My Strong Medicine

The adventures of a male nurse navigating through life, staying fit, surviving the journey.

Posts Tagged ‘fitness’

Does Unfit = Unhappy

Posted by Sean on January 30, 2011

This is a very interesting (yet disturbing) article. It of course has to use the late Jack LaLanne as the subject of discontent.
The article claims that we as a society have labeled ‘fit’ as being ‘happy’ and that if you are not ‘fit’ you feel unhappy and because of the ‘craze’ that Jack LaLanne started you have some sort of ‘guilt’ for not being ‘happy’.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this article and the notion of being ‘guilted’ into thinking that unless you exercise and strive for better health the public views you as a failure of some sort??
That some how we ‘fit’ individuals are a part of some ‘cult-like’ organization that is attempting to ‘out’ anyone who won’t follow.
Hmm.
Seems a bit extreme thinking.
I for one promote healthy living for the reward of improved quality of life and to decrease the ‘pain’ that goes along with unhealthy choices. I for one don’t believe in the extremes of this thought process. Any level of improved health is good in my book.

Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com
The Ripped and the Righteous

It is Jack LaLanne you can thank, or curse, for all the gyms: in exurban strip malls, suburban manses, downtown hotels. The health club he opened in Oakland, Calif., in 1936 was one of their seeds and templates, an endorphin emporium that pointed the way.

With “The Jack LaLanne Show,” he also had a hand in the spread — a contagion, really — of television programs exhorting viewers to rise up from their La-Z-Boys and of infomercials hawking workout equipment. An army of spandex missionaries was unleashed.

But that’s not the whole of his legacy, or the most interesting (some might say insidious) part.

That sense of failure you feel when you haven’t exercised in days? That conviction that if you could pull off better push-ups, you’d be a better person through and through? These, too, are his doing, at least in part. What he left behind when he died last week, at the toned old age of 96, was not only a sweaty culture of relentless crunching and spinning but also the notion that fitness equals character, and that self-actualization begins with the self-discipline to get and stay in shape. In the post-LaLanne landscape, it’s not the eyes but the abdominals that are windows to the soul.

Read more at www.nytimes.com

 

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Exercising Truancy

Posted by Sean on November 18, 2010

This is hilarious. I wonder though…
Things that make you go hmm..

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Weight Loss Inspiration Story & Community

Posted by Sean on November 7, 2010

This is another breath-taking inspirational story.

Watch this video and be amazed at how it’s almost a different person.

Ben Does Life

 

Ben is as real as it gets. He’s honest about his journey, it’s ups and downs, and how easy/tough it can be. I’ve been bumping into more and more fitness tumblr users through his posts.

On Tumblr I found the tag :fitblr.

This was a goldmine of fitness fellows who have their own Tumblr blogs, stories, tips & tricks, as well as an avenue for support and assistance along their fitness journey.

If you have any interest in learning how the ‘normal’ average Joe and Jill lose weight, pound by pound, inch by inch, day by day – get on Tumblr and follow this tag.

Heck come follow me: My Strong (Tumblr) Medicine.

I absolutely love the ‘community’ attempt Tumblr makes with their ‘dashboard’ settings, their ‘likes’, the oh-so confusing ‘notes’ and the integration of the Disqus commenting system.

There isn’t much I’m not liking about my new fitness Tumblr community of fitblr’s. Come join us!

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Fitness guru to help the military?

Posted by Sean on July 17, 2010

I’m not sure how I feel about this? I’m still baffled and frankly disgusted that the military actually needs help with their fitness level and is fighting obesity amongst its ranks???
What happened to our military?
Yes, I understand the obesity epidemic going on nationally, but how did the military become so sedentary that they became obese? Many moons ago as a former Jarhead, physical fitness wasn’t optional.
*sigh*
Now we need (is need a really good word) the help from a ‘fitness guru’ (slang term for someone who lost weight, shared their story and now is an expert) to assist our enlisted personnel in losing weight??
Help me out here my fellow readers.
What am I missing? Or am I the only one that’s a tad bit upset/disturbed/shocked by this??

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My Weekly Weak Sense of Humor

Posted by Sean on June 27, 2009

close to home exercise program

The fitness revolution continues.

Heh heh

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Improved Physical Fitness Lowers Your Risk of Death

Posted by Sean on May 20, 2009

Yes, you read that right. Death. All-cause death from coronary heart disease and cardiovascular disease. There is a new study that suggests increasing your cardio respiratory fitness can lower your risk of death, plain and simple.

Physical fitness is typically expressed as cardio respiratory fitness (CRF) and is assessed by exercise tolerance testing…

Compared with participants with high CRF, those with low CRF had a 70 percent higher risk for all-cause death and a 56 percent higher risk for CHD/CVD events

It doesn’t get any simpler than that folks. Do you want to live longer? Or die sooner?

So once again I ask you, why are you not exercising to improve your level of fitness?

Carpe Diem

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Over-Dun

Posted by Sean on May 4, 2009

clip_image001Image Source: Telegraph.co.uk

There is such a thing as over doing it. We call it over training.

It’s when you decide to exercise one body part excessively with the mind-frame of ‘more is better’.

I’m here to tell you there is a limit. There is a critical mass when the muscle you’re training is no longer benefitting from your exercise. Instead the muscle is being weakened and causing micro-trauma. The muscle is no longer getting bigger and stronger. The muscle is getting weaker and smaller.

Yes, I’m talking to you.

Yeah, the one who thought that doing ‘chest’ today meant doing EVERYTHING you could with your chest. And doing it in all one sitting.

Yeah, the one who thought after you did 3 sets of flat bench on the smith machine, then 3 more sets of incline, and then 3 sets of the pec deck was showing off your prowess and proving just how ‘big’ you really are.

Yep, the same person who after all those exercises thought doing the Hammer Strength Iso-Bench Machine was going to give you that ‘extra’ push to growing your chest that much larger. Who cares that when you did the exercises you were barely using HALF the range of motion of the exercise.

MORE, MORE, MORE.

Where did we learn this? Who did we learn this from? I’ve been around the weight room for most of my life, and I still can’t think of one instance where it was plausible and effective to do 6 or more exercises for one body part in one day over a 4 hr period.

And you wonder why you’re not getting stronger? Bigger?

Maybe you should do more? Add another exercise? Yeah.. that’ll do it.

Carpe Diem

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Your Lifestyle Will Never Be Perfect. No One’s Is.

Posted by Sean on April 25, 2009

balancing 

Yes, once again I said lifestyle, not DIET. I simply refuse to address the term.

We all know by now that the path to improved overall health and increasing your fitness level lies harshly on you and you’re DIET eating habits. Once again – "You can’t out-train a bad diet".

Let’s break it down into simple terms.

Now, for all of us most of us, we rarely ever follow the ‘perfect’ plan. We all have bad days. We all have moments of ‘weakness’. We all have to ‘indulge’ every once in a great while. We all are human (at least the last time I checked). Let’s make something perfectly clear, these ‘moments’ are neither good or bad. They just are. They become what you want them to become. These moments can either make you human or these moments can be the end-all-to-be-all.

You can have a ‘moment’ and simply chalk it up to being human with human tendencies, or you can have a moment that wrecks your psychological mind set and destroys your confidence and drive.

So depending on how many of these moments you have, your perceived goal will be extended from a short time frame of (let’s say) 3 months to more like 6 or 8 months (and maybe longer).

Your goal and your lifestyle follow a very simple checks and balances system that is rooted in mathematics (AGAIN). It’s all about the payback.

In order to move forward you must have more ‘acts’ in the positive column than the negative column. If you have more negatives than positives you will of course fall down the hill instead of climbing forward. And if you have an equal number of positives and negatives you will simply stay in the current ‘state’ of health and fitness you are in. SO in order to move forward on your journey, you must ‘payback’ yourself at least one more positive act then every negative act you perform. Once again weight loss is truly a simple math equation

Here’s the most difficult part of the payback.

You’re positives ‘acts’ will never be equivalent to your negative acts. (What the hell does that mean?)

It all comes back to – "You can’t out-train a bad diet". No matter how hard you train, no matter how many hours you sacrifice exercising, ‘busting your ass’, and sweating, your eating habits severely outweigh your movements.

It’s all about the calories folks. Calories you consume and calories burned. It really is that simple. It’s the calories consumed that ALWAYS trumps the calories burned.

Just because you ‘ran your ass off’ at the gym for 20 min 30 min 60 min 90 min does not mean you ‘burned off’ the calories you consumed the night before day before week before.

There is no better way to explain this than to watch one of the many videos that Craig created. After watching ANY of these videos it’s painfully obvious why what you eat grossly outweighs what you do.

It’s all about the payback.

So does this mean you won’t achieve your ultimate goal? Does this mean that if you slip up and eat the wrong foods, or re-visit a bad eating habit that you are bound for failure.

NO.

It only tells you that your goal is now farther to reach. It means your goal will take longer to achieve. And unfortunately there is no way of quantifying the difference. Basically the journey’s time frame has been extended.

It’s up to you how long you want the journey to be. Everything you eat has a destination (fuel or fat).

It’s up to you where it lands.

Carpe Diem

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Do You Have The Spidey Sense?

Posted by Sean on January 27, 2009

I WOULD LOVE TO TRY THIS EXERCISE! THIS REALLY TAXES YOUR CORE.
Courtesy of : http://www.straighttothebar.com/


A variation of the Spiderman Push-up using the Valslide. Nice one.

Posted in fitness | Tagged: , , | 4 Comments »

How Personal is Your Personal Trainer?

Posted by Sean on December 9, 2008

image

We entrust our most treasured commodity (our bodies) with these professionals. We pay them money to transform out bodies into something ‘better’.

Some are looking to lose weight.

Some are looking to ‘tone’ up.

Some are looking to ‘gain’ weight in the form of more muscle.

The list goes on. But that’s the point. The list of needs and wants for a personal trainer is so vast and innumerable. Which is why you hire this professional for their skill, their education and training. You expect them to be didactically prepared to meet as many of your needs as possible by creating a routine, a regime, heck an lifestyle that will help you achieve your goal. Something you felt you couldn’t accomplish on you own, and needed a professional hand.

Be aware.

Before you pay your money. Before you subject your mind, your body and your soul to their every whim and every suggestions, be sure to observe what they do with others. Take a look at their other clients. And be sure to look at more than one.

Are their clients being transformed?

Not sure? Then ask them.

What are they doing. What exercises are they performing? What new guidelines and regime are they following?

If you start to notice a trend. If you discover that different clients are doing carbon copy workouts, then you might want to save your money.

How is it the mid-20′s female who is ‘curvy’, and the 50-some male who is barrel-chested, and the 30-something couple who are overweight are all doing the same exercises? They may be doing different weights. They may even be doing them in a different order, but they are all following the same path?

I guess they all had the same starting point, the same progression, and the same goal right? I mean how could those 3 clients possibly have different need, different habits, and different results?

Hmm?

Just how personal is YOUR personal trainer?

Carpe Diem

Image Source: Clip Art Heaven

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