Eating For A Triathlon Or Marathon 

Don’t try to change your diet right before your first triathlon or marathon.  If you carb-load right before your race this could make your stomach feel heavy and make you feel sick.  If you have been doing this type of computations a lot you might want to think about carb-loading.  Most people wont need to do this because they have enough reserves that you wont need to do it.  Remember if its not broken don’t fix it.

Cross-Training Makes You Less Prone To Injury

People who cross-train are less in a variety of exercises are more fit and less prone to injury than people who only train in one or two different exercises.  This is do to the fact that most people don’t hit the stabilizer muscles and they don’t get the rest time the big muscles need.

Pull Up Challenge 

Try to do pull ups twice a day for 30 days.  You do one set of as many pull ups that you can in the morning and than do this again in the evening.  If you can do a pull up on your own there are pull up aid to help you today.  This can boost your pull ups, by up to 10 more reps.

USE THESE TIPS TO HELP IMPROVE YOUR RUNNING

Tip 1 use those arms to help increase calorie burn, it will also help pull you when you run.

Tip 2 use sprinting intervals to help increase calorie burn and help increase your cardio as well.

Tip 3 increase your run about 5 to 10% each week.

Tip 4 go running 3 to 4 times a week. 

Tip 5 get good running shoes.  

Tip 6 run with a buddy. 

Tip 7 get a play list together and go running with your MP3 player.

Where Can You Find The Healthy foods In A Store?

Almost 90% of the healthy foods in the store can be found in the perimeter of the store.  You should find fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy and breads in these areas of the store.

Key Exercises To Hit All The Muscles In The Abs

These 5 exercises will hit the whole abdomen not leaving any abs muscle behind.  Remember the key to great looking abs will always be cardio.

KEY TO GOOD LOOKING ABS

Direct abdominal exercises are not going to make your abs look good.  It is the cardio that you do that will make those abs pop.  

FAT FREE

Just because a food label says fat free don’t mean that you will lose weight by eating it. It all about the calories.  If you eat more calories than you burn you gain weight.  If you eat less calories than you burn you lose weight.  Most fat free foods still have calories.

FAT BURNING ZONE

The fat burning zone on the heart rate chart doesn’t mean that you are burning the most fat calories in this zone.  It just means that you are burning the highest percentage of fat calories.  

HOW I FEEL AFTER A GOOD WORKOUT!

LATERAL EPICONDYLITIS OR TENNIS ELBOW

Tennis elbow is caused from overuse.  Many people that do manual labor jobs or overtraining fitness programs my be more prone to getting tennis elbow.  Studies showed that overexertion of the joint was the main factor of this injury.  The good news is that it is a curable injury.  Just because you get this injury it doesn’t mean that you can’t exercise.  You just have to find other ways to exercise why the injured elbow heals.  You want to give the elbow about 3 weeks of rest with little as little movement as possible.  If this doesn’t work, call your doctor for help on the issue.  

SAVE MONEY WITH SMALL GROUP PERSONAL TRAINING

A one hour personal training session for yourself can cost you $35.00 to $100.00. It can cost you around $15.00 to $30.00 an hour for a small group training session. It also helps to do small groups because you have your friends or family there to support you. Always think about your budget, can I do this on my own or do I need to get a friend to two to bring down the cost.

FITNESS BOOT CAMP

Just got a couple tractor tires for my fitness boot camp. It starts next weekend at Ravenhill park, Up in Hidden Valley Lake. Come check it out at 19334 greenridge road. The boot cps are Saturday and Sunday 8:00 am to 9:00 am and 9:30 to 10:30 am for the low impact boot camp.

Dehydration 

If your muscle become more than 3% dehydrated it can cause you to loss up to 10% of your strength.

Jumping Rope

Jumping rope has made a big come back.  Many places that use alternative types of fitness like, crosfit, MMA training and fitness boot camps have brought back the jump rope.  Jump ropes are a great way to get that cardio in and doesn’t take up much space.  You can burn 11 to 20 calories a minute jumping rope.  Just think of what a jump rope that only costs about $3.00 can do for you.  

COME CHECK US OUT!

Calories Per Gram

Remember that there is:

4 Calories per gram of Protein 

4 Calories per gram of Carbohydrates 

7 Calories per gram of Alcohol

9 Calories per gram of Fat

So if you are eating something that has 19 grams of protein, 11 grams of carbohydrates and 8 grams of fat. That comes up to 192 calories.

How To Prevent ACL Injuries 

The bad news is there’s no way to prevent ACL injuries.  The good news is that you can strengthen the muscles around the knee to help stability in the knee.  Some of these exercises that are good for strengthening the knee are squats, leg press, lunges, leg extensions and leg curls.  It’s also good to incorporate running, biking, jump rope or other type of cardio training into your program.  Plus, always remember to stretch.

“The Saying Use It Or Lose It”

This is true if you don’t use it you will lose it.  It does depend on what fitness level your where right before you stopped.  People who are at the a very high level of fitness will see a very big decline in the first 3 weeks of not exercising.  After that it will slow down greatly.  People who are at a moderate to low fitness level will see very little decline in the first 3 weeks and a much bigger decline after that.  Some people will tell you that you will lose it twice as fast as it took you to get it.  Thats not always true, but none the less you will lose it.

TARGET TRAINING ZONES

Healthy Heart Zone (Cool Down) --- 50 - 60% of maximum heart rate: The easiest zone and probably the best zone for people just starting a fitness program. It can also be used as a cool down for people. This zone has been shown to help decrease body fat, blood pressure and cholesterol. It also decreases the risk of degenerative diseases and has a low risk of injury. 85% of calories burned in this zone are fats!

Fitness Zone (Fat Burning) --- 60 - 70% of maximum heart rate: This zone provides the same benefits as the healthy heart zone, but is more intense and burns more total calories. The percent of fat calories is still 85%.

Aerobic Zone (Endurance Training) --- 70 - 80% of maximum heart rate: The aerobic zone will improve your cardiovascular and respiratory system AND increase the size and strength of your heart. This is the preferred zone if you are training for an endurance event. More calories are burned with 50% from fat.

Anaerobic Zone (Performance Training) --- 80 - 90% of maximum heart rate: Benefits of this zone include an improved VO2 maximum (the highest amount of oxygen one can consume during exercise) and thus an improved cardiorespiratory system, and a higher lactate tolerance ability which means your endurance will improve and you'll be able to fight fatigue better. This is a high intensity zone burning more calories, 15 % from fat.

Red Line (Maximum Effort) --- 90 - 100% of maximum heart rate: Although this zone burns the highest number of calories, it is very intense. Most people can only stay in this zone for short periods. You should only train in this zone if you are in very good shape and have been cleared by a physician to do so.

3 Things To A Good Exercise Program

3 Things To  A Good Exercise Program

Aerobic Exercise

Resistance Training Exercises

And Stretching Exercises

Do you need to do all of them together?  No, you can do them broken up if you like, but to get the best results.  You should do them all together.

Finding The Right Personal Trainer

Finding The Right Personal Trainer 

They should hold a current accredited certification with National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA.)  Some of these are ACE, NASM, ACSM and so on.  

Talk to the trainer, see if you click with the trainer.  You should feel comfortable with them.  They should always be positive and motivate you, not yell or be negative.  You want them to reinforce your accomplishments.

See if they have a college degree or some kind of background in fitness.  Not every personal trainer will have a college degree.  This doesn’t mean that they are not good at training, but they should have some kind of background in fitness.

Find out where there expertise lies.  If they have a good knowledge base in the area of fitness that you like.  You should think about working with them.  

The personal trainer should always ask if you have any limitations and develop a program around them.

Find out if they have liability insurance.  All personal trainer should have insurance.  If they don’t this should be a red flag.

See if they have references.  Most personal trainers won’t just have these right on hand, but they should be able to come up with them in a reasonable amount of time.

Last but not least, compatibility.  Do they come to me, do they work with my schedule, what about the trainers gender.  All of these things should be considered before picking a trainer.

Eating Late At Night Will Make You Fat

Many people believe tat eating late at night will make you get fat.  This is totally untrue. Eating more calories than what your body can burn is what’s going to make you fat.  So should you not eat at night.  No, eat when you want to.  Plus, people that are trying to gain muscle or have diabetes should think about eating a snack with whole grains and or low fat milk.  This will give you the protein or glucose slowly throughout out the night.  Always make healthy choses when eating late at night.

Seeing Results In Body Change

Many people starting a fitness program wont see measurable change in there body the first 12 weeks.  Unless they focus on your goals and train to meet those goals.  This will help speed up body change.  Many of these changes don’t become muscle memory until they have been maintained for at least 6 months.  Once it becomes muscle memory it is much essay to maintain that level of fitness.

Building Healthy Habits For The Whole Family

Family time should be put aside every week for you and your family to exercise.  Try not to think of it as exercise, but as family time.  Involve everyone in the activities and just try to have fun.  This will help your children to adopt these healthy habits into there activities later in life.  

Good Activity Ideas:

Hiking

Walking

Jogging

Biking

Playing Basketball

Playing Catch

Going To The Zoo And Walk Around

Going To The Mall And Walking Around

Going To The Beach And Playing In the Tide Pools

Water Can Quench Your Appetite

Dieters for years have been using water to cut their intake of calories.  Using water instead of drinking high sugar soft drinks can cut tons of calories.  Most people drink most of their calories and don’t even realize it.  A good trick that nutritionist have been using to cut those calories is drinking water.  Whenever you feel hungry or thirsty you can use water to cut that hunger or thirst.  Just drink a 12 oz. glass of water and what 15 to 20 minutes and see if you are still having that craving.  This works very well to help stop taking in those extra calories that you don’t need.

Making Healthy Eating Habits

Changing your food habits should take time.   It should never be all at once.  You want to take steps to achieve your goals on making new habits.  If you change your whole diet all at once you won’t make these changes long lasting.  So small changes every week to achieve these new habits.