| Ray Burton ISSA CPT Calgary Personal Trainer |
![]() AtoZ Focus on www Fitness Newsletter Oct.21 2007 edition |
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Sarah's Introduction
By reducing your cholesterol in an attempt to reduce the
danger of heart disease, you
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. 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. 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 Weekly Featured Fitness ArticleChanging Your Body Fast With The
Deadlift 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 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. Unconventional Iron with Nick Nilsson
Secret
Training Tip #671 - How To Do The BEST PULL-UP EVER
I've done
a LOT of pull-ups in my time but THIS variation beats them
ALL. It's a wide-grip 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: What Every Beginner Should Know by Marc DavidA 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. About the author: Marc David's Complete Beginners Guide to Fitness & Bodybuilding ! Click-Here for more details....... GHF Weekly RecipeePork Chops and Rice Makes:6 servings Ingredients:
Directions:
Nutritional Information:
Lynn VanDyke's Melt-The-Fat ArticleBy Lynn VanDyke, Author of
Melt the Fat 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. 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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In this weeks Newsletter!
News This Week!
“Yes, You Can Lose All The Weight
You Want While Enjoying Your News This Week!You already know how hard it is to find a training and nutritional program that will not only fit your body type...your busy schedule...heck, even your PAYCHECK!
I mean, you've probably tried at least ONE "off-the-shelf" fitness program that put you through the wringer with making change-after-change to your lifestyle...only to end up "not quite fitting" with what you felt you could commit to, am I right?t? So where can the "Average Joe or Jane" go to get REAL advice on how to develop a killer "body transforming" fitness plan? I mean, not many people have the privilege (or the budget) to work with world class trainers in their private studios, right? This is where most people end up getting stuck searching for information from their gym buddies and the magazines (the absolute WORST places to get your info!) Sound familiar? Well, you're not alone! Will Brink's
Bodybuilding Revealed Will Brink's Fat Loss
Revealed
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