7 Moves for a Perky Butt

1) Squat Pulses

Always squeeze your butt on the way up.

  • 3 sets
  • 20 reps
  1. Place your feet slightly wider than shoulder-width apart with your knees and toes pointed outward.
  2. Keeping your abs tightly drawn in, slowly descend by bending at your knees and hips in a squatting motion.
  3. Continue to slowly lower yourself as far as you can control without letting your body shift towards your toes.
  4. Once in the downward position and as far as you can go down, start the pulses.
  5. Rise up and descend no more than about 6 inches, repeating this motion 10-15 times.

2) Bench Lunges

Find a chair or a bench and grab a pair of dumbbells.

  • Sets: 4
  • Reps: 15 per leg
  • Start off setting up a flat bench vertically.
  • Place one foot on it while you plant your other leg firmly on the floor.
  • Bend both legs as you go down into a squat.

3) Glute Kickbacks

 

When doing Glute Kickbacks, squeeze your glutes at the top of the movement and keep your knee off the ground when returning back to the starting position to maintain tension.

  • Sets: 4
  • Reps: 15 per leg
  1. To begin this exercise; start off with your knees on the floor in a kneeling push-up position.
  2. Raise your right leg until your hamstrings are parallel with your back maintaining the 90-degree level squeezing your glutes throughout the movement.
  3. Hold this position for a few seconds and return back to the starting position followed by alternating the exercises with the other leg.

5) Fire Hydrant

This exercise targets the glutes from a different angle and helps to form a rounder butt.

  • Sets: 3
  • Reps: 20 per leg
  1. Get down on all four, keeping your working-side foot flexed and knee bent.
  2. Open your right leg out to your side until your inner thigh is parallel with the floor.
  3. Contract your abs and squeeze glutes on top.
  4. Keep your knee off the ground when returning back to the starting position to maintain tension.

6) Squat Kicks

  • Sets: 3
  • Reps 10 per leg
  1. Place your feet slightly wider than shoulder-width apart with your knees and toes pointed outward.
  2. Keeping your abs tightly drawn in, slowly descend by bending at your knees and hips in a squatting motion.
  3. Continue to slowly lower yourself as far as you can control without letting your body shift towards your toes.
  4. When you reach starting position, lift your left leg as high as you can directly to the side of you. Then lower it back with control.

7) Chair Kicks

  • Sets: 3
  • Reps 20 per leg
  1. Put a chair in front of you. Grab the back of the seat with both hands for balance.
  2. Lean forward slightly and raise your right leg directly behind you as high as you can, keeping your knee straight but not locked. Squeeze the glutes on top.

 

9 Butt Moves That Beat Squats

My Muscle Building Course

A Three Phase 6 Month Muscle Building Course

This course is mainly targeted towards guys. Women can get value too, but would most likely want to adjust the phases to insure that they don’t gain too much muscle. They would want to focus a bit more on phase II and phase III and probably limit phase I (this will make sense in a second). Here is a breakdown of the three phases:

Phase I: Quick muscle gains, by focusing in the higher rep range and limiting rest periods in between sets. This creates “cumulative fatigue”…where each set builds upon the previous set. The growth in this phase is largely due to sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. This is an increase in the fluid (sarcoplasm) within the muscle cells.

Phase II: “Hardening up” the muscle gained from phase I while continuing to increase muscle mass (but now at a slower rate). We are focusing now in the mid rep range with longer rest periods. Each set is separate from the previous set and now we are maximizing tension and avoiding “cumulative fatigue”. This rep range and rest schedule builds actual muscle fiber (myofibrillar hypertrophy).

Phase III: Pure density training for maximum definition while purposely avoiding further muscle growth. You will be doing sets in the 2-4 rep range and rest long enough in between sets to lift heavy weights. There will also be a focus on HIIT to lose any excess body fat. This isn’t a bulk and cut program, but you will simply try to get really lean in this phase.

Bonus Phase: This is a strategy used after a period of time in phase III to get what I like to call the “Shrink Wrap Effect”. You begin this phase 3 weeks before an event or vacation. This will make the skin tight around the muscles for maximum definition…and this is long lasting (NOT like carb-depleting and carb-loading).

Bruce Lee’s Secret Six Pack Ab Exercise

Bruce Lee Had Phenomenal Abs!

He was one of the first movie stars of his day to truly have amazing abs. Even by today’s standard his abs are very defined. I really enjoyed watching his movies. If you are young and haven’t seen any of his stuff, you can go over to Youtube.com and watch many of his best clips.

So What is his Secret Ab Exercise? Here You Go “Daniel-San”!

So I’m going to call this exercise “Breath of Dragon”, because it sounds really cool. I could picture a wise Kung Fu instructor telling his young student (with a newly shaved head) about the “Breath of Dragon” in a remote temple up in the mountains…LOL! It is a breathing and ab flexing exercise that builds tone in your abs by increasing the mind-to-muscle link.

The “Breath of Dragon” Explained

First you want to breath in. Then you want to simultaneously flex your abs hard while breathing out. Here is the trick…you want to purse your lips and make it a bit hard to force the air out. It should take you about 5-10 seconds to force all of the air out. As you let the air out of your lungs your abs should have the ability to flex harder and harder.

What the Heck Does This Do?

This exercise “sharpens” up your abs quit a bit. You will want to practice this in front of a mirror (at home please). Once you have expelled all of the air, you abs should look defined (provided your body fat is low enough). What happens is that over time, your abs will look this way even when you aren’t flexing them!

The “Breath of Dragon” Increases the Mind-to-Muscle Link in Your Abs

Have you ever thought about what is involved in flexing a muscle? Your brain sends nerve impulses to your muscle to command that muscle to flex. Do you have a certain muscle that is easy for you to flex? That muscle has a strong mind-to-muscle link. What is the most toned muscle on your body? Most likely it is the muscle that you can flex the easiest (the one with the strongest mind-to-muscle link). How do you increase the mind-to-muscle link in a muscle that you want to tone? Practice flexing that muscle! ***Please Read The Above Paragraph Twice…Nobody ever talks about this concept!***

Tips on Improving the Results You Get With “Breath of Dragon”

You can practice this exercise daily, since there isn’t any muscle breakdown like you get in resistance exercise. I like to do it in front of the mirror after I take a shower in the morning. You only need to do it once or twice…just try and see if you get better at flexing your abs over time. You will get a much harder contraction if you make a super tight fist while you do this as well.

Best Chest Exercises to Build Masculine Square Pecs

So why would a guy want to concentrate on building square pecs instead of rounded pecs? Well…the more rounded a guy’s chest muscles look, the more they look like breasts. That probably isn’t the look most men are shooting for.

There are several chest exercises to focus on to make this happen & some chest exercises you will probably want to avoid as well. Here is a photo of Brad Pitt, which shows what to shoot for.

So you will notice that he has the same thickness of his pecs all the way up to his collar bone. This is what causes that well defined line down the middle of his chest.

The big mistake beginners make is that they concentrate too much on the basic flat bench press. The problem with the flat bench press is that although it is a great mass builder, it develops the lower chest quicker than the upper chest.

The key to develop square pecs is to focus on building the upper chest. There are several basic chest exercises to choose from.

1) Incline Barbell Press
2) Incline Dumbbell Press
3) Incline Machine Press
4) All variations of Incline Flyes

Do you notice any similarities between these exercises? Obviously it is all the incline lifts that will build up your upper chest.

Almost every guy you see in the gym starts their workout with the flat bench press. The reason why is that you can lift the most weight on that exercise while you are fresh.

I would recommend the opposite approach…prioritize your chest workouts so that you do a few incline lifts before you ever hit the flat bench…or drop the flat bench from your workout until your upper chest development catches up with your lower chest.

Here is a tip that I rarely here anyone in the personal training world talk about…If you are having a tough time feeling your upper chest contract in incline exercises, you need to increase the mind-to-muscle link in your upper chest. The best way to do this is through a high volume of lifting for that lift. You are going to want to lift a lighter weight and higher reps to really feel a burn in that muscle. Over time you will be able to contract that muscle hard and then lift with heavier weights in a more traditional manner.

Liquid Diet Weight Loss

Be Careful With a Liquid Diet Weight Loss Program

When it comes to dieting, the hardest thing people find about the entire situation is the lack of control they seem to have over food. For some people, having to pick out the right foods to eat and eat them at the right times can be extremely frustrating. For these people, a liquid diet weight loss program may be a great option.

Before starting any sort of diet, you will want to speak with your family doctor. Explain to him or her the amount of weight you want to shed and talk about the type of liquid diet that you are interested in.
It could also prevent you from becoming sick or internally injured from following a diet that is no good for your own personal medical issues. Just as a liquid diet weight loss implies, you are essentially eating either all liquids or mostly liquids for a specific period of time.

Most of these diets consist of a shake that includes essential nutrients like carbohydrates, protein, fat, fiber, vitamins and minerals. It really depends on the type of liquid diet you choose to implement into your life. You mostly lose water weight and then when you finally eat again, you binge because you’re so hungry. Missing out on essential nutrients can lead to side effects such as fatigue, dizziness, hair loss, gallstones, cold intolerance, electrolyte imbalance, and heart damage.
A lack of fiber in your diet from not eating whole fruits and vegetables can lead to constipation and other digestive ailments.

Easy Healthy Meals – 3 Simple Tips For Quick Healthy Meals

We all lead busy lives and the importance of eating healthy can often be overlooked. Preparing easy healthy meals can sometimes take a backseat.If you have a family like me, you probably have to work a job (perhaps both parents) do the shopping, run errands, pick up the kids from daycare and run a household.Having a few ideas for easy healthy meals up your sleeve can certainly take “a load off”.

One of the biggest problems people face when it comes to meal ideas and meal preparation is not having a basic plan. By that I mean; frozen meat like chicken breasts, steak, diced meat, ground or minced meat, fish. Having these types of things in the freezer ready to go makes preparing easy healthy meals exactly that… Easy.

Keep things like fresh salad items in the cooler if it’s summer and potatoes, carrots, root vegetables and legumes on hand during winter. Homemade soups are always easy healthy meals and are often best prepared well ahead of time.

Tip No2: Cook meals well ahead of time. All you do now is toss a little chicken through some lovely crisp leaves, a few juicy italian Roma tomatoes, a little homemade ricotta cheese with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.
Tip No3: Everyone loves Pizza. Especially a healthy pizza recipe. Can’t be bothered making your own homemade pizza dough? No problem. Spread a little tomato paste and mixed herbs on the bread, layer on your own toppings like cheese, tomato, ham, cooked chicken, capsicum (bell peppers), olives and anything else you like. You can create your very own healthy pizza recipe.