Lifting weights/body conditioning

[Guest guest]

Suz said:

>Any home fitness store sells a myriad of inexpensive gizmos such as

rubber cords and big fitness " Swiss " balls that come with clear

directions. Most of those toys are just great for beginners. I

especially love

what you can do with a long rubber cord. (You probably should avoid

the fancy ab toner gizmos unless you try them at the store and just

love

it. Some of them are just dumb and many are too hard for beginners.

My 2 cents

Suz

I fully agree with Suz's posting. You can do a lot of body

conditioning/strengthening using your own body weight, without

joining a gym. She described several ways to do this.

She also mentioned " a long rubber cord. " I should have mentioned

this in my posting, because this is a convenient and very effective

way to do a total body strengthening program at home.

Most licensed physical therapists use a product called " theraband "

or " theratubing " in hospitals, because we can work on strengthening

right in the patient's hospital room. They are also used in

outpatient rehabilitation clinics.

For home use, the theraband and theratubing can also be used, but a

truly superb product (IMO only) that I like for home use is the " Body

Lines " cords. These are sports cords, similar to " a long rubber

cord " , but are an elastic cord with a nylon covering, which gives a

very smooth and excellent form of resistance. They come with

handles, and you can get an over the door attachment. You can work on

any muscle or group of muscles with these cords (as well as with the

less expensive products) in the convenience of your home. (I have

absolutely no affiliation with this company). They come with a

poster that demonstrates about 30 different exercises. Their phone

number is 1-800-222-4284. There are other companies that make these

cords with handles, and you can find them by going to a good search

engine (I like www.google.com). Different colors represent different

resistance levels within the cord itself (due to the diameter of the

cord and the characteristics of the material that the cord is made

out of).

To increase the resistance of an exercise with a given sports cord,

you simply decrease the length of the cord by stepping on it closer

to the handle, wrapping it around something, doubling it, and many

other ways that will become obvious once you start using the

product. Conversely, to decrease the resistance, just use a longer

length of the cord, move closer to where you have the cord attached,

etc. (easy to do, hard to explain). Another way of changing the

resistance is by using a different color cord (e.g. yellow is usually

a very light resistance, black is usually a very heavy resistance).

Weight machines have the advantage of knowing how many plates you are

lifting, and tracking your progress by an increase in the number of

plates you lift, or an increase in the number of repetitions you

perform. With sports cords, you do not know the exact resistance,

but you can change the resistance in much smaller increments than

with weight machines. With cords, you simply find the resistance

that is right for you, which is done very quickly by trial and error.

Hope this helps.

Bessen

rjb112@...