Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Monday, January 3, 2011
2/3 of Canadians Overweight
This CBC article drove me crazy!
When people were asked why they aren't healthier, lack of time was the main reason given:
Not enough time to get vigorous exercise regularly? BULLSHIT, you're lazy! Vigorous exercise can be completed in less that 30 minutes including warm-up. Get a Crossfit trainer.
Not enough time to sleep? Bullshit! Set your priorities straight and get the rest you require. If your job takes precedence over your health, get a new job!
"Increasingly, we are cocooning inside our houses, in front of screens, remaining motionless," <------Exactly!
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/12/31/canada-weighs-in-poll-health-myths.html#ixzz19ziT7jNA
When people were asked why they aren't healthier, lack of time was the main reason given:
- Not enough time to make healthy meals: 37 per cent.
- Not enough time to get vigorous exercise regularly: 42 per cent.
- Not enough time to sleep: 36 per cent.
Not enough time to get vigorous exercise regularly? BULLSHIT, you're lazy! Vigorous exercise can be completed in less that 30 minutes including warm-up. Get a Crossfit trainer.
Not enough time to sleep? Bullshit! Set your priorities straight and get the rest you require. If your job takes precedence over your health, get a new job!
"Increasingly, we are cocooning inside our houses, in front of screens, remaining motionless," <------Exactly!
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/12/31/canada-weighs-in-poll-health-myths.html#ixzz19ziT7jNA
Monday, October 11, 2010
How to Minimize Callus Formation & Treat Ripped Calluses
Here's a great article from stronglifts.com on how to prevent and take care of ripped callus. I ripped my hands badly doing FRAN on day one of my Crossfit cert last summer. A few people ripped theirs on day one of my KB cert and suffered badly. I just spent the last 10 minutes shaving the callus build-up from my palms. Now the methods below are very safe however if I used those tools it would take hours to do just one palm. I would never advocate using a sharp hunting knife but if you do, do it very slowly. It will take you 10 minutes. From experience, if you don't shave them down every week or so, you will rip them. That takes away precious time from effective training.
Callus formation is a byproduct of strength training & weight lifting, just like building muscle & losing fat are. The pressure of the bar against the bones of your hands promotes callus formation.
Gripping the bar remains painful as long as you don’t have calluses. That’s one reason you should never wear gloves. However big calluses tear apart more easily, so you should minimize callus formation. Here’s how.
Grip Bars Correctly. The bar will slide down in your hand during Barbell Rows, Deadlifts & Pull-ups if you put it in the palm of your hands. Your skin will fold, increasing callus formation.
Put the bar close to your fingers. Not in the palm of your hand. This only applies to pulling exercises! On pushing exercises like Bench Press, Overhead Press or Dips, the bar must be close to your wrists.
Chalk. Chalk fills your skin folds, making the surface of your hand palm smooth. Less skin is pressed down, thus less callus formation. Chalk also provides a better a grip by preventing sweating. Click here to get chalk from Amazon.
Shave Calluses. Don’t bite or rip off calluses with your nails, you’ll rip off too much and they’ll bleed. Shave calluses every 10 days. Avoid too much shaving: it weakens the surrounding skin, causing ripped callus. Tools you can use:
How to Treat Ripped Calluses. In case you didn’t followed the above tips and ripped a callus, here’s what you can do:
Callus formation is a byproduct of strength training & weight lifting, just like building muscle & losing fat are. The pressure of the bar against the bones of your hands promotes callus formation.
Gripping the bar remains painful as long as you don’t have calluses. That’s one reason you should never wear gloves. However big calluses tear apart more easily, so you should minimize callus formation. Here’s how.
Grip Bars Correctly. The bar will slide down in your hand during Barbell Rows, Deadlifts & Pull-ups if you put it in the palm of your hands. Your skin will fold, increasing callus formation.
Put the bar close to your fingers. Not in the palm of your hand. This only applies to pulling exercises! On pushing exercises like Bench Press, Overhead Press or Dips, the bar must be close to your wrists.
Chalk. Chalk fills your skin folds, making the surface of your hand palm smooth. Less skin is pressed down, thus less callus formation. Chalk also provides a better a grip by preventing sweating. Click here to get chalk from Amazon.
Shave Calluses. Don’t bite or rip off calluses with your nails, you’ll rip off too much and they’ll bleed. Shave calluses every 10 days. Avoid too much shaving: it weakens the surrounding skin, causing ripped callus. Tools you can use:
- Pumice stones
- Nail files
- Foot files
How to Treat Ripped Calluses. In case you didn’t followed the above tips and ripped a callus, here’s what you can do:
- Cut the ripped skin away using scissors
- Disinfect
- Wrap nose tissue around your hand when working out
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Agatsu Kettlebell Cert
I had an incredible Agatsu Kettlebell (KB) Certification this weekend. We were lucky enough to have Shawn Mozen (The foremost authority on Kettlebell training in Canada) as our instructor. I must say that I was a little nervous months ago after signing up. Here is a cut and paste from their .com
Instructor courses are intense and very physical. Each weekend course is aprox 16hrs and covers: Kettlebell basics and advanced exercises, Joint Mobility and Bodyweight Exercises as well as marketing. This is NOT a pay for diploma, you must earn your diploma. Be prepared for an intense physical and educational challenge. Any instructor who is recognized by Agatsu Inc may attend any future workshop for their level free of charge to upgrade their skills. Anyone who does not pass an Agatsu instructor course course may within one year attempt the same course free of charge.
This was no joke. I was able to push my limits during this certification and explore new avenues of soreness. Check out this benchmark work-out. We had to complete this after a full day of training. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCsVnvubjYo&feature=fvw
Day two started with the pistol squats (one legged squats) and then the Turkish Get up (TGU). The morning refining our skills, marketing lecture, bodyweight exercises and a 15 minute lunch. We spent a good portion of the afternoon coaching each other. There was a written exam and a demo exam that we had to pass. The end of the day consisted of....you guessed it, another work out. 5 rounds of 5 minutes each of alternating swings, presses, and bodyweight exercises with a 1 minute break between. Call it a champion fight. There was only 1 rule, put the KB on the floor and fail. Imagine 16 hours of driving the body and the putting your KB down on your last 25 minute work out. I am stoked about being able to start teaching my newly acquired skills.
Instructor courses are intense and very physical. Each weekend course is aprox 16hrs and covers: Kettlebell basics and advanced exercises, Joint Mobility and Bodyweight Exercises as well as marketing. This is NOT a pay for diploma, you must earn your diploma. Be prepared for an intense physical and educational challenge. Any instructor who is recognized by Agatsu Inc may attend any future workshop for their level free of charge to upgrade their skills. Anyone who does not pass an Agatsu instructor course course may within one year attempt the same course free of charge.
This was no joke. I was able to push my limits during this certification and explore new avenues of soreness. Check out this benchmark work-out. We had to complete this after a full day of training. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCsVnvubjYo&feature=fvw
Day two started with the pistol squats (one legged squats) and then the Turkish Get up (TGU). The morning refining our skills, marketing lecture, bodyweight exercises and a 15 minute lunch. We spent a good portion of the afternoon coaching each other. There was a written exam and a demo exam that we had to pass. The end of the day consisted of....you guessed it, another work out. 5 rounds of 5 minutes each of alternating swings, presses, and bodyweight exercises with a 1 minute break between. Call it a champion fight. There was only 1 rule, put the KB on the floor and fail. Imagine 16 hours of driving the body and the putting your KB down on your last 25 minute work out. I am stoked about being able to start teaching my newly acquired skills.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Canadian obesity rates climb
Todays headline in the news on CBC! Why am I not surprised? It doesn't end there either, it's going to increase. Have a read.
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/09/23/obesity-canada-adults-oecd.html
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/09/23/obesity-canada-adults-oecd.html
Monday, September 20, 2010
Gym memberships among top consumer complaints
Globo gyms charging to use their machines and showers. You try and quit and look what happens.....
http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2010/09/20/con-gym-membership.html
http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2010/09/20/con-gym-membership.html
Friday, September 17, 2010
Benefits of High Intensity Workouts
In relation to getting into shape, the terms high intensity and low intensity are used a lot but aren’t defined with nearly the same frequency. I suppose that’s because we’re all supposed to know the difference…but many don’t really understand the difference at all.
In general, low intensity exercises work your heart rate at around 60 percent of your maximum heart rate. A high intensity exercise works your heart rate at around 75 percent or more of your maximum heart rate. I suppose this means that anything working your heart at between 60 percent and 75 percent of your maximum heart rate is a moderate intensity exercise, but they must have a bad public relations firm because you don’t hear much about them.
You can determine your maximum heart rate by taking your current age from 220. So, for example, if you’re 50 at the moment, then your maximum heart rate is 170 beats per minute. Don’t let the term “maximum heart rate” fool or scare you. It isn’t referred to as such because it’s the maximum rate your heart can beat before damage occurs; it’s simply the absolute maximum rate your heart will beat.
The 220-age formula is only an estimate and, depending on your individual physiology, you may find yourself exceeding that number. That’s fine, you shouldn’t panic because it’s nearly impossible to damage a healthy heart with exercise. High intensity exercises are simply much more beneficial for your overall health. Aside from burning calories, these exercises help increase muscle mass; low intensity exercises don’t do this. Even if you’re not looking to become a bodybuilder, building muscle is always a good idea for your overall health and prevention of accidental injuries during everyday life.
Low intensity exercises also don’t do very much to increase your overall metabolism while high intensity exercises do. This increase in metabolism is crucial to overall weight loss and general health.
With the exception of the injured, ill, out-of-shape or elderly, there is no reason for anyone to stick solely to a low intensity workout. If you do happen to be in poor shape, then you should begin exercising with a low intensity workout for a little while as you build up to high intensity exercises.
So why do people stick to low intensity workouts? The main reasons are because low intensity exercises are easier and a trainer may have recommended it. Wait…If high intensity is better, why would a trainer recommend low intensity? The two main reasons are personal liability and a misunderstanding of the numbers involved. Basically, you are much less likely to injure yourself during a low intensity workout, so a trainer is protecting themselves by recommending a safe exercise plan. This is easy enough to understand, although a proper trainer will do their job and train you not to injure yourself during high intensity exercises.
The second reason, a misunderstanding, requires a bit more explanation. You see, low intensity exercises burn a higher percentage of calories from fat than high intensity exercises. Low intensity exercises burn approximately 50 percent fat for energy while high intensity exercises burn approximately 40 percent fat for energy. This difference is not great enough to justify the tradeoffs. Besides, it doesn’t actually mean you burn more fat with low intensity exercises. Confused? This is where the misunderstanding comes in. Hypothetically speaking, let’s say that you burn 100 calories by walking for 20 minutes. Walking is a low impact exercise, so you burned 50 fat calories (50 percent of one hundred).
Ten minutes of high intensity exercise, however, can easily burn 160 calories. Since high intensity exercises burn 40 percent fat for energy, you just burned 64 fat calories. You burned 14 more fat calories, but only spent 10 minutes doing it. Basically, the percentage is technically smaller, but you burn more total calories in less time with high intensity exercises. A smaller percentage of a bigger number is better than a bigger percentage of a smaller number.
In addition to this, low intensity workouts only burn fat calories while you’re actually doing them. High intensity workouts, because they increase your metabolism, continue burning fat for hours after you’re done working out. And, because muscle burns more calories than fat, the increased muscle mass means you’ll be burning more calories every second of the day because of your high intensity workout. As you can see, there really isn’t any reason to stick with a low intensity workout when you can step up to a high intensity workout and get a greater benefit in less time.
In general, low intensity exercises work your heart rate at around 60 percent of your maximum heart rate. A high intensity exercise works your heart rate at around 75 percent or more of your maximum heart rate. I suppose this means that anything working your heart at between 60 percent and 75 percent of your maximum heart rate is a moderate intensity exercise, but they must have a bad public relations firm because you don’t hear much about them.
You can determine your maximum heart rate by taking your current age from 220. So, for example, if you’re 50 at the moment, then your maximum heart rate is 170 beats per minute. Don’t let the term “maximum heart rate” fool or scare you. It isn’t referred to as such because it’s the maximum rate your heart can beat before damage occurs; it’s simply the absolute maximum rate your heart will beat.
The 220-age formula is only an estimate and, depending on your individual physiology, you may find yourself exceeding that number. That’s fine, you shouldn’t panic because it’s nearly impossible to damage a healthy heart with exercise. High intensity exercises are simply much more beneficial for your overall health. Aside from burning calories, these exercises help increase muscle mass; low intensity exercises don’t do this. Even if you’re not looking to become a bodybuilder, building muscle is always a good idea for your overall health and prevention of accidental injuries during everyday life.
Low intensity exercises also don’t do very much to increase your overall metabolism while high intensity exercises do. This increase in metabolism is crucial to overall weight loss and general health.
With the exception of the injured, ill, out-of-shape or elderly, there is no reason for anyone to stick solely to a low intensity workout. If you do happen to be in poor shape, then you should begin exercising with a low intensity workout for a little while as you build up to high intensity exercises.
So why do people stick to low intensity workouts? The main reasons are because low intensity exercises are easier and a trainer may have recommended it. Wait…If high intensity is better, why would a trainer recommend low intensity? The two main reasons are personal liability and a misunderstanding of the numbers involved. Basically, you are much less likely to injure yourself during a low intensity workout, so a trainer is protecting themselves by recommending a safe exercise plan. This is easy enough to understand, although a proper trainer will do their job and train you not to injure yourself during high intensity exercises.
The second reason, a misunderstanding, requires a bit more explanation. You see, low intensity exercises burn a higher percentage of calories from fat than high intensity exercises. Low intensity exercises burn approximately 50 percent fat for energy while high intensity exercises burn approximately 40 percent fat for energy. This difference is not great enough to justify the tradeoffs. Besides, it doesn’t actually mean you burn more fat with low intensity exercises. Confused? This is where the misunderstanding comes in. Hypothetically speaking, let’s say that you burn 100 calories by walking for 20 minutes. Walking is a low impact exercise, so you burned 50 fat calories (50 percent of one hundred).
Ten minutes of high intensity exercise, however, can easily burn 160 calories. Since high intensity exercises burn 40 percent fat for energy, you just burned 64 fat calories. You burned 14 more fat calories, but only spent 10 minutes doing it. Basically, the percentage is technically smaller, but you burn more total calories in less time with high intensity exercises. A smaller percentage of a bigger number is better than a bigger percentage of a smaller number.
In addition to this, low intensity workouts only burn fat calories while you’re actually doing them. High intensity workouts, because they increase your metabolism, continue burning fat for hours after you’re done working out. And, because muscle burns more calories than fat, the increased muscle mass means you’ll be burning more calories every second of the day because of your high intensity workout. As you can see, there really isn’t any reason to stick with a low intensity workout when you can step up to a high intensity workout and get a greater benefit in less time.
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