Water Bottles & Workouts

Look around you at the gym. You'll see a slew of people carrying water bottles. Carefully analyze who is carrying a water bottle and who isn't. You'll notice that the most serious people, especially the guys in the free weight area, don't have a water bottle.

I'm not sure, but I think women's magazines have scared women into thinking that if they don't keep drinking water every couple of minutes, they will become dehydrated and end up in the ER.

Don't get me wrong. Hydration is important. But the truth is that most of us don't exercise hard enough to need constant hydration during an hour or hour-and-a-half workout.

What I see is many people, mostly women, using the water bottle as a crutch. After every set, they stop and drink water. It's a nice way to extend the time between sets and work out less hard. After all, drinking water takes time--just enough time to let your heart rate start to go back to normal and to give the muscles a break. Don't do it!

Here are my tips:

• Drink plenty of water before you go to the gym.
• If you do a cardio workout and you're thirsty afterward, go get a drink from the drinking fountain.
• If you get thirsty while doing your weights, find a good time to take a quick break and get a drink of water...at the water fountain.
  
• Drink water when you get home after your workout.
• Leave the water bottle at home. You don't need one more thing to carry around and put down and pick up constantly.

If you are training hard enough to need constant hydration, I'm impressed. You must be training for a triathlon, the Tour de France or the Olympics. Average gym-goers like me don't sweat enough to warrant the ubiquitous water bottle. In fact, I'll work out a lot less hard if I have to carry the bottle around with me and stop every five minutes to take a drink.

My Favorite Exercises: Reverse Flys

Unfortunately, my current gym has no machine for reverse flys, where you pull the handles from the front of the body outward to the sides. This, of course, is the opposite of flys in which you are bringing your arms in from the sides to in front of your chest.

Maybe it's a good thing my gym decided not to include one of these reverse fly machines because I found a new favorite exercise in reverse flys with dumbbells.

This is a great exercise to work the back. Here's how I like to do them:

• From a standing position, bend over until your torso is almost parallel to the floor and perpendicular to your legs.
• With a dumbbell in each hand, start with the arms hanging straight down.
• With a controlled movement, raise the arms keeping them just slightly bent so you don't hyperextend your elbows. Raise them until they are straight to the sides.
  

As you do this exercise, think about lifting with the elbows and squeezing the shoulder blades together. This will help you focus specifically on the back muscles you're working. Try to keep the abdominal muscles pushing toward the small of your back; this keeps your core strong and steady throughout the exercise.

If you're used to using a machine, or you don't do this exercise at all, give the dumbbell reverse flys a try.

My Favorite Exercises: Back Extension

Chronic back pain is one of the most common complaints in our society. Keeping the lower back muscles strong is one way we can avoid injury to our backs and the resulting pain.

It's hard to find good exercises to work the lower back. Personally, I like to take advantage of the back extension machines found in most gyms. This is one of the few times I prefer a machine, It ensures I control the movement, and I can use weights to increase intensity.

Most of these machines work similarly. You sit on an incline and have a pad behind your shoulders. You complete the exercise by pushing the pad until your back is straight. The important things to keep in mind as you do this exercise are as follows:

• Don't overextend when pushing back. Only push far enough so that your back is straight at the end.
• Go forward as far as possible. This is where you get the benefit of the exercise, moving from the forward position to the straight position.
• Don't use too much weight.
• Use a controlled motion, no momentum. Go slowly.
• Focus on using the muscles of the lower back and not the legs to do the work.
  

Strong muscles support our bodies properly and help prevent injury and pain. Don't focus totally on the abdominals and forget the opposing muscles of the lower back. They work together to keep our core strong.