better off you are.

Again, this is fault. Instead of having anything to do with weight loss, sweating is all about regulating body temperature. There is no correlation between the amount of sweat you produce and how much weight you’ll lose, especially since sweating varies from person to person.

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