Image Credit: Lost Fun Zone
Read part 1 about quitting junk food here.
You’ve probably heard it a thousand times: you are what you eat. So if we’re going out and eating like crap everyday, then what are we? You can think that one over, but in the meantime, something needs to be done about it.
Quitting junk food won’t be easy though, because your body grows accustomed to what you feed it. Being stuck on junk food is nothing like being a crack addict, but some research shows that junk food still has many addictive properties.
So it’s gonna be tough, no doubt about it. Here’s how to do it:
1. Have a purpose: You’re not just quitting for the hell of it. You want to get something out of your hard work. Hold onto that thought and let it be your motivator… maybe it’s to impress a girl/guy or look (more…)
Just starting out with weightlifting? Want to get bigger muscles this winter?
Get my full-body lifting routine here: FullBodyAttack!
Your body is 100% unable to do anything that your brain does not tell it to do. Period.
For every movement you make, and for every action you take, the initiation and completion begins and ends with the signals that come from your brain. Since your brain is the central command center for your body, it makes sense that improving the function of your mind also improves your physical capabilities.
This improvement can be accomplished through mental rehearsal and visualization. By using your mind to visualize the actions you will take, dramatic increases in performance are possible. Here is an example:
Individuals were divided into 3 groups. Each group was tested to see how many free throws they could successfully shoot with a basketball at the beginning and the end of the study.
Group A: Practiced free throws for 20 minutes Group B: Did not practice free throws at all Group C: Practiced mental free throws every night for 20 minutes. No real free throws were done, only a mental (more…)
Continue reading about Mind Over Matter: Performance Through Visualization
All this time you thought those thousands of sit-ups were going to build you a six pack… only to have me tell you that you might have been wasting your time.
(And chances are, you have no business doing any abs work – unless your diet is great, you are doing compound weight training, and are already fairly lean.)
The truth is that sit-ups only work your abs indirectly. All that time that you spent doing those sit-ups was really a greater benefit to your hip flexors than for your abs. Were you not trying to build up tough hip flexors with your sit-ups? If not, I’m sorry to be the one to bring you the bad news. I’ll explain what all of this means.
How your abs work:
Muscles work through contraction. To put it simply, when a muscle contracts, it becomes shorter in length as the fibers pull together. So let’s think about what this means for your abdominals. What happens when your abdominals contract?
Again, when you abdominals contract, the muscles of your stomach area pull together and essentially become shorter, thereby moving the skeletal structure they are attached to. This contraction of the abdominals shortens your abdomen and pulls your rib cage and your shoulders toward your hips (see the picture up top).
Pulling your shoulders toward your hips is exactly the type of movement we see in the various types of stomach crunch exercises. A proper crunch will keep your lower back flat to the ground, and as your shoulders are pulled toward your hips, your spine will also inevitably bend and flex. This is what we call spinal flexion.
Crunches aren’t for sissies though. The range of motion for these is quite small, so they don’t look as impressive as a full sit-up, but a well-executed crunch will place intense stress on your abs and create a burn.
Focus on really pulling with the stomach muscles and squeezing them at the top of the movement for a moment. Like any other exercise, adding weight is important, but we’ll talk about ways to do that another day.
Why sit-ups don’t work (very well):
Here’s the bad news: all of that great spinal flexion and pulling with the abs doesn’t happen very much when you do sit-ups. Think about what’s happening when you do sit-ups. Your body is bending at the hips to pull your torso upward. This is called hip flexion, and it doesn’t use your abs nearly as much.
The beginning of the sit-up movement is the most effective part for your abs. The sit-up begins by pulling with the abs for about the first 30-45 degrees of the movement. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that the rest of the movement is done by your hip flexors. The hip flexors are a little group of muscles that help connect your femur (leg bone) to your back bone/ pelvis (check out the picture on the left).
Once your abs have completed the first 30-45 degrees of movement in your sit-up, they then begin to act only as stabilizer muscles. They hold your upper body in that flexed position isometrically while your hip flexors do the dirty work to pull your body upward at the hips. So your abs are indirectly involved in the movement, and this explains why they can get a little sore when you do sit-ups, especially if you have weak abs.
Don’t believe me? Try it for yourself right now. Stand in a doorway and hold on with one hand for stability. Place your other hand on your abs to see how much they flex. Now, raise your leg straight up in front of you. You will feel tightness in the top of your thigh, but not your abs. Leg raises and sit-ups are essentially the same movement in reverse.
Image credit: oatmeal2000
I can already feel the hate mail coming, but I’m going to say it anyway: you shouldn’t always trust science. Instead, we’re going to talk about a better way of going about things.
First off, I realize that there’s not a crystal ball that magically reveals all truth, and science is the best method we have for understanding health and how the human body functions.
But science is a back and forth process of sharing ideas, debate, and seeking evidence. Science isn’t always right, and all the new studies that we hear about should be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism, and sometimes even ignored.
Here’s why:
Statistical models show that we live in a world of healthy mediums. When we measure the characteristics of a certain population, we usually end up with a nice bell curve as shown below. For example, the average height of men in the
Let’s say for example, that you are a scientist and you are trying to figure out if saturated fats (animal fats) are fit for human consumption. You conduct a few studies that seem to show it has some negative side effects, so you conclude that people should eat zero fat. Just stop eating all fat (and that’s what we did).
A few decades later, a new group of scientists, including Mary Enig (more…)
How will I ever find time to workout with my busy schedule?
It’s a question that anybody who exercises regularly has had to deal with. Finding time to workout is not easy, it’s unlikely, and quite frankly, you shouldn’t even try to find time to workout.
What kind of advice is that for a workout site?
It’s good advice. Because the truth is, if you are looking to “find” time to workout, you’ll probably be looking for a very long time. You have a job, you have to study, maybe you have kids… you’re a busy person, and I seriously doubt that you’re going to “find” the time laying around. No, the only way you will ever have time to workout is if you stop trying to “find” the time and start making the time.
And if you’re not struggling with time for your workouts now, you will some day. Get into the mindset right now that it will be tough to keep the exercise habit at some point in your life (if it isn’t already). Mentally preparing those times of life in advance will help you to deal with them when they finally arrive.
Here’s an incomplete list of ways to make the time:
1. Choose your time wisely: Each time of the day has it’s benefits, but be open to other times, such as the morning. You might not have the same schedule for the rest of your life, and since (more…)
Continue reading about The Only Way You Will Ever Have Time To Workout
Alright, you may have seen people wearing a belt in the gym and wondered if a weight belt is for you. In general, and for most of you reading this, a weight belt is probably something that should be used sparingly in your workouts, and maybe not at all.
Whether a weight belt holds back your core muscles from experiencing growth on heavy exercises is debatable, but the belt can provide safety when you’re doing very heavy lifts or when there is a possibility of injury.
There are 3 reasons you might want to wear a weight belt when you workout:
1. Reduce Stress: belts help to reduce stress in exercises where the spinal erectors are involved in holding your lower back straight. Think of exercises like the deadlift or squats.
2. Prevent Hyperextension: By helping you to keep your lower back straight, a weight belt can keep (more…)
When it comes to losing fat and building muscle, eating less food is not the answer to getting lean and cut. Others will try to tell you that losing excess fat is simply a matter of using more calories than you eat. What they don’t tell you is that eating less will slow your metabolism.
Part of the secret to eating the right amounts of food while keeping your fat levels in check is to use the thermic effect of food to your advantage.
The thermic effect (also referred to as specific dynamic action) is the incremental energy requirement above your resting metabolic rate used due to the cost of digestion, absorption, and disposal of ingested food.
Translation: Some of the foods you eat speed up your metabolism more than other foods.
You’ll find it much easier to reduce your fat levels if you consume plenty of foods with a higher thermic effect. Proteins tend to have a much higher thermic effect than other types of foods.
Calculating the thermic effect: A general guideline used by some to calculate the thermic effect of the foods you eat is to take your total calorie consumption and multiply that (more…)
Continue reading about Burn Fat With The Thermic Effect of Food
Think you’re too wimpy or too small to be seen in a gym? Better think again.
His name is Aditya, but his friends call him Romeo. He is 2’9” tall, weighs in at less than 20 pounds, and feels no shame whatsoever as throngs of people come to see him as the smallest bodybuilder ever.
And why should he feel any shame whatsoever?
What is wrong with being born with a frame that’s smaller or larger than usual?
Yeah, I know that it’s easy for a beginner to feel out of place in a gym. You’re struggling to press an empty bar while some beast of a man is pressing 500 pounds next to you. You might feel too embarrassed to be seen in public with all the other fit people.
“Look at the fat guy jiggling on the treadmill!”
“What’s that little wimp doing near my bench!”
But these are only voices in your head. Voices that are helping you to rationalize and not take control of your life. It is the fear of ridicule from your peers… And while this self-consciousness can be a powerful motivator, it can also be an overpowering inhibitor.
Take the words of Romeo:
“I’ve been training as a bodybuilder for the last two years, and by now I think I must be the strongest dwarf in the world.”
“I have always been fit, but since I started working out, I have become famous for my strength.”
May the best dwarf win
Weight training can build your confidence, but confidence is also required just to get started with any pursuit in life. Whether you’re learning to lift, learning a new language, learning to sing… the fear of doing poorly is often the greatest factor that holds you back from what you could become.
There’s nothing wrong with being naturally larger or smaller (less witty, less handsome, etc.) than other people. What matters the most is how you deal with what you’ve been given in life. And if you happen to feel abnormal or like you’re a dwarf in life, don’t let it get in the way of your goals or your dreams.
What matters most is not what you’ve been given in life, but what you give, so give it your best so that you can live without any regrets. Whether it’s your workout, your career, or your social life… Just get out there and be the best dwarf in the world.
Continue reading about I Am The Strongest Dwarf In The World
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