Sarah's Introduction

 Too-low cholesterol could lead to cancer

By reducing your cholesterol in an attempt to reduce the danger of heart disease, you
could heighten the danger of getting cancer, researchers believe.

Researchers at Tufts University in Boston (Mass.) have come to this conclusion after studying 23 different studies where a total of 41.000 persons participated.

What they found was that the risk of developing cancer increased if the patient had reduced their cholesterol to a level below that which a healthy person would have had.

Dr Richard Karas who presented the results said that the findings were merely the first steps on the road and that the results should be looked into more closely. For example, the researchers are unsure of whether the findings can be a side-effect of cholesterol lowering drugs or whether they affect all patients with too low cholesterol.

Originally, the research was started to check on whether or not certain cholesterol lowering drugs had negative side-effects on the liver. There were not found any links to that effect.

Well, I guess most of you are familiar with Shane Ellison’s book, The Truth About Cholesterol Lowering Drugs available at http://thepeopleschemist.atozfitness.com

He’s mainly worried about the drugs’ direct side effect as a chemical, on your body. This study seems to indicate there are other dangers, higher risk of cancer being one of them! Scary stuff.

Of course, we’re not telling any of you to stop taking the medicines your doctors have prescribed for you, not without their concent! However, we feel it’s important that you should be aware of recent scientific studies so that you may discuss this with your doctor, make up your own mind.

Personally, when I was told that my cholesterol was too high and that I had to go on meds, my mind rebelled! I took the prescription, filled it, took the chemicals for 3 months, and was given half the dose at the next blood test. 3 months later the doctor “resigned” and took me off the meds entirely. Why? Because I did a 180 on my nutrition and exercise plan. From not even having one, I went to 5 days a week weight training, 5-6 days a week cardio, and 100% clean and lean nutrition. Not only did I no longer need the chemical drugs, I lost body fat and looked 10 years younger in the process.

That was what prompted me to write my Fitness For You e-book and starting my own on-line training website so that I could reach as many people as possible, not only the members of my gym.

The main challenge with this type of training, is that I cannot see the person I’m working with, I can only give directions and hope they will follow them. I can tell you what to do but not do it for you! YOU have to eat clean. YOU have to train with weights and make sure you have progression from one workout to the next, YOU need to get out of bed and hit the cardio.

I already do it for me, I cannot also do it for you.

That was the “lecture” of the week :-)  Have a great one!

Sarah, CPT
www.atozfitness.com/sarahsblog
www.trainwithsarah.com

Weekly Featured Fitness Article

Changing Your Body Fast With The Deadlift
By Ray Burton
 

The deadlift gets a bad rap these days from overly conservative doctors, chiropractors and, well people that issue insurance policies! The deadlift is not something to be avoided. In fact, if you know how to do the deadlift properly, you will pick up things from the ground in the safest way possible. You will also have an invaluable tool for your workout programs.

The deadlift is an incredible tool because it is a compound exercise that works a lot of muscle groups at the same time making it perfect for both fat loss and muscle building programs.

Using lots of muscle at once is something that you should be looking for in your exercises for a number of reasons. Using multiple muscle groups makes and exercise "functional". Meaning that it has real world uses. Using compound exercises that involve the big muscles also means that you burn a ton of calories while doing it. For the mass monsters that want big muscles, the deadlift allows the usage of huge poundage's that can translate into massive muscle gains in short periods of time.

How To Get The Most From The Deadlift.

The shoulders need to stay over the bar in the bottom position. Shoulders being behind the bar can start the whole series of movements off wrong from the start. The bar is in contact with the leg all the way up. As you come up you press your knees back and lift your chest. This maintains the lumbar curve. The bar travels straight up and down.

Make sure you come to full extension at the top. It is not a lean back but an extension of the hips causing you to stand up fully straight. The lean back is mostly for the power lifters that want to prove that the lift is completed for the judges.

On the way down you initialize the movement by pushing your bum back then lowering the chest keeping the nice lumbar curve and then bending the knees.

What you don't want is to sit back and have your shoulders come back behind the bar because then the bar will break its straight path and you will have a hard time when you get to the knee area.

Watch out for the dreaded two-part deadlift. This is when you are coming out of the bottom and the hips extend and then the lower back does its work after. It is very similar in appearance to the stiff leg deadlift but a whole lost worse for you. That is not what you are trying to do here.

You can avoid this common fault by making sure that you lift the chest at the same time as you push through the hips. Everything will move up in one motion.

4 key things to remember when doing the deadlift?

1) Nice lumbar curve throughout the movement
2) Chest up at all times
3) Shoulders over the bar not behind to keep a straight bar path.
4) Push through the heels keeping the bar in contact with the legs.

Remember to drive off the heels and look straight ahead. Press your knees back once the bar breaks the floor.

The biggest common fault is the loss of the lumbar curve. This means that the load is too heavy or you do not know how to do the movement right yet. Reduce the weight and practice, practice, practice.

The second biggest mistake is letting the bar come away from the leg. This takes the weight away from your center of power and can pull you out of position right at the floor before you even get started. Roll that bar in to the shins before you even start to pull.

Here is a great way to put the deadlift into your fat burning program. Superset deadlifts with pushups. Do 10 sets of 10 for each exercise non-stop until completed. Time yourself and try to beat that time on the next workout. Its simple but highly effective.

Ray Burton ISSA CPT Calgary Personal Trainer I hope this helps you out and if you would like to use the program that I designed that takes care of all these factors for you, please visit http://www.fattofitprogram.com Its only $29.95 and you get exercise descriptions, your diet, exercise program and a ton more. It’s the complete package if you want to lose weight fast the healthy and

 Unconventional Iron with Nick Nilsson

Secret Training Tip #671 - How To Do The BEST PULL-UP EVER
By Nick Nilsson

I've done a LOT of pull-ups in my time but THIS variation beats them ALL. It's a wide-grip pull-up
done with a very specific grip that will INFLATE your lats like crazy! If
you want wider lats, USE THIS EXERCISE.

If you want wider lats, have I got an exercise for you! This one will blow up your lats like no other type of pull-up I've found. The secret to this one lies in WHERE you do the pull-up...

But I'm not very good at keeping secrets so here it is...

You do the pull-ups in the CORNER of the power rack!

I know it's hard to contain yourself at this point, but try to keep it together! Once I explain HOW to do pull-ups in the corner of the rack and WHY this corner pull-up works so good, you'll be itching to get to the gym and try it.

To really properly explain why it works so good, you first need to know how to do it so you can visualize how it works.

Now, to do this exercise, you're going to need a power rack. And that's pretty much it. Technically, you should also be able to do at least 6 to 8 reps of regular pull-ups in order to perform this exercise. But even if you CAN'T do that, I'm also going to show you a way to spot yourself so you CAN perform this exercise and get just as much out of it as anybody else.

So even if you can't do full pull-ups, keep reading!

First, stand facing the corner of the rack. Now reach up with your left hand and grip the top cross-bar with a PALM-FACING-AWAY grip (a.k.a. reverse grip) about 18 inches from the corner. Now reach up with your right hand and grip the side top beam with the same grip at the same relative distance from the corner as your left hand. You want to be sure to keep your grip even on the beams. Definitely experiment with grip width to best match your armspan when performing this exercise.

Now you're ready to pull!

Bend your knees and get your feet off the ground. You'll immediately notice the tension in your lats in that bottom position. Perform a regular pull-up movement, bringing your body up as high as possible.

Here's the BIG trick...as you pull yourself up, try to consciously PUSH OUTWARDS against the cross-beams of the rack. This outwards pushing combined with the pulling up puts HUGE tension on the extreme outer fibers of the lats.

So pull yourself up as high as possible then lower yourself SLOWLY and under complete control. The negative on this exercise is VERY intense and the stretch it puts on your lats is phenomenal!

As you get towards the bottom, let your arms go completely straight to maximize the stretch on the lats. Be sure to keep tension in the shoulders, though. Even though your arms are straight, you want your body to still be supported by muscle tension in the lats and not the tendons and ligaments of your shoulder joints.

Now pull back up again, remembering to push outwards against the cross-beams as you pull up.

Keep going until you can't do any more reps. It's a tough exercise and an eye-opener even for people who generally can do a lot of pull-ups!

So how do you do this exercise if you can't do a lot of (or any!) pull-ups? Self-spotting with your feet.

When you're in the rack, you can either set the safety rail or the racking pin (the hook that you rack the weight on) to about 2 feet or so off the ground. The exact height will depend on how tall your rack is and how tall YOU are. Basically, you're going to be using it as a step. As you do the pull-up, you're going to set your foot on that pin/rail and use your legs to help you get the reps.

It's important here to give yourself only as much help as you need to complete the rep you're doing, NOT so much that you're just standing up and down and going through the motions. You want to keep strong tension on the lats to get the most out of this exercise.

This technique is good not only for those who need help right off the bat but for doing forced reps when you CAN do full reps on your own. When you can't perform another full rep on your own, set your foot on the pin/rail and keep going!

You can also perform this exercise using a palms-facing-in grip, but I've found it to be less effective in terms of hitting the outer lats than the palms-facing-out version.

---

If wider lats are what you're looking for, this exercise will do the trick. It's a powerful variation of an old standard and will really fire your lats up fast! Test it out in your next back workout and be sure to let me know how SORE your lats are the next day...

To check out the pictures and video of this exercise in action, click-here

About the author:
Nick Nilsson is Vice-President of the online personal training company BetterU, Inc. He has a degree in Physical Education and Psychology and has been inventing new training techniques for more than 16 years. Nick is the author of a number of bodybuilding e-Books including ";Metabolic Surge - Rapid Fat Loss," "The Best Exercises You've Never Heard Of," "Gluteus to the Maximus - Build a Bigger Butt NOW!" and "The Best Abdominal Exercises You've Never Heard Of

What Every Beginner Should Know by Marc David

A Time Efficient Weight Training Plan For Those in a Hurry

If you are short on time and don't want to spend 45 minutes or more in the gym but you still want to become stronger and live a healthier life, I have some ideas that you should seriously consider.

After all, not all of us want to focus on one or two body parts a day and see how huge our biceps can get right? And some of us would like to build muscle but simply don't have the time to dedicate to the process.

But better still... there's some certain exercises you can do that will involve nearly every muscle group in the body and increase your strength overall. You'll build muscle and burn fat.

Last I looked, there were over 10,000 different exercises you could do, probably a heck of a lot more really, but I'm going to tell you which ones are the most effective for reaching your goals in a very short session.

Ready? Here's what you do.

Quick Weight Training Instructions:

a) Do this routine 2-3 times a week. My recommendation is twice a week but I know some people will be itching to do more.

b) Do only a single set of each exercise.

c) Shoot for 8-15 repetitions per set. When you can do 15+ repetitions, increase the weight by 5 lbs for a small muscle group (arms) and 10 lbs for a bigger muscle group (legs). This allows for a simplistic approach at progressive resistance, doing better every workout.

d) Your rest period will be 60 seconds between each exercise and two or three days between sessions. If you need a little more time between sets to clean up your area, that's fine.

e) Pay close attention to your form. These are compound movements that you need to know how to perform before doing them. Nothing crazy or fancy here but you certainly should be proficient at doing them. If you can, hire a personal trainer for a single session to ensure you understand each movement and how to perform it correctly.

The Exercises:

1. Squats (Barbell back or Front squats)

Virtually every muscle in the legs in involved in a squat movement. It is a full body growth hormone releasing exercise that is on the "must do" list for anybody who seriously wants to condition their legs. You can pick and choose between a back or a front squat for variety.

2. Dead Lifts

For starters, this is another full body exercise that involves your hamstrings, glutes, quadriceps, and many other muscles.
It's another full body exercise that is guaranteed to get your stronger and bigger in a short amount of time. Your body's only choice is to build more muscle, burn more fat and get stronger.
I know you see mostly men doing this lift, it's NOT just for men.

3. Lunges (Dumbbell or Barbell or Smith Machine)

A bit more focused on the hamstrings, hip flexors and glutes, this is a fantastic exercise for getting strong, shapely legs.
At this point, your legs have been worked from every angle using every major muscle in them. And your stabilizers win too because this one if done with the barbell or dumbbells will require some balancing.

4. Step Ups

They've been called the "One exercise nobody does that will increase your leg strength by 200%." Who knows if that percentage is correct but doing them with some dumbbells will certain hit the upper thighs. You can setup some boxes to do this or use a bench 12-18 inches high. Your leg should be at a 90 degree angle when starting and you can alternate legs or focus on a single leg at a time.

5. Pull-ups (Front Lat Pulldowns)

How can a single exercise be responsible for some much back development? The pull-up is just one of those exercises you don't see a lot of people doing because it's hard to do.
Straight up and straight down. No swing or kicking. If your knees come up when doing them, you are doing them wrong. Start off with the lat pulldowns until you can build up sufficient strength to do some pull-ups. Alternative this exercise for variation.

6. Dumbbell Incline Bench Presses

Use an incline bench at an incline of no more than 30 degrees.
This is a great chest builder that normally is safer then a regular incline barbell bench because you won't get caught under the weights should the situation arise. Here's a little tip to ease any shoulder pain. Keep your palms facing each other.
This takes an enormous amount of stress from the front of your deltoids.

7. Biceps Curl (Body Drag Curls)

Often referred to as the biceps builder it's going to work the biceps in a single joint movement. You can make this exercise a heck of a lot harder by focusing in on the biceps using a Vince Gironda Body Drag Curl. If you have a problem getting a good burn in your biceps, try doing body-drag curls.

In a standing barbell curl position, slide the bar upward against your body until it reaches your mid-chest level - about as high as you'll be able to move it without cheating it up - then lower the bar the same way, making sure it does not lose contact with your torso.

Your elbows will move backward and your shoulders cannot assist in the movement.

Get prepared for a great biceps burn!

8. Tricpes Pushodowns (Dips)

A standard in developing the other 75% of your arm. For those worried about the "jiggle" effect, you'll want to build up the back of your arms with this movement. You can finish off this routine by skipping the triceps pushdown isolated movement and going for free weight or weighted dips. That's a chest, shoulder and triceps combination that will work wonders.

I know how hard it is to gain *LEAN* muscle... especially if you want to lose fat at the same time and you are training naturally.

Till next month,
Marc David for AtoZFitness

About the author:

Marc David's Complete Beginners Guide to Fitness & Bodybuilding !
The complete, A-to-Z, step-by-step beginner's course on how you can start building muscle and losing fat quickly and easily without crazy diets, supplements or insane training routines ... Starting even on the very first day! 

Click-Here for more details.......
The Beginner's Guide to Fitness and Bodybuilding System is the routine you've never done. Learn how to avoid boredom, discover sources for exercises and make the best gains of your life. Check it out at http://www.beginning-bodybuilding.com

GHF Weekly Recipee

Pork Chops and Rice

Ingredients:

• 6 pork chops
• 1-1/2 cups rice
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 1-1/2 pounds canned peeled tomatoes, chopped
• 1-1/2 leeks, chopped
• 1/2 cup green onions, chopped
• 3/4 teaspoon rosemary, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, minced

Directions:

• Heat a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat and saut� pork chops 2 minutes per side and remove from skillet.
• Add remaining ingredients to the skillet and bring to a boil.
• Reduce heat to low; place pork chops on top of rice and simmer for 35-40 minutes.

Nutritional Information:

• Serving Size: 1 pork chop
• Calories: 380
• Fat: 8 g
• Cholesterol: 55 mg
• Protein: 25 g
• Carbs: 50 g
• Fiber: 3 g
• Sodium: 270 mg

Lynn VanDyke's Melt-The-Fat Article

By Lynn VanDyke, Author of Melt the Fat
Basic Diets for Fitness and Toning

Many basic diets for fitness and toning forget that real people need to follow them. When you’re looking to lose weight in the long term, you need to have a diet that’s realistic for you to follow as well as convenient. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a diet that takes what you already eat and simply makes it fit into your life? With these tips for basic diets for fitness and toning, you can get in shape without having to work up a sweat while planning your meals for the day.

The key to convenient basic diets for fitness and toning is that you need to continuously stoke your body’s metabolism in order to keep it burning calories. This means that you need to eat five to seven meals a day. Doing this might seem like you will be eating a lot of calories, but this is not the case. You will want to eat smaller meals of a few hundred calories. This is easier for your body to digest and use for energy. It also allows you to feel satiated for most of the day, so you don’t have great ups and downs in your blood sugar.

Another way to create basic diets for fitness and toning is to make sure that you’re eating good carbs and adding lean protein to each meal. By good carbs, this means that you should choose high fiber carbs like whole grains. These are carbs that are not or refined. This will require you to replace simple carbs with better choices – i.e. sweet potatoes are a better choice than regular potatoes. It’s also been scientifically proven that adding more protein to your diet is an effective way to help your body burn fat. Try adding a portion of protein to each meal if you can – even a few nuts can help.

In the end, the basic diets for fitness and toning that you will actually stick with are those that use your common sense to make your food choices. If you want to lose weight, you need to eat the appropriate amount of calories. It’s not about having a diet, per se, but rather realizing that food is the energy that will fuel your body, so it should be treated as such. It isn’t about starving yourself, but rather listening to your and knowing what it needs to run properly.

By following basic diets for fitness and toning that involve these tips, you will be able to see the results of your toning plan more quickly. And since you’ll be feeling better too, you might just add more intensity to your routine. You will get in shape without suffering or starving – what a relief.

About the Author

Lynn VanDyke is a master trainer and nutritionist focusing on straight-forward fat loss workouts. Her wildly popular ebook, Melt the Fat is available for immediate download. Bonuses are being offered for a limited time only. Learn more about Melt the Fat at http://melt-the-fat.com

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