Just like old wives tales, Santa Claus (he actually just might exist) and the boogie man in the closet, exercise myths tend to die hard. The confusion of what it takes to build a healthier, fitter, stronger and more sculpted body is high. When enter any given gym I see the many people doing some things right and many things the wrong way. things such as improper exercise form, the overuse of certain exercises and the neglect of others, the focus on taking lots of nutritional supplements but not eating correctly, excessive time spent in the gym, and much more. Not that I am wandering around gyms taking notes on every person there, and if they are following the ten commandments of fitness. It is interesting to me because during the first few years of exercising in the gym I also

Unless they were focusing on maintaining their fitness level they shouldn't look the same month after month, year after year, with no real improvement in physical development, leanness ad strength. I blame the lack of improvement predominantly on the myths of building a fit strong body.

If your goal is to maintain the same body that you joined the gym with then it doesn’t really matter how you exercise; you could go to the gym and sit on the leg extension machine, read your newspaper and maintain your body. Why go the gym to do that? Of course that’s probably not why you joined up, for one reason or the other you saw in yourself better health, fitness, strength, lower body fat and yes curved muscles. So what happened, where did you go wrong? Weren’t you on the road with the sun shinning above? What made you turn down that trail into the woods?

Much of the information in muscle and fitness magazines, about how you could take this and that miracle concoction and turn your 120 lb. skin and bones into a 200 lb. Hercules, or how you could lose all the body fat you wanted by exercising with 3 lb. dumbbells, or how you needed to live in the gym exercising 5-7 days a week for hours in order to reach your goal. You might have taken this or similar advice to heart, fell for it hook line and sinker (I know that I have), and came up short, making little to no progress. Well it’s not entirely your fault. Unfortunately there is a lot of misinformation in the field of exercise and fitness by people either with the best of intentions and no real understanding of fitness, or by people who push product and services that they know don't work as well as they claim. Either way taking advice from these individuals would produce minimal progress, frustration and injury.

There is so much misinformation out there that I couldn't possibly list it all, so how does a person sift through the vast and arrive at the information that actually works? It can be like cutting through a jungle. Fortunately there is information that has stood the test of time and proven effective in making people fitter, stronger and leaner. Here is are a few effective guidelines that have proven effective in my own exercise program as well as those of my clients. I would recommend that you apply the following guidelines when constructing a productive exercise program:

1. The more challenging the exercise the better the overall result. This is not always true but generally it applies, for example if you want great legs and had to choose between performing squats or that nice new inner thigh machine in the corner, choosing the squat even though it is more challenging will produce better overall results. The best weight training exercises are the squat, lunge, deadlift, shoulder press, bent over row, seated row, parallel bar dip, push up, pull ups, lat pulldown and their variations. These exercises will allow you to get leaner, stronger and more sculpted than with less challenging exercises. If you have a physical condition or an injury that prevents you from doing any of these exercises, then performing another variation of them or substituting them for more agreeable ones might be in order. For effective but agreeable exercises consult the exercise section in the book 12 Weeks to Beach Body Abs.
2. When you lift weight select a resistance that really challenges you. Light weights don’t challenge your body enough, and an unchallenged body will remain the same. A light weight is any weight that allows you to complete a given exercise easily. Whatever weight lifting program you choose, you must progressively increase exercise poundage to produce ongoing results. In fact the best progress is made by taking a set to the point at which little or no additional repetitions are possible with good exercise form. Yes it’s hard work, but results will come quicker because of that.
3. Weight training every day is not the way to achieve the oustanding result. If you are training with weights every day to build lean muscle and strength you might be limiting your progress. If you are not superhuman or on growth drugs then having rest days away from the weights will allow you to make better progress. This applies even if you exercise different muscle groups on different days; it applies because even when you are exercising a different muscle group you are still stressing your whole body. The body needs complete days of rest from intense exercise to allow for quicker gains in lean muscle and strength. Most people will make great progress weight training 3 times a week on non-consecutive days, others will need only 2 weekly sessions of weight training to get the job done. If you are weight training properly you should be getting a little bit stronger just about every time you exercise, if you are not then you are probably weight training to frequently or not hard enough.
4. Perform light to moderate exercise on the days that you don't weight train. If you wish to speed up fat loss and encourage muscle recovery then do your cardiovascular exercise on your non-weight training days. For example If you are weight training on Monday, Wednesday and Friday then perform your light exercise on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. light exercise would include activities such as speed walking, hiking, jogging, running, swimming, biking, or any activity that is moderate to slightly vigorous in intensity. Light to moderate exercise can been done at a brisk, non strenuous pace for 20 minutes or more. Even something like walking to the grocery store, picking up groceries and walking back can be a great light exercise workout, so be creative.

The application of these solid guidelines will allow you to achieve solid progress in body fat loss, lean muscle, strength and endurance without breaking your bank or forcing you to live in the gym. For other effective methods on building the body you want check out my list of books and DVDs. (click here to go to)