Exercises for Cellulite Reduction

Most people would have you believe that cellulite is just something that you will just have to live with. I have to say that cellulite is particularly hard to target and get rid-off however saying that you can’t do anything about it is simply misleading. Think of cellulite as a type of fat that is very hard to get at, only through consistent and intense exercise and dieting will you be able to get at it and smooth out your skin. Any creams or massages will help in the short term but if you really want a long term solution then you are simply going to have to put in the hard hours to have definitive long term results.

I would also like to address the many beauty clinics that are being set-up to sell remedies for this problem. Two words describe most of these clinics: “Not Effective”. As mentioned earlier you may see some initial results but none of them are long lasting. You will need to visit them over and over to get treatments thus wasting a large sum of your money simply maintaining smooth skin that you should have naturally anyway. If you follow the steps that I will outline below then you will certainly see a reduction in the severity of your cellulite problem.

Most of the time females are the ones who are most afflicted by cellulite problems. This is mostly due to hormonal differences between males and females and also how fat tissue and connective tissues differ between males and females. Females have connective tissue that binds all the fat “sacks” below the skin that are much more susceptible to hardening compared to males. Once the connective tissues start to harden and the fat cells increase in size then you will experience the dimpled look because the fat cells have no where else to expand too but outwards towards the skin surface.

The hardening of the connective tissues is because of several factors but the main contributors are excess toxins, age and your lifestyle habits like smoking or drinking and your genetics. The main focus of cellulite reduction is to rejuvenate the connective tissue’s elasticity and also reduce the amount percentage of body fat that you have so you won’t have the fat cells bulging out even if you connective tissues are hard as rocks.

First let’s get to the connective tissue part. As mentioned earlier connective tissue hardness and in the thighs comes mostly from an unbalanced lifestyle, age and also genetics, two of these factors you really can’t do much about so we’ll leave them be. You can however significantly change your lifestyle so much so that cellulite might not even affect you if you train and eat properly.

The first thing to do is to get your connective tissue’s back to its old elastic self again. You need to get blood flow to your connective tissues to “wake them up” once again. This can best be achieved by doing moderate amounts of cardio to get you sweating and your blood moving. This can be especially true for people who live sedentary lives and will probably give the most benefit to them. The blood flowing through the connective tissues and also the increased body temperature will firstly release the toxins that are stored in the connective tissues and also build up extra tissue that might have been destroyed after many years of neglect.
The cardio exercises that you do will also have the affect of reducing water retention in your body. Water that is retained in your body will also lead to the expansion of fat cells and thus you should consume plenty of water while also doing lots of exercise. This in effect tells your body that the supply of water around it plentiful and that hording water in the body isn’t necessary. This is also a great way to get toxins flushed from your system and taken away from your connective tissue so it can be re-built properly by the body.

The key to an exercise regime that works well to remove your cellulite problem is consistency and intensity. To target cellulite directly we recommend that you get involved with any cardio exercise (biking, cross-training etc) for at least 30 minutes a day to build up a good sweat and start the process going.

In addition to cardio exercises we also recommend a healthy regiment of resistance training to build muscle under the fat. Science has proven that women who have greater muscle mass have much lower incidents of cellulite. Although the actual mechanism and relationship between cellulite and muscle mass isn’t certain some suggest that muscle has a way of absorbing the high and low points that cellulite causes thus leaving the skin relatively smooth even if the fat cells underneath are dimpled.

Resistance training also plays a very important role when it comes to fat loss. Resistance training or weight training will firstly help burn further calories when combined with cardio and also provide a very consistent residual calorie burning affect even when you aren’t working out. This is great to push your metabolism up and keep you burning calories even when you are resting. We suggest that you target your legs, thighs and butt when it comes to resistance training for cellulite as this is often the trouble area that people want to target. As mentioned across this site spot reduction is very hard to achieve. Rather you would do better by simply targeting body fat levels and not just thigh fat. We however think that the additional muscle tone in the butt and thighs will do well to absorb the cellulite dimpling away from the skin thus smoothing the skin out nicely.

We believe that cellulite treatment is a long-term thing and you will have to work on what is below the skin rather than apply creams above the skin to get proper results. If you follow the right regiment of diet and exercises we believe that you can significantly improve your cellulite problem. Remember that the results are never instant and that you will have to work hard and wait for them to come, try to stay focused and not loose your drive.