For someone brand new to working out and gyms, buying a gym membership can be a bit daunting. Making matters worse, I've found that gym salespeople can be just as bad as used car salepeople. For example, a co-worker just signed up for 10 personal training sessions and had the salesperson run her credit card number while she worked out. When she went to sign the bill, she noticed she was charged for 12 sessions, not 10. It was the second time they tried to overcharge her at that particular gym.

Yes, this could be an honest mistake but I've found it beginning to be a common trend in my experience. So, below are a couple thing to consider when you choose a gym. This is by no means an exhaustive checklist but it should get you thinking about the crafty gym sales pitch that'll be thrown at you like a 90mph meatball.

When it comes to eating right and exercising, there is no "I'll start tomorrow. Tomorrow is disease. ~V.L. Allineare

It's easy to get frustrated when trying to lose weight and even easier to give up. Assuming you have no underlying health issues, over eating and poor food choices may be the largest contributor to your bulging waistline. So, in order to slim down, the first step is really to become your own biggest critic. A task easier said than done.

While it's probably more comfortable to have someone like a nutritionist or dietician critique your eating habits, successful weight loss will really depend on your commitment and willingness to scrutinize what you're eating. Being honest with yourself and putting your diet underneath a microscope is tough, I don't know many people who will readily admit they're responsible for their own 42+ inch waist. Sometimes it's not knowing you are making poor food choices and other times its just self-deceit.

To help you slim down and become comfortable with your body, I've tried to help you identify 3 hidden habits that may be holding you back.

Arms, legs, back and everything else that comes with it!

Unless you’ve been blessed with amazing genes, building a huge chest isn’t as easy as most would have you believe.  The good news though is that the program I’ve included here is designed to help you make some explosive muscle gains with a little hard work.  Keeping with the theme of this blog, this program is predicated on dedication and will build muscle mass evenly across all muscle groups.  Stick with it and you’ll make serious gains after 6 weeks while avoiding the development of chicken legs and noodle arms.

A few points to consider before I share the program:

• Keeping with my love for high intensity training involving supersets and keeping your heart rate up while working out with weights, this program is built around minimal rest periods. You should only rest 30 seconds to a minute between supersets.
• It’s a 4 day program where Day  1 and 3 are the same and Day 2 and 4 the same, you just use different weights with different repetitions.
• Days 1 and 2 are designed to hit slow twitch, endurance muscle fibres and Days 3 and 4 to hit fast twitch, mass building fibres (translation: well rounded muscle development).
• I’ve included links to Bodybuilding.com for reference on the exercises (if you haven’t checked out Bodybuilding.com already, I suggest you do so – it’s a great workout resource, just be sure to come back here when you’re done).

Did you buy iFitness looking for a huge chest?

Since my last post, I've noticed a couple visitors arriving on the site after searching for info on the effectiveness of the iFitness workout programs (I also know you're mainly from California and spent an average of 5mins on the site - thank you Google Analytics).

So, over the next few weeks, I'll be walking through each iFitness workout program to see if they live up to the hype. To begin, I'll review the iFitness 30 Minute Chest Workout.

Is the iFitness Chest Workout Effective? Maybe.

Do I recommend it? No.

If you want a massive chest, this program may help you but better programs exist. However, I want to stress a very important point - specifically targeting one muscle group at the expense of others is NOT a good idea. The only exception is where a muscle imbalance already exists.

You WILL look like an idiot if you have a massive chest and small arms, legs and shoulders. The iFitness program emphasis of 2 chest exercises to 1 exercise of every other body part will create a muscle imbalance if you stick with it for months and months. You'll end up looking disproportional - think this guy on the right.

If you do want to use this program, make sure to follow it up with a program that has equal muscle emphasis. Also, most chest exercises (any pressing motion really) is heavily influenced by your triceps and shoulders - the secondary muscles. So if you want to build a huge chest, you'll need to work these muscles just as hard as your chest otherwise they'll fatigue quicker than your chest and handicap your results.

But enough with the cautionary tales - I know what it's like to want to get huge so let's review the program and identify areas for improvement.

*I apologize but I will not be posting the chest workout program here - it was developed for the iFitness program of which only costs $1.99 so dish out the cash to get the program.

B*llshit.

I know that's harsh but I don't think you are being completely honest. I know it's tough to find time to workout but it can be done - right now I have a full time job, I'm working to develop this blog, I'm planning a wedding with my fiancé, I walk my dog twice a day for at least 30 minutes and I'm developing web sites through a side business I started.

I'm not saying because I can do it, you can. Rather, I understand the difficulty in finding time to workout but I think if you re-examine your daily schedule you'll find you have more time than you think.

Here are a few examples to get started.

Fitness + iPhone = iFitness?

What if spending $1.99 could save you hundreds of dollars a year? Would you pay it? According to medicalprod.com, that's the potential of iFitness.

iFitness is one of many iPhone / iPod Touch fitness applications available on iTunes. Among other things, iFitness is designed as a replacement for a personal trainer of which can cost you anywhere from $30 - $75+ per hour. That's a pretty bold statement, right? But it goes further, iFitness also works as a training log. Naturally I was pretty curious about the potential of the app so I bought it to test it out.

So how does iFitness measure up? So far, I'm pretty impressed.

An Overview

I have to admit, I stumbled upon iFitness after thinking of designing a similar app myself. Thinking of how great it would be to have an app that could link in with a computer database to track workout progress and the potential to it, I was naturally pretty pissed to learn that someone had already beat me to the punch. However, after my initial anger, rage and steardy fist shake, I realized testing out iFitness would make for a great post and give me the opportunity to experiment with an app that I had only begun to mentally conceive, all at a lost cost.

Gyms can be intimidating places for anyone just learning to workout.

Depending on where you go, pressures can stem from loud music, foreign equipment, judging eyes or imposing physiques, all of which can be overwhelming. Additionally, it doesn't help when other members are acting like idiots. During a recent workout, another gym member kept throwing his weights and grunting loud enough for the entire four floors of the gym to hear. How'd you feel if that was your first experience at the gym? With that, the wheels starting turning and I created this list of 15 behaviours to avoid at the gym.

This list is meant to provide novice gym members with some basic, usually unwritten, gym etiquette and veteran members, a reminder of what’s acceptable and what's not. The gym's a common amenity for a lot of people so don't treat it like you're the only one who uses it.

1. Put your weights back

Each piece of equipment has a specific home, if you find it there, put it back. It can be a real pain when you're time at the gym is limited and you have to go hunting for equipment, so don't make others do it. Additionally, not everyone can lift the 90 or 100 lbs dumbbells, so if you take'em, put'em back.

2. Strip the weight off when you're done

Just like not returning equipment, not stripping plates can be a real frustration for anyone with limited time between sets. If it was important enough to load up a machine, its important enough to unload it - it unreasonable to expect others to clean up after you.

No matter what you are doing, your mind is the most powerful tool at your disposal.

No longer seeing improvements in the mirror?

Been stuck at 120lbs on the bench press?

Don't feel like working out anymore?

The mind is often a forgotten piece of the workout puzzle. It's easy to forget about concentrating and mentally preparing yourself for a workout.  All fitness goals are both physically and mentally demanding. You may not realize it but it could be your mind that causing any of the above mentioned problems.

In fact, mental preparation is so important that in his book, The Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding, Arnold Schwartzenegger dedicated an entire chapter to it, Mind over Matter: Mind, the Most Powerful Tool. In it, Arnold emphasizes the point with a story about Franco Columbu, his one time training partner and close friend, who was performing squats at a local gym:

Franco got under 500 pounds, squatted down, and couldn't get back up. We grabbed the bar and helped him get it back on the rack... Just then four or five Italian-American kids from New York came in. "Wow," they said, "there's Franco! Hey, Franco!" They were great fans, and were looking forward to watching him work out...I took Franco aside and told him, "Franco, these guys think you're the king. You can't get under five hundred pounds again and fail." All of a sudden his face changed. He looked at me with big eyes, realizing he was on the spot. Then he went out onto the street and spent a while psyching himself up, taking deep breaths and concentrating on the lift.

He stalked back into the gym, grabbed the bar, and, instead of the six reps he was supposed to do with 500 pounds, he did eight!

This story demonstrates the importance of the mind to fitness.  A lack of concentration and mental preparation can affect anyone, even professional bodybuilders.  Below are three strategies to overcome a slumping mind and get your fitness goals back on track.

The Low Down on Protein

Protein is kind of a catch all phrase. Protein is a fundamental building block of the body but is actually made up of 20 different amino acids which combine to make thousands of different proteins in the human body (Side Note: Until recently, it is accepted that there are 20 amino acids but new studies have claimed there are 22 amino acids, I don't think its a huge difference and doesn't affect the rest of this article - believe what you want, 20 or 22). The protein combinations help produce muscle, hair, nails, blood, bone, etc. Next to water, protein is the most plentiful substance in the body.

Of the 20 amino acids required by the human body, the body can create 12 - the other 8, called essential amino acids, must be supplied by food or supplements. Foods derived from animal sources are largely considered to be complete sources of protein because they contain all 20 kinds of amino acids. Other foods, like vegetables and legumes, are considered incomplete sources of protein because they don't contain all 20 amino acids - this is why eating a variety of foods is important for vegetarians (Bonus tip: Hemp contains all 8 essential amino acids and is a great source of vegetarian protein).

Additionally, the body does not store proteins the same way it does fat (crappy, I know). The good news? Protein is in pretty much every (natural) food. The bad news? You must consume protein on a daily basis.

Why waste your time trying to achieve one fitness goal at the expense of another?  Why not combine them?

One of the challenges to getting in shape is time. There is a common misconception that you have to spend hours in the gym lifting weights and then spend more time on a treadmill to get in shape. In reality, all this strategy does is set you up for failure (unless you're aiming to be the next Mr.Olypmia, in which case this article's not for you). The secret to losing weight and building muscle at the same time is to combine your goals into a targeted workout.

The following workout program is adapted from the Men's Health book, The Abs Diet. It's intended to combine cardiovascular exercise (like running) with weight lifting. In doing so, this exercise program will cut your fitness time in half and I'll guarantee results (this program is partially responsible for busting me out of a two-year plateau of zero muscle growth).