The All Health Network

Red, yellow, delicious, granny smith? change it up.

One of the “newest” things I’ve started seeing around the gym is kettleballs. If you haven’t seen them, they look like a bowling ball with a handle on it. Now of course the lighter weights may only look like a softball or a grapefruit with a handle, but you basically get the idea.

Kettleballs are new only in the sense that they are becoming the new fashion, not that they are actually some sort of new invention. They’ve been around for over a hundered years acutally, being used extensively in the soviet bloc nations, specifically Russia for many many years. So why all the attention all of a sudden, and why are they the next best thing to sliced bread?

They’re not. Don’t get me wrong here. They are an interesting piece of equipment that can give you tremendous results. But they are just another piece of equipment. The training is somewhat different than the traditional plates, bars and dumb bells, but the ending result can be identical. The lure of kettleballs is that they are different and different is good. The biggest danger at the gym for most people is boredom.

Here are the steps:
1) you figure out a plan
2) you begin the routine
3) it becomes routine
4) you get bored with the routine
5) you quit the routine

That’s the way it happens a lot of the time. Maybe not you, maybe not yet, but sooner or later. So what I have to offer is the change up. Just like a batter in baseball gets used to how a pitcher is throwing the ball, the pitcher has to change up the routine to be effective, and so do you.

If you are doing circuit training on machines, try using the free weights for a while. And vice versa. I know a lot of guys who shun the machines as something for the newbies or women, but those machines can isolate muscles and throw a whole new dimension into your workout.

When you’ve switched once, try another change - go for a class. Try doing a Yoga class a few times a week, or spinning.

Keeping things interesting is the best way to keep the gym as a part of your life. Try it and see.

My son told me that he wanted to trade arms with me. Just in case you wondered, he wasn’t talking about rifles or nuclear weapons, he was talking about the ‘big guns’ the bicep/tricep combination.

He has, many times, started a fitness program. By program, I mean randomly picking up weights and lifting them a few times and then heading to the bathroom to check progress in the mirror. Surprisingly enough, this seems to be a strategy many adults follow as well, except perhaps with a bit more structure.

Now, big gun comments aside, I am in fairly good shape. Not someone you are going to gawk at as I walk down the prominade at the local mall, but I am not embarrassed to take my shirt off at the beach. But that didn’t come with limited effort. There was a plan, and I followed it rigorously for pretty many years. I still have plans and take action. That’s how you get results.

So yesterday my son says to me, what can I do to exercise my lower back? Seemed like an odd question. That has to be the least looked at body part of all times. Quick when was the last time you looked at a guy or girl and said, “wow, look at that lower back!!”

I said to him, what are you thinking about with that? He was thinking about total fitness and not concentrating on one specific area. Bravo young man. That’s all I could think.

Still no real plan, but he’s thinking about it. He actually picked up a book I recommended and was looking at the exercise routines and fitness plans. I have a good feeling about that.

What are you doing fitness-wise? Are you taking action on your fitness plan? Do you have a plan?

Reset Your Mind?

This doesn’t directly tie in to the health and fitness theme, but it certainly is something to consider. How much sleep do you get every night? If you are like many people in this multi-tasking, do-more age you probably aren’t getting as much as you should. I have no room to talk, as I get 6 or 7 hours on a good night, but there is some new evidence to think about.

Would you be more effective at your job if you got more sleep? Could you be a better problem solver? A study recently conducted through the UK National Academy of Sciences showed that people who took naps that resulted in some REM stages of sleep were better able to solve problems. The scientists involved said that some problems can be solved strictly with the passage of time, meaning that through thinking about them, they end up resolved, others didn’t get solved that way.

A statement was made “…only REM sleep enhances creativity” The statistics of this study showed that the REM sleep improved creative problem solving by nearly 40%!!

That’s all for now, I have to take a nap.

link to article

Eating Yogurt with a Fork?

In order to grow as a person, you have to begin to be larger than what you are right now. What do you aspire to be? And what are you doing to get there? Are you waiting for someone to offer you a new job or a scholarship or an internship? You can’t just sit on your hands and wait for the world to give you an opportunity on a silver platter. You must begin to be more, right where you are.

First you must fulfill every expectation in the position you now hold. If you are employed begin to do everything that is expected plus extra steps that are beyond that. I’m sure you have co-workers that do the bare minimum to get by. Maybe not currently, but surely at one point you have had to work with these slugs. They are the ones that leave the coffee pot empty as they take the last cup, they use the last sheet of paper in the printer and let you take care of that as well. Rise above the pettiness of normal office or shop shortcomings and be pro-active.

Start looking at the position above yours and figure out what you can do to be qualified for that, if you desire to rise in your current workplace. Think about steps you can take now to make your desires come true. Do you want to be a professional writer? Start writing for the weekly penny pincher magazine. Do it for free if they don’t have paid positions. Get your name out there as someone who is dependable and can provide services that more than meet expectations.

Do you want to be a better ball player? Stay late at practice. Ask the coaches what you can do to improve. Hit the weight room a few extra sessions a week.

Do you want to master the stock market? Read the Wall Street Journal every day and study Warren Buffett and other masters of that realm. Scour the trade papers and on-line journals for hints. Attend seminars that will help you to rise above the level of mediocrity that so many seem to be satisfied with.

Only by striving to be more than what you are, and having a vision of what you want to become, and taking steps to prepare yourself for future opportunities and eventual success can you become what you are aiming for. Reach for the stars and you will at least reach the moon.

I was having a discussion with my oldest daughter about training methods, and she, in her years of experience and wisdom, has devised her own training plan. By plan I mean she plans to go to the gym, and that part she does. That’s nearly where the plan ends.

Now I am not saying that to put down my daughter, but to point out that many people have this same fitness agenda. Monday Wednesday Friday, resistance training, Tues, Thurs, Sat, cardio, Sunday rest. Now repeat.

That’s a good start, but to have the most effective plan, and the best bang for your buck, you need to have those activities quantified and defined. What do you do for resistance training? What machines or specific weights do you use? Barbells, Dumbells… How many reps, how much weight? What muscle or muscle groups aer you targeting? What is the progress you’ve made? What goals are you trying to reach? Have you switched to different exercises to overcome the fact that your muscles do become atuned to routine?

One last question. Are you over-training? Your body will switch modes and get into a different metabolic burn rate, if it feels that you are in a starvation/lack stage in your life. Having plenty of quality food and a shorter exercise period will give you much better results that too little food and too much time at the gym.

[ Editor's Note:  Fitness author Jon Benson shared this letter with me and gave me permission to share it with you. ]

Got arm flab?

Know someone who does?

Some women I know with a healthy sense of humor refer to it as “their wings” because their arm flab flaps when they walk or jog.

It’s time to get rid of your wings ladies…

… and guys, listen up:  You are not immune to arm flab. Even if your don’t have any, the tips I’m about to give will help you build stronger arms.

Before I go any further, I have to tell you about Marty Web.

Marty looked like … well, your typical 59-year-old housewife. Actually she looked a bit worse.

She was a good 80 pounds over her ideal bodyweight. And she had her wings…

… big time wings. Loads of arm flab.

That was at age 59.

At age 61… wow. Different story.

Marty transformed her body to such a degree that even I could have never guessed she was an OUNCE overweight!

Her story and 52 others just like her, male and female, are in my first book — and my best-seller Fit Over 40.

I’d like you to read more about it here –

Fit Over 40 <— cure for arm flab

Marty replaced her “wings” with toned, beautiful arms. And you can too.

She has two pages in Fit Over 40… too much to cover in an email… but here’s the basics to get you started:

1. You have to get your nutrition down pat. Most people think that the flab on their arms (or anywhere for that matter) can be solved by “turning it into muscle.”

This is not true folks. Fat does not turn into “anything”. It is used for energy. Period.

Muscle is muscle. Fat is fat.

You must use low-insulin nutrition like I recommend in all my books, including Fit Over 40, to lower your bodyfat. For ladies, the back-of-the-arm bodyfat is often the last bit to go.

But I promise — it will go. I can go for anyone. Marty Web and dozens of other ladies in Fit Over 40 prove that in living color… and they share how they did it.

Low-insulin nutrition means eating more protein-rich foods, foods that are not processed, and plenty of tasty veggies. But it does not mean you cannot have your pizza and burgers here and there. I do every week and my bodyfat is low.

2. You must train your triceps. The back of the arm is made of three muscles called the “triceps”. You have a long head, a medial head and a lateral head that form the triceps muscle group.

If you cannot access a gym, you can do plain-old pushups to work all three heads of the triceps. Here’s a few tips. First, if you cannot do a pushup with your legs straight, start by doing them on your knees. Work up to straight-legged pushups.

Second, do one third of your reps with your hands facing away from your body, one third with your hands facing toward your body (fingers pointing toward you) and the final third with your hands in the “normal” pushup position, facing the same direction as your body. This will work the various heads nicely.

If you have access to a gym, see the exercises for the triceps found in my book Fit Over 40:

Fit Over 40 <— say good-bye to arm flab

3. Finally, you have to have a role model. Find someone like Marty who has lost their wings and use their success to inspire you.

Put these three things together and you too will be “grounded” — wingless, but with a lovely pair of arms that never jiggle and look fantastic.

There was some misunderstanding about my last post, “It’s On” especially the point about weight loss being a bad idea. Should you have a weight loss goal? Should you have a ‘target weight?’ What problems do I see with that sort of mentality?

I’ll start off saying that a weight loss goal, in and of itself, is not a totally bad idea, but the why behind that is the real issue. In the good old US of A, we seem to be obsessed with image and “thin is in.” and although studies have shown that people weighing less, live longer on average, there is a lot that is not taken into consideration in those studies. First, they were initially based on mice. Overfed mice died prematurely, mice kept barely above starvation levels lived longer than average lives.

Now, I’m no mouse, but I would have to question the quality of live living like that. Most people who starve themselves also binge eat and that pattern gives food as a reward. Not a good idea at all.

The second part of this is, how do you determine the best weight for you? do you go to medical charts or government recommendations? Those don’t take into account muscle mass or body type. So looking at some generic chart isn’t going to give you any sort of ‘ideal weight.’

What people should target is a body fat percentage. Losing weight? not the answer. That’s why I said the other day, losing weight is a bad idea. If I look at the charts I can find that my ideal weight is between 142 and 157 pounds, or it’s 176 pounds, or it’s 192 pounds. Those were the first three charts I found through an online search checking only .edu (college) sites. Those numbers were from Rutgers, Harvard and Vanderbilt, all recognizable as reputable schools, so even the experts don’t agree. And none of them take in body fat percentages. For the record, right now I weigh 190 pounds and am around 10% body fat. So my weight is not really an issue, unless I am concerned with the charts.

What you should really be concerned with is fitness level more than anything else. How does your heart deal with moderate exercise? Can you climb a few flights of stairs without taking a break? Are you breathing heavily when you have to walk at a moderate rate for a half hour? Look at the real issues and lead a healthy life with regular exercise, both aerobic and resistance training. Try not to be obsessed with a ‘number’ That number doesn’t define you, your fitness or who you are.

How effective is your workout? And how much time do you spend at the gym? These are not random questions and unless the gym is also a large part of your social life chances are you are spending way too much time there.

Why do I say this and why does it come to mind today? I was talking with my youngest daughter and found that she is spending between and hour and half and two hours at the gym on a regular basis! Now I know that’s not the worst place to be hanging out, but still all that time is pretty much wasted.

And of course, because we are close, she is sure that I don’t have a clue. A stranger could come up and say the same things I say, and that person would be viewed as a life saver. The person you don’t know is often viewed with more respect than those close to you. Sad fact.

Anyway to get back to my point, over-training shifts your body into a survival state, and if you are looking to lose weight (bad idea) you are going to be disappointed. The preservation mode kicks in and likely you will stay the same weight and you body will desperately try to add fat to help prolong your life. Yes, totally true, once again you are burning muscle. Not the desired result, I am sure.

So what’s the key here? Shorter intense workouts seem to be the best answer to getting fit. Have you heard the Bowflex commercial? 20 minutes a day, three times a week. Actually this works. It may not get you that sculpted look you see on the fitness models in the commercials, but it works. And those twenty minutes need to be 20 intense minutes of resistance training. Not gabbing with the cute guy/girl on the next machine. Not choosing a light weight that doesn’t challenge your muscles, but really using the time to maximum advantage and then letting your body recover.

I won’t preach here, I will just say, look around the gym and see who is lolly gagging about and who is working it. Now take an honest look at yourself and decide which group you are really in. Can you turn it up? Can you work it like you should?

I have just served you and now…. It’s on.

This is one of the most common sense guides to understanding your metabolism that we’ve ever seen — all fact, no fiction.

If you’ve ever been frustrated by conflicting information on what it takes to increase or boost your metabolism — and keep it under control once and for all — you want this information.  It’s presented in easy-to-understand language that leaves out the “science-speak” that sometimes makes your head spin.

Once you know the facts, it makes any fitness and/or nutrition plan you follow that much easier.

See the link in the sidebar to the right, or click here.

As always, if you have questions, feel free to ask!

We are inundated with swine flu information and propaganda. You have to have heard at least 100 stories in the past couple days or you are living in a hole in the ground somewhere (hopefully not near a corporate pig farming operation) and how much of that is hype and media vomit? Or how much of it is driven by corporate greed? Yes you read that right, corporate greed.

Now I am not a conspiracy theorist, but I have read stories that big pharma, or in this case, pig pharma, actually manufactured this virus and unleashed it to boost corporate profits. I won’t go as far as to say I believe that, but I do believe that it is possible, and I fully believe that there are scumbags in every industry who would stoop that low. I just don’t think that really happened.

however, that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe that pig pharma is willing to exploit the situation to the best of the almighty dollar. I do keep an eye on the stock market, and quite a few stocks have risen as a result of the demand for medications ( oseltamivir, zanamivir, amantadine and rimantadine) used for treatment. Is there a manipulation going on? Certainly to some extent the answer is yes. Is the whole story overblown to a degree, yes. Healthy people may get sick from this but the actual mortality rate is nearly zero.

As a point of fact, during the last flu pandemic in 1918, most of the deaths were caused by ancillary factors, not by the flu itself, and we are now much more capable of dealing with those causes. This encarnation of the flu, swine flu, in this instance, will cause no more harm than the bird flu did a flu years ago, excuse me a few years ago. Not saying there wasn’t death, and it is heavily impactful to people close to those lost, but didn’t the story turn into more than the actual events?Don’t go into a panic over this, go about your business and take precautions, but don’t let this make you crazy.

Update: I was doing some research and found that 36,000 people die every year from the ‘plain old ordinary’ flu. And this is not publicized in the news much at all. That fact comes from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and those deaths are ongoing. Year in, Year out. Bird Flu, Swine Flu, small potatos compared to the casualties during the regular flu season. Now most of those deaths are in the elderly and children - people with weak immune systems, but some aren’t. The trick, not that it is much of a trick, is hygiene. Wash your hands before you eat, keep unwashed hands away from your mouth and drink plenty of fluids.

Kinda like the advice your Momma always told you. Life is like a box of chocolates, wash your hands before you eat em, no matter what ya get.