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Anymore, Dumbbell weight sets are a necessity in any home gym. If you’ve been pounding away for years on a bike or treadmill doing your cardio exercises – faithfully – but your fitness level has reached a plateau, what can you do? The answer lies in varying your workout by exercising with free weights, i.e., dumb bells and barbells.

Use Free weights to advance your training

Most fitness trainers will tell you that dumbbell exercises are a must in weight lifting. To get an idea of what they can do for you, imagine how muscles work together when opposing each other.

On any given lift, one muscle is contracting and another is relaxing, such as the biceps and triceps when performing a biceps curl with a dumbbell in each hand. Since the tricep must be move as well, the bicep is not completely isolated. Hence, doing multiple sets of repetitive exercises using dumbbells will work the target muscle — but it goes a step further.

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Whether you ride a mountain bike, a road racer or a city hybrid bicycle, chances are you’re health conscious. When you adopt a regime of outdoor biking for both exercise and commuting, you’ve found a life-enhancing solution that will keep you lean, healthy, and happy.

And it can all be done on a bike. Cycling is as good as running and swimming as an aerobic (meaning “with oxygen”) exercise that will elevate your pulse rate and increase your cardio-vascular activity. Sports medicine specialists often prescribe cycling because it causes less wear and tear on the joints and muscles than running, while still building endurance and alleviating stress.

Cycling, both road and mountain, tones many of the same large muscles of the lower body as hiking does. You’re working the quads, hip flexors, and calf muscles when pushing the pedal down; and the hip flexors, hamstrings and calves when pulling the pedal up. But it’s an upper body conditioner as well since the muscles of the torso, as well as the arms and shoulders, are very active while riding. (more…)