6 Ways To Lose Belly Fat







Side stretching can also help you to lose tummy fat.

  • Stand with your feet shoulder width apart.
  • Repeat the same step with your right leg.
  • Repeat this procedure at least 5 to 8 times.








  • Don’t get stressed out; learn to relax and unwind.


Real Tennis Elbow Relief

The cause of epicondylitis is an inflammation of the muscular insertions on the epicondyle of the elbow; its an array of tendonitis. Lateral epicondylitis, also called “tennis elbow” is the term used when the muscle inserts on the side of the elbow are inflamed.

Medial epicondylitis or “golf elbow” refers to inflammation of the muscle inserts on the inside of the elbow. In both types of epicondylitis pain can occur at the muscle insertion into the bone of the elbow or may radiate into the muscles of the forearm and occasionally to the wrist.

Epicondylitis is usually related to overuse or direct trauma to the area. The pain is more intense after an intense or repetitive use of the limb. Activities involving strong grip or forearm rotation are particularly aggravating.

How to relief the pain

Tennis elbow relief can be accomplished, on the most extreme or chronic cases, by surgery, but for the rest of us non invasive procedures are enough to get rid of the pain. The non-surgical treatment has three main components: protection, inflammation reduction and strengthening the muscles and tendons.

Decreasing the time or intensity of activity

Other methods of protection are the use of an elastic elbow brace, strap, band or wrap and occasionally, support with plaster or magnetic immobilization. A stretching program can be useful to reduce muscle tension on the tendon affection. Stretching includes the affected arm as well as the neck, upper back and shoulder, hand, wrist, forearm and triceps.

How to reduce the inflammation caused by tennis elbow

The second component of non-surgical treatment aims to reduce inflammation of the tendon. This can be done with ice, various forms of physiotherapy (such as ultrasound or iontophoresis), anti-inflammatory medication and infiltration with corticosteroids (a class of steroid hormones).

You can apply these simple treatments at home:

Apply ice after exercise/work periods to reduce inflammation and get temporary pain relief. To apply the ice wrap the elbow and forearm with a damp cloth and place a bag of crushed ice on it. Keep the ice on it for 15-20 minutes.

Friction massage and ice: It can be used to reduce inflammation and promote healing of the inflamed tendons. Ice causes the constriction of the surface vessels; the friction dilates them. To give yourself an ice massage, fill a plastic cup with water and put it in the freezer; cut the top half of the plastic cup and gently massage the painful area with ice for five minutes.

For the friction massage, use the tips of the thumb or index fingers to rub on the painful area. Start with light pressure and gradually increase it until you apply firm pressure; continue the massage for 3-5 minutes. Alternate ice and massage, always ending with the ice application so that the affected area doesn’t remain inflamed. Repeat 2 or 3 times a day.

When to start doing exercises for tennis elbow

The third component of the non-surgical treatment consists of stretching and strengthening exercises of the muscles and tendons that were affected; usually this is done after the above steps to decrease the pain. In some cases, when the pain does not improve with other methods, a strengthening program will lead to the complete resolution of symptoms.

Start with the exercises once you have remained pain free for several days. The stretching and strengthening exercises are necessary for a proper rehabilitation. Stretching the muscles of the forearm flexors and extensors as described in the exercises section will help prevent muscle imbalance.

Insight on Tennis Elbow Surgery

When other treatments and rehabilitation fail to provide relief to the affected area, surgery may be prescribed as an alternate option to get rid of the pain.

When should tennis elbow surgery be considered?

In typical cases, the indication should only be given due to failure of proper rehabilitation. Some authors set a period (3-12 months), but this pattern is relative. We must consider that approximately 85% of cases improve with appropriate rehabilitation.

Although tennis elbow surgery should only be considered as a last resort, you should know that it is a very safe procedure and complications occur rarely. When complications do occur they are usually related to anesthesia problems and not to the procedure itself, however, risk is a part of every surgical intervention.

What are the risks?

Some risks are present on any type of surgery, these may include: deep infection of the arm or the skin around the incision, hemorrhage or a painful/unsightly scarring.

Other risks or complications, although not likely to occur, are specific to this type of surgery; these may include: damage of the nerves (which causes weakness, paralysis and loss of sensitivity in the arm and/or hand); there’s a possibility that the tendons get damaged, causing weakness on the hand or wrist.

It is also possible that tennis elbow symptoms don’t disappear with surgery or get worse afterwards; it is even possible, after a successful procedure, that the symptoms relapse.

General anesthesia complications may also ocurr; these may include: nausea, vomit, chapping of the lips, urinary retention, headaches, teeth fractures and burning of the throat. More threatening complications of the general anesthesia are embolism, pneumonia and heart attacks. If you experience any of the above after surgery, contact your doctor or healthcare provider immediately so appropriate action can be taken.

What to expect from tennis elbow surgery?

Surgery is performed under local, regional or general anesthesia. In the most common procedures an incision is made over the epicondyle and the affected tendon is trimmed.

A different procedure involves releasing the tendon from the bone and reattaching it to another place on the bone. In most cases you will be able to go home after you recover from the anesthesia.

Other surgical alternatives are available and your doctor should discuss them with you before making a decision; please visit our latest news section so you and your doctor make the most informed decision possible.

What happens after a tennis elbow surgery?

You will need to use an arm splint to immobilize the arm; maintain your arm elevated, and the area where the surgery was performed, dry. When you sleep it is recommended that you keep the arm above heart level; this is to reduce the blood circulation pressure and avoid throbbing.

Stitches are usually removed after 10 to 14 days and physical therapy is then started. Depending on the type of surgery performed and your current health condition, the doctor will let you know when it is safe to get back to work; you will not be able to drive for about a week after the stitches are removed.

Only after 4 to 5 weeks will you be able to tell if the pain is definitely gone, even after performing physical therapy. However it may take months before you can fully use your arm without any restrictions. It is also a possibility, as mentioned before, that surgery does not resolve the tennis elbow symptoms in some patients; if this is the case, alternative surgical procedures may be considered.

How To Perform Lateral Epicondylitis Exercises

Lateral epicondylitis exercises are very effective to relieve pain and reduce inflammation. Lateral epicondylitis is a scientific term for a common stress injury called tennis elbow. It is an inflammation in the tendons located at the outside part of the elbow. This kind of injury affects tennis and other racquet players, golfers, bowlers, gardeners, housekeepers, industrial workers, carpenters, those whose occupation demands repeated activities of hands and forearms, and any other individual who are prone of any major injury. Its symptoms include pain and swelling at the lateral side of the elbow and pain when lifting or gripping.

Tennis elbow exercises restore the strength and flexibility of the muscles and the forearm and wrists as well. The exercises ensure proper blood circulation to the injured part and promote healing. The amount of exercise should be increased gradually and you should avoid doing the ones that are painful. Lateral epicondylitis exercises consist of stretching and strengthening exercises at the wrist forearm and elbow.

Some tennis elbow exercises include ball squeezing exercise, stretching exercise and strengthening exercise. Ball squeezing exercise builds up the power on the muscles and durability to promote your stamina for weight exercises. Just hold a soft squeeze ball in your hand for a few seconds and release. Do this exercise for about ten to fifteen time, twice a day. In a stretching exercise, it warms up your elbow joint and your wrist joint before an exercise for the muscles. The standard range of movement at the wrist is composed of flexion, extension and lateral deviations of the palm.

Stretching exercises should be practiced two to three times in set of ten. For pronation and supination of the forearm as a stretching exercise, rotate your palms downwards and upwards respectively without bending the wrist. For strengthening exercises, rest the forearm with wrist and palm facing downwards at the edge of the table. Grasp a weight of around four hundred to five hundred grams in your hand and bend your wrist downwards and then straighten it. Repeat this exercise for two minutes until your wrists are exerted sufficiently.

Another strengthening exercise is to rest the forearm with wrist and palm facing upwards from the edge of the table. Hold the weight in your hand, next flex your wrists and then lower it down. Moreover, you can also stand upright with the arms held out. Hold a stick in your hand and attach weights to it with a rope that reaches the ground. Roll the rope around the stick completely with the rotational movements at the wrists. Unroll the rope so that it touches the ground. This should be repeated with palm facing downwards and upwards. This aids in strengthening the wrist flexors, as well as the extensors. You can also practice pronation and supination with appropriate weights.

You can also place your wrists on a table with thumb facing upwards. Hold a hammer in hand and raise the wrist for the thumb to point towards the ceiling. Strengthen the wrist and repeat the exercise for 2 minutes. You can also use the same method while moving the wrist outwards towards the little finger.

5 Useful Tennis Elbow Products

As a tennis elbow sufferer, you have to be very particular with the tennis elbow products being offered in the market today. There are certain things that you need to know. First, you don’t need to spend a lot of money for a quick fix. Second, you don’t deserve to suffer for a long period of time. Third, you don’t need products can provide relief but may cause more damage to your health. Fourth, you have to face the truth that some products are to be paired with great consideration in order to achieve good results. And most importantly, the best things in life are free.

There are plenty of tennis elbow products in the market covering the field of contemporary medicine, the field of sports, the field of herbal treatment, the field of Oriental medicine, the field of therapeutic treatment, and so on. There’s a long list of them offering aid to your injury but you can have five of the products that stand out from them.

Tennis elbow, also known as lateral epicondylitis, is a very common injury among racquet players, manual laborers and any other individual. This is dominant among people in their 40s and 50s. This injury involves multiple extensor muscles that stems together from the outer part of the elbow where they are either inflamed or degraded. It is regarded that this is due to overexertion, repetition of movements and too much muscle stress.

You may have this injury if you can feel pain on the outside part of the elbow that often radiates down the forearm, pain when you try to flex or straighten your arm, and pain when you grip, twist, lift or grasp something. There are plenty of different treatments and you’ll never run out of it. But the point is not about the availability of the treatment but with actuality of the cure. Here are five of the products that may be useful for you and have been proven to be useful in treating tennis elbow.

Tennis elbow brace or straps. This is a useful tool to protect your elbow from further injury and to help your elbow as it heals. This will ensure that your muscles are not going to be stressed and that your blood flows evenly, hence, promotes healing.

Ice packs or heat packs. The use of ice packs and heat packs are very useful in relieving the inflammation of the muscles. This will help your ease the situation by keeping down the pain and avoid swelling. Fortunately, you can just simply use an ice wrapped in a towel to apply on your injured arm because we are basically after the cold that ice packs can provide. As for the heat packs, you can just simple use warm baked potatoes to apply on the affected area. You have to note down, though, that the application must not exceed 20 minutes to avoid further injury.

Fish and Celery. You need to include eating fish and drinking celery extracts in your diet. Celery can be extracted through boiling. Taking five drops of celery before each meal may help reduce the pain that you are experiencing due to the injury. Taking in Omega 3 fatty acids are very relevant and fish are rich with them so there’s no reason for not to think of eating fish in the next meal time.

Rubber band. Yes, you read it correctly. The use of rubber band to strengthen the muscles in your wrist is very helpful. Just place a rubber band around all of your fingers and practice opening your fingers against it. You can these two times a day.

Stress ball or tennis ball. That little stress ball is not just effective to relieve your stress but it is a very useful tool to strengthen the muscles in your arms to prevent injuries. Just hold a stress ball, or a tennis ball, for about three seconds before releasing. Repeat this until the muscle tire and do this twice a day.

These tennis elbow products may not be the ones you expected but they are the ones that are effective for that bothersome pain in your elbow.

The Single Easiest Way To Activate More Muscle During Your Workout

One of our goals during each and every workout is to activate and work as much muscle as possible. It doesn’t matter whether you’re training a single muscle group or your entire body, more muscle involvement means more calories burnt and more stimuli for muscle growth.

There are several ways to do it but besides adding more exercises to the workout or increasing weights, there’s a single easiest method that you can use to activate more muscle during most exercises. That way is extending the range of motion.

Now, first of all, you need to understand that not every exercise benefits from the extended range of motion. Some exercises, like the bicep curl, for example, actually benefit from the limited range of motion because that way the muscles spend more time under tension. Extending the range of motion to lock the elbows at the bottom or to push the barbell against the chest at the top will actually allow the muscles to rest in case of the bicep curl.

But there are many exercises that become more intense because of the greater range of motion and they activate more muscle at the weakest spots as a result. Here are some of the more common examples.

Decline Push Up

You can extend the range of motion of a push up if you elevate your arms on weight plates, kettlebells or even dumbbells. This works best with the decline push up because you need to raise your legs to the same or greater level to keep the top part of the exercise at the same difficulty. This way at the bottom of the exercise you have to push yourself from a dip like position which adds more intensity, activates more muscle and works on the most difficult part of the push up.

Pull Up

It’s easy to extend the range of motion of a pull up by pulling your chest up to the bar rather than only the chin. This exercise is one that is commonly limited as far as the range of motion goes because guys tend to cheat and don’t pull themselves up enough to complete more reps. However, that works against them because incomplete reps really cut the benefits of this great exercise. If you go for the extended range of motion you can guarantee that those upper back and shoulder muscles get hit really hard.

Kettlebell Sumo Deadlift

You can really get down on the bottom part of the deadlift if you increase the range of motion of the kettlebell sumo deadlift. Stand on weight plates or other elevated platforms so that you pick the weight up from the floor lower than your feet. This makes a deeper starting position and activates more muscle to initiate the lift. This way even when you go back to the standard deadlift, your performance will increase.

Kettlebell Swing

The kettlebell swing is performed by swinging the weight up to the chest level to primarily activate the hips and explosive hip thrust power. But you can easily involve more back muscles and your shoulders if you swing the weight above your head. This obviously requires greater hip thrust power too.

As you can see from these four examples, activating more muscle in each exercise is just a matter of extending the range of motion by making the muscles move more under tension. You can use this method with any exercise as long as the muscles don’t get the rest at the top of the movement (bicep curls, bench press, shoulder press) but increase the tension (squat, row, pull exercises).

Bodyweight Giant Set That Burns Fat And Builds Muscle Like Crazy

It’s clear that for sustained fat loss, training is necessary. A diet alone is not a viable option because it will destroy your muscles as much as it burns fat and do great damage to your metabolism. Training to build more muscle, on the other hand, will improve your metabolism and keep burning fat during workout and rest with fair caloric intake.

But not all training methods are equal and while most workout routines will give you the desired result eventually, there’s nothing like giant sets to make it faster. If you want a training protocol that amps up your metabolic rate and burns fat in the fastest way, this has to be it.

Giant sets are four or more exercises done subsequently without rest. The exercises can target complementing, opposing or different muscle groups. The key here is that they increase workout intensity as high as possible and involve a lot more muscle fibers than any other technique as a result.

Bodyweight Training

While giant sets are used by seasoned bodybuilders mainly as a tool to change things up and break the plateaus, it’s generally advised against beginner giant set use, especially when heavy weights are involved because it can quickly lead to over-training.

But even if you’re not a seasoned bodybuilder, there’s still a lot of benefits of doing lighter bodyweight giant sets now and again (every few weeks). First of all, you get the fat burning and muscle breaking intensity in a shortest workout possible. Secondly, you can see it as a challenge and a milestone for your fitness goals.

The Giant Set

So now that we’ve established the benefits, let’s create a giant set of bodyweight exercises for a full body workout (most effective to burn fat). We’ll use the fundamental exercises for the chest, arms, back, core and legs:

  • Push-ups – 6×15
  • 6×15 Squats – 6×15
  • 6×15 Inverted rows – 6×15
  • 6×15 Sit-ups – 6×15

So you’ll be doing 15 reps of push-ups, squats, inverted rows and sit-ups, in this particular order. You’ll do 6 sets with minimal rest, which makes 360 reps in total.

Depending on your fitness level, you might be able to complete this workout in 5 to 20 minutes. Try to go as fast as you can but keep the form of each exercise correct. This makes a great challenge and a fun way to test yourself against time once every few weeks. It will be a good shocker to your muscles and a great metabolic booster too.

Consider adding this or other giant sets to your workouts to keep challenging your muscles in new ways. That’s the only way to sustained fitness. If this routine becomes too easy for you, feel free to add weights, or replace the inverted rows with pull-ups or chin-ups.

The Alphabet Ab Workout Is All Youll Ever Need To Get Ripped Abs

To train the abs completely, we have to understand the basic anatomy of this muscle group. We already know that simple crunches will not cut it and you won’t train your abs efficiently with only this one exercise. There are more movements involved in the way abs work besides the top to down muscle movement.

The Basic Anatomy of the Abs

The main parts of the abdominal muscle group are rectus abdominis, external and internal obliques and transversus abdominis. Each of these muscles are responsible for different movements of your core. The rectus abdominis (six pack) is responsible for the up and down flexing movement, the obliques are responsible for the oblique rotation from top to bottom (external) and from bottom to top (internal), and finally the transversus abdominis runs through your waste like a belt and is responsible for your core stability, stopping the movement.

So in order to train your abs completely, you have to involve all of these movements in your workouts. You need up and down crunching when your lower body is stable, as well as the reverse crunching when the upper body is stable and your legs are moving up. You need rotation movement from side to side, and you need to be able to stop your body from spontaneous movement.

You have two options here. You can perform different exercises for each movement, or you can incorporate all of them in one exercise.

The Alphabet Ab Workout

Because we often have to work with limited time around a busy schedule, we love exercises that can include several different muscle movements. This increases the workout intensity and saves a lot of time, making the workout very efficient.

The Alphabet ab workout is one of our favorites because of these reasons. It’s a simple and fun technique to train your abs that incorporates all the required ab movements in an unusual way. And the premise is simple, we take a hanging knee raise exercise and spell out each letter of the alphabet with our legs.

So starting with the letter A, while hanging from a pull up bar, we raise our legs up and across, then down and across the other way. Finally, we lift the legs midway and across vertically for that dash in the letter A.

Continue performing leg raises in all these movements to draw every letter of the alphabet or until you fail. This will include all kinds of circular, up and down, and top to bottom movements that will work your abs in all ways possible. That makes this workout technique pretty much all you need to train your abs, especially in limited time.

If you can’t complete all 26 reps, keep improving until you get there. And if the entire alphabet is too easy for you, go for several rounds and try keeping your legs straight, move in bigger motions.

How To Get Six Pack Abs Without Ab Exercises

Take any person who works out and chances are one of their main goals is to shed the belly fat and define six pack muscles. To do that, we have a lot of workouts for the abs and we also know that it’s not enough. We need good nutrition, otherwise those abs will be “nicely” covered with fat.

We also know that abs is the group of muscles that can be trained every day and it’s hard to over-train them. But did you know that you can train your abs without ab exercises?

When we talked about training abs every day (read that article), we talked about direct and indirect ab training. The idea is that there are a lot of exercises targeting various muscle groups that also hit your core and abs. If you focus on those exercises more, you’ll be able to train your abs without even targeting them specifically.

So to train your abs at the same time as you train other parts of your body, you have to understand how those exercises engage your core and take a step further to engage it even more. Here are some example exercises.

Single Arm Dumbbell Press

You can engage your core by simply contracting your abs when doing the dumbbell press but if you drop one dumbbell and do one armed press, you will really engage your core. Pressing a single dumbbell puts all weight on one side of your body and you really have to fight rotating with the weight. This way you engage a lot of stabilizer muscles and work your abs while targeting the chest. If you also lift the leg on the same side as the weight, you will make it even harder.

Single Arm Bicep Curl

Yes, you’ve guessed it, unilateral exercises that require extra body stabilization work your core and abs like crazy while you’re actually targeting your other muscles. Bicep curls are no different, if you take one dumbbell at a time, you will work your abs and biceps at the same time.

Knee Up Pull Ups

Pull ups work your core in any variation, but if you also raise your knees during a pull up, you will engage the abs even more. Focus on muscle contraction as you raise your knees and pull yourself up so you can train your abs at the same time as you train your back and upper body.

Seated Shoulder Press

You can train your abs while targeting the shoulders if you destabilize your body while doing the shoulder press. You can do that by sitting on a bench without the back to lean on and keeping your legs straight (lift them off the ground to make it harder), or sitting on a stability ball.

Bodyweight Tricep Extension

What makes the bodyweight tricep extension exercise great is that it engages the core at the same time. You don’t even have to think much about performing this exercise, your abs will work automatically to keep your body stable.

Overhead Weighted Lunges

Many leg exercises engage your core and abs already as it is. Squats and deadlift, for example, work your core without modifications. But you can add ab training to other leg exercises too. Lunges are great to work your legs, but if you pick up a weight and raise it above your head while you do them, it will engage your abs too.

These examples show you how easy it is to add ab training to any workout and you don’t even have to have special ab workouts to train for a six pack. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have ab workouts at all but if you look to add ab training in all workouts that you do, you will really improve your results.

The Best Reason You Should Use Elbow Tendonitis Brace

Why should you use an elbow tendonitis brace? Elbow tendonitis is a diagnosis that covers two common elbow injuries. First is the tennis elbow that refers to the inflammation of the tendons that attach to the outside or lateral part of the elbow. Second is the golfer’s elbow that refers to the inflammation of the tendons that attach to the inner or medial part of the elbow. For you to be able to understand either type of elbow tendonitis, you have to know what tendons really are.

Tendons are the ends of muscles. They function as connectors of the muscles and the bones. In the case of the forearm, muscles in front emerge as tendons from your inner elbow bone, while the muscles that run down the back are tendons from your outer elbow bone. These muscles insert as tendons to the bones in your wrist and hand. When you happen to experience stiffness and pain due to inflammation in the tendons that originally emerge from elbow region, the treatment should be focused in the wrist region. Specifically, the best treatment for tennis elbow or golfer’s elbow is to take enough rest for the wrist joint for when you do so, the emerging tendons in the elbow region can rest and heal at the same time.

There are a lot of conventional treatment codes of conduct for tennis elbow tendonitis like the use of ice massage or other modes of physical therapy. Some treatment protocols call for braces that wrap around the top of the forearm where the tendons of the muscles originate. This is being done so because braces can dampen the pull that wrist activity will have on the tendons in the elbow region. This is going to provide a temporary relief to the injure arm and comfort to you as well. If you happen to acquire tennis elbow or golfer’s elbow, you should rest your wrist. Also, you can really rest your arm when you wear solid braces around your wrist for a few days. It should be solid enough to avoid witting and unwitting overuse of the injured area.

This gives the muscles and tendons in your forearm and elbow an ample time to rest and heal. Flexing and extending the wrists in a deliberate manner for a few times each day will keep your tendons and muscles strong and will minimize the chances of elbow tendonitis from developing. It is best to protect your muscles from any aggravating conditions while you’re adopting some physical therapy techniques, and when you’re doing some simple tasks that need to be done. So, you must make the right choice by protecting your arm using elbow tendonitis brace.

They come in the configuration of bands, sleeves or braces. In this way, you can provide your elbow the kind of support in needs while it heals and avoid further injury. Elbow braces are in a wide variety of types from different manufacturers. Some elbow braces have gel packs that can either be heated or cooled according to the need of the patient for an additional therapeutic respect. Other use silicon or air to be inserted in the product to provide compression mainly on the injured area while avoiding the constriction of blood flow. Some comes in handy and lightweight. Comfort in doing activities and breath ability package is very important.

The best reason that you should use or wear an elbow tendonitis brace is for the protection it can provide as well as on how it promotes healing.