Physical fitness is important for all of us and our teens are no exception. In fact, fitness that begins in childhood can create an investment of the greatest value to our children. Studies have shown that children who participate in fitness activities continue to stay active throughout their lives. However, research also shows that between the ages of 13 to 18 teens exhibit a steady downward trend in fitness levels. There are many reasons why this may be, but it is very important to realize our impact as role models so it is important to stay fit as parents and adults.

Teens can stay fit by engaging in any activity that they enjoy. There are many choices in addition to competitive and noncompetitive sports including skateboarding, rock climbing, dancing, gymnastics and skating. Weight training, with knowledgeable supervision, can build muscle and help prevent other sports injuries.

Teenagers should exercise at least three times a week for 30 minutes at a time and maintain an active lifestyle. This is especially important in a day and age where children and teens are more and more sedentary both in their entertainment choices of computers, television and video games as well as their homework demands at a desk and computer.

Here are some practical tips for teens and their parents:

* If your child/teen refuses to participate in any fitness activities, it may be a sign of a physical or psychological problem. A doctor should probably be consulted.

* Injuries may occur due to overuse and the growth of muscles, ligaments and tendons. Stretching should be encouraged to help prevent tears and strains.

* Teens going through puberty may become less coordinated. An appropriate warm up and cool down is always in order and injuries attended to.

* Watch for signs of eating disorders and possible steroid use. Early intervention is vital for both of these very serious circumstances.

* Teenagers should continue to wear safety helmets and appropriate knee and elbow pads if their fitness activity warrants it.

* Parents, coaches and trainers should know the signs of a concussion and the what to do if they suspect one.

* Sunscreen should always be applied when doing fitness activities outdoors.

* Weight training should be taught or supervised by a knowledgeable trainer or adult. This is especially important due to the teen’s proneness to injury at this time of major growth. When teens experience a growth spurt, their bones may grow faster than the muscles and tendons making them more vulnerable to injury. Proper form and duration should be adhered to.

* Trampolines are not recommended due to the large number of injuries to participants of all ages.

* Teens and their parents should incorporate a nutritious diet into their lifestyle.

For more information and fitness support, please contact Pamela through her personal fitness training website at: www.RealBodyFitness.com

Apart from regular exercise, keep an eye on you daily food intake. It is as important as hitting a gym, I assure you. You must eat a balanced diet and start resistance training. This shall increase your metabolism, which shall soon lead to the six-pack abs. These are the basics you must remember before enrolling yourself in a gym and sweating it out.

Firstly, try to reduce the fat content present in your body- once the overall fat composition reduces considerably, your six-pack abs will become more prominent. This means that the strenuous workouts must utilize the fat stored in your system as a source of energy.

I must repeat that a proper diet system is instrumental in your plan to achieve those six-pack abs. Eat regularly and properly- this shall enable you maintain the required energy levels for various activities. Keep a check on your blood sugar level so that it does not fluctuate.

Steer clear of junk food and processed food products that use too much sugar. Maintaining a steady blood sugar level is of utmost importance because it will affect the overall results derived from weight training. The solution is to eat small portions of food throughout the day, which stabilizes blood sugar level-, and this shall help in burning most of the stored fat during your exercise routines.

Next, you must consider taking resistance training that aid in developing six pack abs quickly. Body fat levels drop very fast and one soon acquires a sculpted look after a few weeks of resistance training. Your lean body mass will be increased by what is known as the multi joint exercises. Your metabolism will greatly increase, leading to further burning of stored fat. These are exercises that specifically target your abdominal region so that they are rendered prominent.

Decreased fat content and increased lean body mass are both a direct result of resistance training. This also leads to an increase in the metabolic rate of your system. In the process of developing a perfect six-pack abs you shall be successfully cutting down on the fat storage in your body, which continues burning not only during exercises, but much after.

Remember the basic tenets of achieving your desired body structure- exercise regularly, and eat properly. This shall influence not only your overall metabolic rate, but also the fat content of your body. Your body shall gain muscularity and the abdominal structure shall become clearer as days go by. You must remember that there are no alternatives to a healthy diet and resistance training when it comes to achieving a six-pack abdomen!

In relation to getting into shape, the terms high intensity and low intensity are used a lot but aren’t defined with nearly the same frequency. I suppose that’s because we’re all supposed to know the difference…but many don’t really understand the difference at all.

In general, low intensity exercises work your heart rate at around 60 percent of your maximum heart rate. A high intensity exercise works your heart rate at around 75 percent or more of your maximum heart rate. I suppose this means that anything working your heart at between 60 percent and 75 percent of your maximum heart rate is a moderate intensity exercise, but they must have a bad public relations firm because you don’t hear much about them.

You can determine your maximum heart rate by taking your current age from 220. So, for example, if you’re 50 at the moment, then your maximum heart rate is 170 beats per minute. Don’t let the term “maximum heart rate” fool or scare you. It isn’t referred to as such because it’s the maximum rate your heart can beat before damage occurs; it’s simply the absolute maximum rate your heart will beat.

The 220-age formula is only an estimate and, depending on your individual physiology, you may find yourself exceeding that number. That’s fine, you shouldn’t panic because it’s nearly impossible to damage a healthy heart with exercise.

High intensity exercises are simply much more beneficial for your overall health. Aside from burning calories, these exercises help increase muscle mass; low intensity exercises don’t do this. Even if you’re not looking to become a bodybuilder, building muscle is always a good idea for your overall health and prevention of accidental injuries during everyday life.

Low intensity exercises also don’t do very much to increase your overall metabolism while high intensity exercises do. This increase in metabolism is crucial to overall weight loss and general health.

With the exception of the injured, ill, out-of-shape or elderly, there is no reason for anyone to stick solely to a low intensity workout. If you do happen to be in poor shape, then you should begin exercising with a low intensity workout for a little while as you build up to high intensity exercises.

So why do people stick to low intensity workouts? The main reasons are because low intensity exercises are easier and a trainer may have recommended it.

Wait…If high intensity is better, why would a trainer recommend low intensity? The two main reasons are personal liability and a misunderstanding of the numbers involved. Basically, you are much less likely to injure yourself during a low intensity workout, so a trainer is protecting themselves by recommending a safe exercise plan. This is easy enough to understand, although a proper trainer will do their job and train you not to injure yourself during high intensity exercises.

The second reason, a misunderstanding, requires a bit more explanation. You see, low intensity exercises burn a higher percentage of calories from fat than high intensity exercises. Low intensity exercises burn approximately 50 percent fat for energy while high intensity exercises burn approximately 40 percent fat for energy. This difference is not great enough to justify the tradeoffs. Besides, it doesn’t actually mean you burn more fat with low intensity exercises.

Confused? This is where the misunderstanding comes in. Hypothetically speaking, let’s say that you burn 100 calories by walking for 20 minutes. Walking is a low impact exercise, so you burned 50 fat calories (50 percent of one hundred).

Ten minutes of high intensity exercise, however, can easily burn 160 calories. Since high intensity exercises burn 40 percent fat for energy, you just burned 64 fat calories. You burned 14 more fat calories, but only spent 10 minutes doing it. Basically, the percentage is technically smaller, but you burn more total calories in less time with high intensity exercises. A smaller percentage of a bigger number is better than a bigger percentage of a smaller number.

In addition to this, low intensity workouts only burn fat calories while you’re actually doing them. High intensity workouts, because they increase your metabolism, continue burning fat for hours after you’re done working out. And, because muscle burns more calories than fat, the increased muscle mass means you’ll be burning more calories every second of the day because of your high intensity workout.

As you can see, there really isn’t any reason to stick with a low intensity workout when you can step up to a high intensity workout and get a greater benefit in less time.

It’s ironic that the icon for both the peak in muscle conditioning and the pit of laziness is a six-pack. For the former it’s on your stomach and for the latter it’s poured into your stomach. Of course, it’s a lot easier to pour it into your stomach which explains why many more people drink six-packs than develop them.

If you’re serious about getting your abdomen into six-pack condition, you need to know and keep in mind that there is no magic bullet and that it’s going to take a sincere commitment to succeed. Realistically, developing the muscles for the six-pack appearance isn’t actually the most difficult part of the process. Removing the layer of fat hiding your six-pack is the hard part.

This is the reason that you see guys doing crunches for what seems like eternity, doing it religiously every day and still not developing that six-pack they are so desperately chasing. For all they know, they have developed it, they just can’t see it!

So, the first key to developing six-pack abs is fat reduction. While it’s possible to focus on a specific muscle set and develop it without really developing the rest of your body, this simply isn’t possible when it comes to weight loss. You may see advertisements for products and pills promising “spot” weight loss (i.e., reducing just your tummy fat), but those advertisements are designed for the bottom line, not the waist line.

You’re going to need to alter your diet, pure and simple. I’m not saying this because I sneak into your house while you’re sleeping and look at your fridge, I’m saying it because it’s the safe bet: most people need to alter their diets if they want to lose weight and achieve optimum health.

Burning fat is really a simple concept in theory: you need to burn more calories than you put into your body. There are two ways of burning calories and, to effectively develop your health and especially your six-pack, you should master both of them. The first is through exercise, especially aerobic and cardiovascular exercise. Get sweating and get your heart beating faster and you’ll burn through calories. The second is through speeding up your metabolism.

Contrary to popular belief, metabolism is not automatically set by genetics. You can speed up your metabolism and, by doing so, you will burn more calories on constant basis. Steps to improving your metabolism include drinking lots of water, exercising and building your muscles, eating high nutrition foods frequently and not skipping meals.

Those last two steps need a bit of explaining for you to fully benefit from them. The classic three-times-a-day meal plan is not the optimum way to eat. For maximum efficiency, you should eat five to seven smaller nutritious meals a day. Doing this ensures that your body doesn’t have a lot of excess energy sitting around waiting to be used, because you’re taking in less at a time.

Skipping meals, the most common and least successful tactic for people trying to lose weight, can wreak havoc with your metabolism. Your body is a highly adaptable machine designed, at bare minimum, to survive. It adjusts to your eating habits and then, when suddenly you skip a meal, it slows down your metabolism to ensure that you have enough energy to get to your next meal. Eating regularly is necessary to keep your metabolism up.

With your nutrition under control, exercise portion comes into play. As I recommended above, regular cardiovascular exercise is necessary for losing the fat. You also need to do weight-training exercises to shape and tone the muscles in your body and abdomen. These two exercise types need to be balanced, because overdoing either one of them is highly counterproductive.

Once you get your body fat down to six-pack level, then you can slowly reduce the cardiovascular exercise and increase the weight training if you’re interested in developing your muscles further. If you do that, however; remember to adjust your daily calorie intake accordingly to compensate for the reduced cardio exercise.