I’ve always been into meditation. I guess it’s something I picked up from martial arts at an early age. But just recently I’ve been using it as a post workout tool for recovery. I have to say, it seems to do the job quite well.

Not to mention there are some legit studies showing it’s effectiveness post exercise. Check this study out from the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Here is my current routine.

1. I find a quite place to sit down and relax. I try to keep it distraction free, but by no means do you need to be in complete darkness and silence. Hell, sometimes I don’t even close my eyes. There’s no set rules in meditation. That’s why I like it.

2. Start by watching your breath. Just notice the sensation of the air entering your lungs. Try to keep the breaths deep into your abdomen. Almost like you’re breathing into your gut.

3. Focus on relaxing every muscle in your body. Start from the top of your head on down to your toes.

4. Once relaxed you’ll probably notice your mind will tend to wonder off occasionally. That’s alright, it always happens. Just bring yourself back to watching your breath.

It doesn’t take much to get results. Start with 2 or 3 minutes. Sometimes recovery is neglected, but it really is one of the most important aspects of a workout. In recovery is where you build lean muscle, burn fat, and clear harmful stress hormones from the body.

Give it a shot. Let me know if you’ve tried this or have found a better way.

By Vince DelMonte

www.VinceDelMonteFitness.com

If you could sculpt one body part to perfection for next summer, what would it be? Let me guess – six pack abs! I don’t know anybody who does not want to shrink there waistline, lose body fat, eliminate low back pain and develop a jaw dropping set of rock-hard six-pack. Too bad that your brain has been poisoned with contaminated information.

Before you can start learning how to get six-pack abs and discover the truth about what it really takes to build a beach-worthy abdominal section, you must first expose the lies, myths and rumors. Before we talk about how to get six-pack abs, the right way, we must re-program your hard drive and empty the trash can of garbage you have been fed.

Because of all this hyped up and misguided information – even among so-called ‘fitness experts’ – you should skeptical of discerning about all abdominal training equipment and programs. Let’s first eliminate the top four ways not to get a six-pack:

Learning how to get a six-pack does not require expensive workout equipment promoted through obnoxious infomercials. You can’t flick on the TV anymore without seeing two new abdominal exercise machines being promoted at once. There are so many of them, that if you get suckered into these ‘ab workout’ gimmicks, you will be broke quicker than Ben Johnson sprints the 100 m dash! And get this: Of the $520 million dollars a year spent on exercise equipment, abdominal machines get a $208 million dollar piece of the pie!

Learning how to get a six-pack does not require thousands or even hundreds of crunches a day. So much for the Brittany Spears ab workout! Crunches are decent but totally overused and associated with more being better. Crunches is a very general exercise and general exercises get general results. Excessive floor crunches shorten the abdominal wall, pull your head forward and emphasize poor posture. They also involve a very low level of stimulation which neglects adequate muscle fiber recruitment.

Learning how to get a six-pack does not involve starvation diets. Starvation diets starve the muscle when instead, you should be feeding the muscle. Guess what happens when you starve your body? Your metabolism shuts down out of survival and causes your body to store fat. Your body must get energy from somewhere so guess what gets sacrificed? That’s right, your precious muscle which is in fact responsible for a maintaining a high metabolism. Starve your muscle – great logic!

Learning how to get a six-pack does not require fat burning pills. What did the last weight loss pill you bought do for you? The same thing the next one is going to do – nothing! Except give you a thinner wallet but not a thinner waist line. The entire concept of taking pills to ‘burn fat’ is built on a sandy foundation and misleading because diet pills only treat the symptoms and not the root cause. Without focusing on the root problems of a flabby mid-section, like nutrition, lifestyle and proper training, you will just end up where you started – farther away from having a six-pack for summer instead of closer.

If you just landed on earth from Mars today, and were able to avoid these four completely wrong ways to build a six-pack, than you will have an advantage over the rest of the world and be one enormous step closer to taking your shirt off with pride!

About the Author:

Vince DelMonte is the author of No Nonsense Muscle Building: Skinny Guy Secrets To Insane Muscle Gain found at http://www.VinceDelMonteFitness.com

He specializes in teaching skinny guys how to build muscle and gain weight quickly without drugs, supplements and training less than before.

Yesterday I posted an article by Mike Roussell about 4 foods that can help you burn fat.  Today I share with you my favorite place to purchase green tea.

If you’re a tea snob, don’t hate on the tea bags.  They come in handy when your pressed for time.