Routines

Ok you found your BMR and have an idea of what you need to eat in a day. Now what? Well now you can start making up routines! This is my favorite part, since I will ALWAYS have to keep changing it, and try to find new ways to make it exciting! I recommend starting off with a full-body, light-weight workout for anyone that's either starting, or haven't done a workout in more than a year and don't have very physically strenuous jobs.
What I recommend is taking a total of 1-2 minutes per exercise, and repeating it 2 or 3 times, depending on how many exercises you have and how you feel after the first set of exercises. After the first workout, I'd wait at least a day, maybe two before doing the workout again. After a few weeks, your body should starts getting used to that, and I'd recommend starting to specialize the workouts to target more specific parts of the body. For example, have one day be arms, then the next chest and back, then legs. Then same thing again. Once your body starts getting accustomed to that, get even more specific. One day biceps, next day triceps, then chest, then back, etc. Now this sounds like it will only be a month before you're targeting specific areas, but the more specific you get, the longer it takes to get to the next area, so it may take you anywhere from 2-6 months before you're really targeting very specific areas.
Speaking of targeting areas, another thing to remember if you have a fat loss goal is...let me say this clearly, YOU CAN'T SPOT-LOSE FAT! I'm sorry if that came on a little strong, but there are SO MANY people that think they can lose fat only in the belly area, and that's not how it works! So trying to make an abs-only diet and regimen won't be as successful as doing a full-body workout.
A good thing to remember when making a routine is the exercises tend to last about a little over a month before your body starts to memorize the movements and will slow down your progress. This is called the "Plateau". The Plateau is where your progress seems to stop, no matter how intense you make the workout (although sometimes changing the intensity and pace can help spark back some more results and shock the body back into growth/fat loss). To prevent this, you need to change what exercises you do, and how many sets you do, rest periods, how many exercises, and tempo!

BMR

This should have went into getting started, but I figured this deserved a whole post on it's own since when I try to train people, some just don't understand it. BMR stands for Basal Metabolic Rate, which means how many calories you would eat if you sat on your gluteus maximus all day. Some people ask "Well why do I need that, why is it so important?" Well, in order to get on the right track to eating right, you need to find out how much your body needs just to survive for the day, let alone doing exercise. Now some of the calculators you find online have activity levels they ask you to choose. Some are pretty accurate, but others don't detail what they mean by which activity level.
For instance, sedentary is when you pretty much do nothing but bare minimum-you don't work out, but you do normal things all throughout the day. Unless you do a job with construction, or something where the first day you were sore all over, you should classify as sedentary. The construction workers and hard labor jobs tend to fit in the somewhat-active/active range. Guys like me that workout 5-6 days a week and have a job that keeps them on their feet, and also do farm work at house get a very active. So that'll give you a range of what to pick. I also found a calorie calculator which I'll post the link at the end of the post which is pretty detailed in what you'll need to eat INCLUDING compensating for the workouts, so when you find out the calories from that calculator, it's adding in if you do that stuff everyday so that's something to keep in mind when using it. Either way, it gives you a good ballpark range to work with and figure out what works in helping you either lose the weight, or gain weight/muscle.
ALWAYS REMEMBER: if you want to gain muscle, you need to meet the satisfaction of what your body needs in a day, and a few hundred extra calories for the workouts you do (depending in intensity, it could be less or more, but a few hundred is a good starting point). If you want to lose fat/weight, you intake just a few hundred less of your BMR + whatever you need for your workouts (for some people just meeting the BMR is enough to lose healthy weight as long as they still exercise).
Anyways, if you have any questions you'd like me to make a post about or just answer, be sure to leave a comment. I hope this helps anyone get a good step in the right direction and makes their way to great gains/losses, and as always, thanks for reading!
Link for Calorie Calculator: http://www.stevenscreek.com/goodies/calories.shtml

Mens' goals versus women's goals

So today I posted this picture on facebook. I don't even believe in the ideology, since the pictures aren't exactly similar since the woman doesn't have muscle tone, she is just lean. Anyways, I merely posted it also adding how a guy has to eat 4000 calories, etc, just to kind of get an idea of how people view body image.
The results were interesting. Some said what I knew they would say, the typical "Oh, she's fit". And my response is "Not to the trained eye." Just because she's SKINNY, doesn't mean she's FIT, there's a difference. Without proper diet AND exercise, a woman will hardly ever look cut (unless it's in her genetics, which is why I said 'hardly ever'). Most women, if they want to look cut and have muscle definition, need to be on a  regular weight lifting routine (doesn't need to be heavy weights, just some form of weighted resistance with medium to high intensity, depending on the goals). The woman in this picture merely had a diet where she ate less than what she exerted and possibly did some cardio, typical way to lose weight, but again, there is no muscle definition, so she hasn't trained with weights.
The point of this is women's goals are different from men's goals usually, so they have to train differently as well. Most men want to be fit- they wanna be able to lift heavy things, run faster, feel better, and also look good doing it of course. Now women that typically ask me to train them want to "lose _ pounds". Only a few have ever answered they want to feel better about themselves, and be able to do more with less physical strain. So when I put a woman with the "lose _ pounds" mindset on my regimen, they tend to quit fairly early. That's usually because when they see the work that has to go into getting fit (which is a LOT), they just want to focus on the diet portion. The women that do want to get fit however tend to stick with it, and so far I have someone right now who's doing awesome and feels great about it! There is a difference between being skinny and fit. And in a trainer's eyes, he can spot the difference, and I train people to be FIT.

Getting started

Since I'm just getting started on here, maybe it'll be a good place to also start on suggesting how someone DOES get fit. Looking on multiple fitness boards and websites, I see a lot of people either ask how to start, or they just start with cardio for fat loss. Cardio is good for cardio and leg fitness, but like all workouts and exercises, if you load up too much on it you'll burn out or actually hurt yourself more than help. Also, research has shown that a woman that does light to moderate weight lifting (doesn't have to be heavy) will lose more FAT than a woman that runs all the time. Now let's think about that. Why on earth would someone that lifts weights lose fat more than someone that runs all the time? Remember this is if she maintains the same diet, as well. Here's why: when you lift weights, you're tearing down the muscle fibers in the area you're working out (i.e. Biceps). When you tear it down, it builds a little bit more each time. A pound of muscle burns about 7 calories a minute at rest, while a pound of fat only burns 3 calories a minute. Now you WILL build a little muscle in the legs from running. BUT when you do a full body workout, you're incorporating ALL the muscles in the body and tearing them down. And for people that aren't so good at basic logistics, that means cardio with one muscle group focused on < multiple muscles being focused on and needing more calories to function a day. Another common issue I see with women is they think "Well I don't want to look like Sylvester Stallone or a bodybuilder like those gross women in bodybuilding competitions." Women, you will NEVER get that big unless you take testosterone shots, or your body makes as much of it as a man, which genetically is a very slim chance! You'll get some size, sure, but you won't get as big as my 17 inch arms, or 43 inch chest (that's mostly muscle anyways). As for starting a workout regimen I'd suggest 3 days a week for maybe the first 2 weeks, and maybe add an extra day after that when your body has adjusted to the change. Also I keep my workouts simple but intense, and depending on your goal it may differ, but I only use about 3-4 exercises for every set and do only 3-5 sets. It's simple, and basic, but it has never steered me wrong. I think this will be a basic good start, and for the next post I will discuss the most important part of getting fit-eating right! If anybody has questions please feel free to ask by e-mail and I will post on here or just email back when I have found the answer or I already know it! Again, thank you for reading!

My introduction

So welcome everyone to my newly-made blog! Never did one before, so figured I'd do it with something that I love to do- help people get fit, and maintaining that level of fitness later on in life! What better way to explain what brought me to this point than to start from the beginning. I started at the age of 14 when for my last birthday present was a Weider bench with assorted weights. I was a fat young lad, with low self-esteem and acne breakouts worse than what the teenage mutant ninja turtles would have had if they were actually human. Now some people would think "His parents were basically telling him he was fat with that birthday present!" and you'd probably be right. But it was because of it that I realized I needed to change what I did with my life. That without lifting those weights, I wouldn't amount to much in life and be depressed possibly the rest of my life. A strange thought for a kid, I know, but it worked. I lost most of my fat and had a strong 6-pack within the next school year. It felt great! People actually came up and talked to me for more than just needing answers! So I decided to start lifting heavier weights, to get bigger. You kind of know how the rest of the story goes. Along the way though, I always remembered to teach onto others what I've been taught. I like to help others to become as successful as I have been with it. Fitness has been good to me, and I want to be good to it as well, so what better way to be good to it then spread the knowledge of it to everyone who will listen? There's nothing that pleases me more than to see someone reach their goals and appreciate all the hard work they put into it. SO, with all that said, I will be posting random tips and pointers and some of what I do to either help motivate or inform people that are interested in becoming either fit, or possibly a bodybuilder, or whatever!