Healthy Andy

If you’re looking to push through a plateau in your training, or just try something extra challenging in your chest workout, try one of these plyometric chest exercises that I’ve been doing lately (and having a real love/hate relationship with).  Be forewarned, though… they’re pretty intense.

What’s A Plyometric Chest Exercise?

Plyometrics is a term for a particular type of exercise favoring fast, explosive movements.  The idea is to train the muscles to produce a lot of speed and power as quickly as possible.  While this is related to raw strength, this isn’t necessarily the same thing. 

As an example, someone who can jump really high might not be able to squat a huge amount of weight.  But, they can explosively accelerate their body very quickly and thereby launch themselves into the air with greater speed than an Olympic weight-lifter might be able to.

These fast, explosive movements have obvious benefits for athletes, since many athletic events require speed and explosive power more than anything else (well, aside from coordination).  Aside from speed and power, plyometrics also encourages the neurological connections between the mind and the muscle, potentially leading to quicker reaction times.

Plyometric Chest Exercise #1

So let’s apply these principles to a chest workout.  For our first plyometric chest exercise, we’re going to go old school and dig out a good old-fashioned body weight exercise: the push up. But not just any push-up.  We’re going to do explosive or, as they’re sometimes called, “Marine Corps” pushups. 

It looks just like a regular push-up, but instead of simply pressing yourself up into a plank position, you’re going to lower yourself down and then spring yourself up into the air as fast and high as you can so that your hands clear the ground by several inches.  As you land, lower yourself back down, and then spring back up into the air, as many times as you can.

Once you get the hang of this, you should be able to launch yourself high enough that you can clap your hands before you lower yourself back down.  Even if you’re used to doing push-ups, don’t be surprised if you find plyometric pushups to be a surprising challenge.  You’re using a different set of fast-twitch muscle fibers to do these explosive movements versus a slower, more controlled push-up movement.

The great thing about this exercise, of course, is that it’s free.  You just need a stretch of ground that you can do this on, and the will to actually do it consistently.  For our next exercise, we’ll need a piece of equipment.

Plyometric Chest Exercise #2

For this exercise, we’re going to essentially do the same thing as in #1, but with a little twist: we’re going to do it on a Bosu ball.  For those of you unfamiliar with a Bosu ball, it’s basically half of an exercise ball with a firm plastic disc as a base.  Most people use it by standing on the base with the ball part on the ground, using it as a wobble board to make various exercises more difficult.

We’re going to do the same thing, but we’re not doing to stand on it.  Instead, grab either end of the disc part of the Bosu ball with both hands, and get into the plank position.  Since the ball part is on the ground, you’re already going to be wobbling a little bit.  If you’ve never done this before, you’re going to want to do a few regular push ups on the Bosu like this just to get used to it.

Once you’re ready, lower yourself down, and like before, launch yourself up into the air as quickly as possible so your hands (still gripping the Bosu) clear the ground.  As you go up into the air, bend your arms slightly to draw the Bosu up into the air.  As you come down, the Bosu will compress beneath you a bit.  Launch yourself back up, as many times as you can.

I actually find using the Bosu to do plyometric pushups is a lot easier on my hands and wrists than otherwise, because the Bosu will give a little rather than just landing back down on concrete or a hardwood floor.  But the instability created by the Bosu definitely ramps up the difficulty level.

Give it a try, and be ready for some soreness the next day!  As a general rule of thumb, it’s best not to do plyometric movements for any body part more than three times a week, so that your body can fully recover.

Stay healthy!

It may sound like a gastrointestinal complaint, but in reality, a burpee is one of the oldest old-school bodyweight exercises out there.  Nobody’s really 100% sure where it came from or who invented it (there’s plenty of theories floating around out there), but the only thing that matter is, the burpee is a easy, free exercise pretty much anybody can do.

Like most bodyweight exercises, the burpee is really quite safe.  If you can jump up in the air and do a push-up without hurting yourself, you can do burpees.  In fact, that’s pretty much all a burpee is; a squat jump combined with a push-up.

Just What Is A Burpee?

Here’s how the exercise is performed.  Stand normally with your feet at shoulder width.  Bend your knees to squat straight down until you can put both hands flat on the ground next to your feet. 

After that, shoot your legs backward so that now you’re in the push-up position with your arms straight (also called the plank position).  Lower yourself down into a pushup, then push yourself back up to a plank. 

Draw your legs back underneath you so they are next to your hands again, and jump up into the air.  That’s one repetition.

The burpee is designed to be done for many repetitions, like a push-up or crunch.  Of course, you can try to make it harder by doing all kinds of crazy variations, like adding a pull-up.  In that variant, you end the burpee by jumping up to a pull-up bar, doing a pull-up, and then dropping down to a standing position on each rep.

Or, you could alter the push-up by making it a more explosive push-up, the kind where you spring up high enough into the air so you can clap your hands.  Really, you can alter the burpee however you like to make it suit you more effectively.

Here’s a video of a very fit women doing a modified burpee as part of a circuit training routine:

Can’t do a push-up yet?  You can modify the burpee as follows.  After you lower yourself into the plank position, take a half-second and rest your knees on the ground.  This will make the push-up easier to do until you build up enough strength in your arms to handle a “proper” push-up.

Who Should Do Burpees?

Simply put, anyone and everyone can and should mix some burpees into their exercise program.  It’s a great, simple, all-around full body exercise.  Multi-joint exercises, in general, are fantastic for rapid weight loss and building up functional strength and agility.  And, as I mentioned, they’re pretty mild to do… that is, for one repetition.  Start doing a bunch of burpees in a row, and you’ll quickly see how challenging they can really become.

The biggest advantages of the burpee exercise is that you don’t need any equipment whatsoever, and really, not much space at all.  Actually, the main space requirements are that you won’t hit your head on anything as you jump up into the air!  So for people who travel a lot, or can’t get to a gym, the burpee is a great exercise to help them either get or stay in shape.

Also, as I mentioned, since they’re pretty easy to do, burpees are great for beginners who aren’t quite ready (either physically or emotionally) to join a gym.  But make no mistake, advanced athletes should mix burpees into their routine as well from time to time.

Stay healthy!

It’s that time of year when the white stuff starts falling and people come into my office with low back pain from shoveling snow.  There’s some easy ways you can avoid getting yourself all twisted up in a knot from clearing off the sidewalk or driveway, so here’s some quick tips to keep you out of my office, in both video and text below the video, depending on which you prefer.

Shoveling Snow Safety Tips

The main thing is to move in way your body is designed to.  Here’s what that means.  The joints of your lower back (called the facet joints) don’t look like a ball-and-socket like your shoulder.  They are flat and look sort of like two pancakes slapped up against each other (or maybe I just haven’t eaten breakfast yet).

Facet Joint In The Lumbar Spine

Take a look at the picture to the left.  The yellow arrow points to a facet joint.  Notice it’s formed by two flat surfaces overlapping, one from above, one from below.  So, they glide past each other like the palms of two hands rubbing past each other.

What this all translates to is, this gliding motion creates a flexion/extention movement (bending over, bending back).  When you move, lift, or do anything else- including shoveling snow- so long as your lower back moves in this front to back plane, you’re fine.

Forget What That Song Says-Don’t Do The Twist

The problem arises when you try to twist at the lower back.  Then, those paddle-shaped joints smack into each other and start causing pain and inflammation. 

 Even worse is to do those movements with force… like flinging a shovel full of snow over your shoulder.  Now not only are you twisting those joints into each other, you’re doing so very forcefully  and with the momentum of a huge chunk of flying snow behind it.  Not a good idea.

The solution is to shovel and throw the snow directly forward.  That means you’ll be shoveling across the driveway or sidewalk, not along it.  By throwing the snow forward, you are essentially simply bending forward and backward, keeping those lower back joints gliding past each other properly.

Shovel To The Left, Shovel To The Right

Next, switch which hand is forward on the shovel from time to time.  Even if you throw snow forward, the natural stance of holding a shovel with one hand in front of the other will angle the body slightly and put more stress on one SI joint than the other.  What’s an SI joint?  These are the main weight bearing joints of the pelvis.  There’s two, right over the spot where you see two dimples over a fit person’s butt (very technical explanation, I know).

Anyway, if you’re always flinging snow with your left hand forward, you’ll stress one side of the pelvis more than the other because of the angle you’re standing at.  So spread the stress around evenly by switching back and forth frequently.  By the way, this is good advice for shoveling a lot of dirt, as well.

Minimize the amount of snow in each shovelfull, as well.  Wet snow can be surprisingly heavy, and since you’re trying to lift it at a distance from the center of gravity of your body, that makes the stress on your spine even greater.  Think of holding a bowling ball.  If I hold it straight against my chest, it’s easy to support (close to the center line).  If I hold it straight out at arm’s length (away from the center line), it becomes a real challenge to hold up.

Five pounds or so per shovelfull is plenty.  I know, I know, this makes for more time shoveling, but you’ll thank me when you can actually walk the next day.  On that note, if there’s a huge snowstorm on, you’re best off clearing off the driveway every few hours or so while the job is small rather than waiting until the snow is piled so high you can no longer see daylight.

Know Your Limitations

Finally, if you have a pre-existing health condition, don’t push it.  Snow shovelling is a surprisingly vigorous activity, and lots of people end up in the emergency room each year due to coronary events or other health problems brought on by people pushing themselves too hard.  In fact, the last time it snowed, EMS services ended up across the street from me, taking somebody away.  Take your time and take breaks if you have to.  It’s not a contest.

Okay, friends, a look outside tells me the snow is tapering off now, so I’m off to put my snow shovel where my mouth is!  Stay healthy!

Our anti-aging discussion continues with the hormonal component of living longer.  The endocrine system is extremely complex and inter-dependent, each hormone affected by others and affecting others as well, so discussing what one hormone does can get a little dangerous.  It creates the illusion that it’s easy to make one change without causing any others.

But, trying to deal with them all at once is too complicated, so we do have to split things up somewhat.  The main hormones we’ll be dealing with when it comes to how to live longer are HGH (Human Growth Hormone), insulin, and the sex hormones (testosterone and estrogen).

Living Longer:  Human Growth Hormone

HGH is pretty much what the name implies.  It makes little baby people turn into big adult people, and continues to stimulate the growth process (in terms of maintenance and response to exercise) throughout adult life as well.

More specifically, HGH does stuff like:

• increase muscle mass
• mineralize (increase calcium in) bone
• boosts the immune system
• makes internal organs grow/maintain themselves
• promotes fat burning
• general increased sense of well-being

Like most hormones, HGH secretion begins to drop off with age, to the tune of about a 10-15% decline per decade after 30.  Not surprisingly, people started experimenting with hormone replacement about 20 years ago, and found that as HGH levels were restored, there were some positive effects (mostly related to that list I just went over).

Replacing HGH is tricky, though, and expensive.  I talked to an expert on this (an MD who has been doing this in his clinic for years), and here’s what he told me.  First off, the body’s levels of HGH are not constant, they’re pulsatile; your body releases it in waves about every four hours or so.  The size of the pulses varies, too, so you have to inject your HGH at very specific times (usually very early in the morning).

Over-doing it also is a problem… just look at Sylvester Stallone.  Nobody’s really sure what the safety limits are, but the side effects of too much HGH are things like a thickened jaw, finger and toes, or sometimes an acquired diabetes or impotence.  And that’s just what we know about.

The bottom line is, I’d stick with more natural methods until a lot more mistakes get made on people other than you, and those issues work themselves out.  So what can you do about your HGH levels?  Well, you can either stimulate the secretion of HGH or prevent its decline.

The best way to stimulate HGH is through intense exercise.  The more intense the exercise, the bigger the surge.  Of course, you have to be careful not to go too crazy by trying to pick up a Volkswagen or something, because then you’ll just end up hurting yourself.

An interesting stimulant of HGH is ghrelin, a hormone released due to hunger.  There’s some studies out there on caloric deprivation leading to longer life in mice, which may be as a result of increased HGH secretion due to hunger.  Not that I’m recommending starving yourself or anything, but I found that connection interesting.

Sleep is an important part of HGH secretion.  The vast majority of HGH is released during sleep, especially one hour after falling asleep.  Which leads me into how to avoid LOSING Human Growth Hormone.

There are two big hormonal antagonists to HGH- insulin and cortisol.  Insulin, of course, is the blood sugar hormone, and surges way too high on intake of refined carbs.  So sugar and bread and all that stuff not only makes you fat, but old, too.  Awesome.

Related to that, remember that your biggest surge in HGH is one hour after bedtime… so don’t have any insulin floating around messing things up at that time.  In other words, no eating before bed.  Preferably, at least three hours before bedtime.

Cortisol is a stress hormone.  It has nice short-term anti-inflammatory effects, but the long-term effects are pretty nasty.  For this discussion, we’ll stick to its effects on HGH.  Simply put, it acts as an antagonist to HGH, reducing its effectiveness.  So, stress, sleep deprivation, and overloading on caffiene, will not just make you sick, but old before your time as well.

There are some supplements called HGH secretagogues that provide the body with natural enhancers to Growth Hormone production.  The main action seems to be from arginine, an amino acid that suppresses another hormone that acts to block HGH called somatostatin.  The expert I mentioned earlier claims that he’s tested people on secretagogues that had their HGH levels increase by 10-20%, but it takes months to get up to that level.    I don’t know of any official studies backing up those findings, but there is a study on arginine and increased growth hormone levels.

How To Live Longer:  Sex Hormones

Another big area for hormone replacement is with testosterone and estrogren, the two main sex hormones.  Like HGH, both of these tend to decrease with age, with undesirable consequences.  So this is another important factor to living longer.

I’m not going to go too much into HRT (hormone replacement therapy), because it’s not really my area, but I will re-interate that HRT is a tricky business and shouldn’t be undertaken lightly.  Too much of a hormone is just as bad as too little, and there’s a bad tendency in our culture to think that if a little of something is good, more is “more good-er”.

What I will talk about is natural ways to prevent decline or other interference with the sex hormones.  Let’s start with testosterone.

Testosterone, of course, is the Manly Man hormone, that makes boys into men and men want to drink beer and kill stuff.  Seriously, though, it is the masculinazing (I think that’s a word) hormone that is responsible for all kinds of physical and behavioral effects like the building up of muscle mass and bone density, and the various secondary male characteristics like facial hair, etc.

As I mentioned, testosterone levels decrease with age, but there’s ways to increase it naturally as well.  Vigorous resistance training will increase testosterone levels.  Proper amounts of sleep also promote the release of testosterone, at least during sleep.

There’s some interesting behavioral effects on testosterone as well, mostly concerning power (really, the perception of power).  Winning competitive events increases testosterone levels, and losing them decreases testosterone. Really, any perception of an increase in power, domination, or social status has a corresponding increase on testosterone, with the opposite being true for a loss in those areas.

So I guess the lesson there is, don’t take on a challenge you can’t beat!

There’s other little things that will decrease testosterone, like a zinc deficiency or eating too much licorice (I know, that one’s a little weird, isn’t it?).  Actually, though, the big threat to testosterone is environmental. 

Specifically, pro-estrogenic or estrogen-like chemicals that are present in the water, air, food- or anywhere, really- due to industrial contaminents.  These are contaminents like pesticides and herbicides as well as other chemicals, that have gotten so prevalent in our enviroment that there are places where fish are experiencing mass sex changes due to the levels of estrogenic compounds in the water.

That means pretty much every guy out there is being exposed to large levels of estrogenic compounds, which reverses the effects of testosterone.  Uh-oh.

It’s bad for women, too, by the way.  Remember, just because women need estrogen (actually, men need some too, just like women need some testosterone), doesn’t mean that more estrogen is more better-er. Sending hormones spiking out of balance is always a health problem.

So what can be done about these negative hormonal influences?  Well, the best thing is avoidance, so here’s another good reason to eat organic, whole foods… to avoid the estrogenic effects of the chemicals in refined foods.  Trying to minimize exposure to man-made chemcials in general is also a good idea… not always possible in today’s society, but the more you can avoid it, the better (you’ll remember from the last post on how to live longer that this also helps with avoiding free radicals).

Oh, and bad news for men… hops is very strongly estrogenic.  Yes, hops, as in, “used to make beer” hops.  In fact, there’s a condition called Brewer’s Droop that’s caused by a beer brewer handling so much hops that he absorbs it through his skin and begins having problems with, erm, “standing at attention”.  So if you beer drinkers want to stay being “real men”, you’d better start eating organic!

The intake of cruciferous vegetables (like broccoli) is also good for helping the body clear out toxins in general, and can help with removing excessive estrogenic compounds from the bloodstream.

All of these interventions are also obviously good for women, too, since as I mentioned, excessive estrogen is just as bad as too little.  In fact, being exposed to excessive estrogen likely reduces the body’s ability to make its own estrogen.  Any time you add extra hormones to the body from an outside source (like, say, anabolic steroids), your body begins to shut down its own production of that hormone, and eventually, the glands that produce them will atrophy (shrink up and get weak).

Soy is another plant that has pro-estrogenic compounds, and huge, raging debates go on all over the Internet about whether or not soy is a dangerous thing to consume.  To be quite honest, the evidence is conflicting and there’s no clear answer, so I’ll just say this.  Considering the potential for hormonal influence, it’s probably a good idea to avoid massive quantities of soy.  Not avoidance entirely… I don’t think that’s necessary… but if you’re guzzling down a gallon of soy milk and day and eating loads of fast food (which uses a ton of soy protein), then you might be causing problems for yourself.

So, to sum up, here’s a list of things to do to avoid problems with these major hormones involved with aging:

• Get vigorous exercise regularly
• Get sufficient sleep and don’t eat before bedtime
• Reduce your stress
• Stick to unrefined (whole) foods that are organic
• Filter your water and try to reduce exposure to man-made chemicals

Those are the major areas in which you can make a difference most easily before you go running to the doctor for HRT.  The natural methods to living longer are always the best ways.

By the way, an excellent book on testosterone, its effects on health, what can interfere with it, and details on its replacement, is The Testosterone Syndrome by Eugene Shippen.  Here’s a link to it on Amazon.  Another one I’ve read and thought was decent was The Natural Testosterone Plan, so you might want to have a look at that one as well.

Stay healthy!

Everybody wants to know how to live longer, right?  I mean, you don’t hear a whole lot about advice about how to shorten the typical life span.

Anti-aging is a big, BIG topic, however, so I’m going to break this up into three sections:  toxins, hormones, and the immune system.  There’s some overlap between the groups, but we’ll stick with that for simplicity’s sake.  Today’s post will be on toxins and free radicals, and we’ll cover the other two in successive posts.

How To Live Longer: Toxins

First off, quit smoking.  Yes, yes, yes, I know that’s cliche’ advice a thousand times over, but there’s a reason why it’s cliche’… because the evidence for it is so overwhelming.  Even a little bit of smoking is bad for you, as I discussed in this article on the smoking dangers of even a light habit. 

That article was just on the obvious downsides of smoking… lung cancer and emphysema.  But, there’s oh so much more that smoking will do.  As an example, as soon as you take a drag on a cigarette, you paralyze the cilia, or little itty bitty hairs that line your respiratory passages… you know, the tubes that carry AIR to your body.

Why are those little hairs important? Well, because they sort of wave around and push mucus up and out of the body to clear out all the gunk that gets trapped in it.  Okay, I know that’s a little gross to think about, but you know what’s even more gross to think about?  Tarry, filthy thick sludge that’s stuck in your lungs and respiratory tract because it ISN’T being cleared out on a regular basis.

This is an important part of the immune system, and even a little cigarette smoke paralyzes it and brings it to a standstill (I told you there would be some overlap between today’s catagories).  But wait!  There’s more!

Smoking is the poster boy of toxins because it’s a dramatic example of one of the main mechanisms by which toxins age you… free radicals.  I’ve written in more detail about free radicals in this post on how antioxidants work, and also in my free guide to nutritional supplements, but let me give you the quick version.

Free radicals are highly reactive molecules that damage anything they touch.  You can think of them almost like little bits of acid floating around, ruining whatever they come into contact with.  A commonplace example of the effect of free radicals is the rusting of metal.  

They occur naturally in the enviroment and in the body (due to regular metabolic processes like energy production), but contact with various toxins and pollutants REALLY ramps up your exposure to these little devils. 

Obviously, increased exposure to those toxins will increase how many free radicals you get bombarded with… or how much acid gets sprayed on you, if you like that metaphor. And these free radicals, once they get inside of you, tear down and break down your cells and tissues and organs bit by bit, until they slowly become less effective and eventually don’t work at all.

Sound like aging to you?  It should, because the action of free radicals is considered one of the main causes of aging.  Not only do free radicals directly break down the substance of your body, they mess with your genes as well.  That’s right, free radicals will eventually attack and break down portions of your very genetic code, altering the function of those genes.

Ever hear of cancer?  There’s a pretty good example of what can happen once DNA goes awry.  But that’s just a major, obvious end-result that we’ve managed to directly link to genetic damage… how many other minor, less noticeable diseases or ill effects are being caused throughout the body by genetic damage caused by exposure to toxins and free radicals?  Odds are, we’ll never sort all that out.

Avoid Toxins For Life Extension

What can you do about these free radicals so you can live longer?  Well, step one is avoidance, obviously, which is why I started this section off with “quit smoking”.  You’ve already got enough free radical nonsense to deal with from all of the industrial pollutants and toxins choking the environment; no need to go making things worse by VOLUNTEERING to pollute yourself further. 

That’s just plain silly.

Oh, and of course, there’s plenty of other ways to pollute yourself besides smoking, so here’s some common sources of toxins to avoid: 

• Other drug use, particularly recreational (that means you too, alcohol).
• Pesticides and herbicides in the food supply (which is why I buy organic).  There’s more to this than just toxins and free radicals.  Some of these chemicals can mess with your endocrine system (hormones), which I will discuss in more detail in tomorrow’s post on living longer. 
• Chemicals in the water supply (I always get the filtered stuff). This is actually a pretty big topic all by itself that I’ll be covering in another post.
• Perfumes, dyes, non-stick or non-stain sprays, coatings, and treatments.  I’m going to lump other industrial toxins and chemicals in here, particularly if you are exposed to them at work.
• The air:  this is a tough one to deal with, because it’s not like you can walk around with a gas mask on.  Well, I guess you could, but it would REALLY adversely effect your love life.  One decent solution is to use air filters in the home, which is an environment that you can somewhat control.  Something is better than nothing.

Living Longer With Antioxidants

Next, you can actually protect yourself from free radical damage, also called “oxidation”, by supplementing with…. “anti- oxidants”.  Do you see now why antioxidants are so popular?  They shield you from all that nasty damage caused by stupid free radicals so that you get to live longer.

The mechanism of how they do this is fairly simple… they neutralize free radicals by donating an electron.  Free radicals are so reactive and damaging because they’re missing an electron.  So, hand over a spare electron, and poof!  That free radical calms down and doesn’t hurt anybody.

Since antioxidants have plenty of electrons to spare, they’re great at making free radicals shut up and go away before they poke a hole in anything important.  You can see this with your own eyes with the following experiment:

Slice an apple in two and set the halves on a plate.  Soon enough, the flesh of the apple will turn brown- that’s oxidation and free radicals at work.  Now do the same thing, but coat the sliced apple flesh with lemon juice.  It won’t turn brown (or it will take a really long time).  That’s because lemon juice is chock full of Vitamin C, a basic antioxidant, which then protects the exposed apple from browning due to oxidative damage.

The “basic” antioxidants are Vitamins C, E, A, and selenium… you’ll find those in most multivitamins.  But I suggest you take some additional, more potent antioxidants because of all the pollutants floating around out there that you just can’t realisitically avoid.

One term for these heavy-duty antioxidants is “polyphenols”.  That term just refers to the molecular structure having many (“poly”) phenol groups.  That particular structure means polyphenols have a lot more electrons to donate, which means that’s just that many more nasty free radicals that can be neutralized.

Things that include polyphenols that you might have heard of include dark chocolate, green tea, and red wine.   The two big heavy-hitter antioxidant supplements I like (because there’s so many excellent studies supporting them) are called resveratrol and pycnogenol.  Resveratrol is a red wine extract, and pycnogenol is a pine bark extract that I’ve written about it in articles like this one on inflammation and antioxidants and this one on natural tinnitus relief.

Another solid antioxidant worth mentioning is Co-Q10, because it does its work in the mitochondria, which are like the power generators of each individual cell.  You can read more about Co-Q10 in this article on CoQ10, the little known antioxidant.

It’s a good idea to take a blend of various antioxidants, since each different type is good at operating in different parts of the body.  So a broad mix is better than super-dosing with just one kind.

Okie-dokie, that’s about it for our discussion of toxins, free radicals, antioxidants, and how to live longer by understanding this particular component of aging.  Next time, we’ll talk about hormones.

Stay healthy!

No gym?  No problem!  There’s plenty of ways to get in exercise without having to drive to a club or pay a monthly fee. The leg lunge is a great body weight leg exercise that will have you walking all wobbly by the time you’re done with it.

As a little side note, for those of you who are exercising in a gym, don’t you hate it when you’ve done a really intense leg workout, and you’re walking across the gym when your exhausted thigh muscles suddenly give out and one leg involuntarily bends due to fatigue, and it makes you look like you just did a really lame dance to the (always terrible) music playing over the gym speaker system?

Not that anything like that has ever happened to me, because it hasn’t, ever, ever.

Where was I?  Oh, yes, the leg lunge.  This exercise is great for a couple of different reasons.

A BODY WEIGHT LEG EXERCISE: NO EQUIPMENT NECESSARY

The obvious first advantage about the leg lunge is that you can do it anywhere, anytime.  And just because there’s no weights or equipment involved, don’t think for a second that means the lunge isn’t intense:  is it ever!

I personally like to use it as a finishing move but it easily can stand alone, especially for a beginner.  Since you can do this exercise using only the resistance of your body weight, even those who aren’t terribly fit can use it right off the bat to get started on a fitness program.

For those who are severely underdeveloped or have problems with their knees, the lunge can be easily modified simply by not bending the knee as far on each repetition. 

In addition, since the leg lunge is done free-standing (not done locked into the plane of travel of an exercise machine), it’s highly functional.  What I mean by that is, it’s a natural movement that your body undertakes, so it’s ideal for athletes.  This sort of natural movement engages much more than just the target muscles (in this case, the upper leg muscles); it also requires the stabilizing influence of the abdominal or “core” muscles to maintain balance and posture.

There’s another great benefit to leg lunges: multi-joint leg exercises really seem to ramp up the body’s production of growth hormone, especially when those exercises are intense.  Growth hormone is the body’s way of keeping you young and functional and healthy in general.

HOW IT’S DONE

The technique is really pretty simple.  Start in a standing position, and step forward with one leg. Bend that knee until it is at a 90 degree or right angle.  Your trailing leg will also have to bend at the knee; when I do it, the back knee typically touches the floor.  Then straighten back up. It should feel natural, like a deep step, which is all it is.

Now step forward with the other leg and do the same thing.  That’s really all there is to it.  You can stand in place and alternate sides, or lunge-walk in a straight line.  I like the lunge walk better because I think it has a more natural feel to it.  The way I use it is, I’ll do a series of squats and then finish off my thigh muscles by lunge-walking up and down a long hallway at the gym.  By the time I’m done, I can barely stand up.

Again, you don’t have to take it to that level if you’re not ready for all that.  In fact, as I mentioned before, if you’re just starting out you may need to only lower yourself partway down; say, two-thirds of the way down to the forward leg being bent at 90 degrees.  Then, you can progress from there as you see fit.

How many should you do?  That’s up to you as well.  As I said, one of the great things about this exercise is that it’s appropriate for beginners to advanced athletes.  Do as many as you can until failure for the most rapid results, or if you just don’t feel ready for all that, hold back a bit.  If you do take this exercise to failure (unable to perform any more repetitions), be ready to be SORE the next day!

If you start to feel like just body weight leg lunges are too easy, you can hold a pair of dumbells (start light) in your hands as you lunge along… or if you don’t have dumbells at home, use a pair of one gallon water jugs.  A gallon of water weighs eight pounds, so with a pair of empty water jugs, you basically have a set of dumbells of varying weights (however much you fill them).  Be sure to fill them up to identical amounts, of course… no need to go imbalancing yourself.

How often?  That also depends.  I usually do them once a week, but those athletes who need explosive power as well as endurance may want to do lunges twice a week… more than that is probably too much if you’re also running, biking, or doing other training with your legs.  Spread those resistance training days out during the week so you don’t over-train.

Most importantly, don’t neglect this body weight leg exercise that will surprise you with how well you’ll respond to it. Natural surges in growth hormone levels (such as those encouraged by leg lunges) really propel your fitness level foward more quickly in all areas; decreased body fat, and increased strength and endurance, even in areas other than your legs.

Work some leg lunges in to your life and stay healthy!

Moms face an extra difficult challenge when it comes to their ab workout.  Not only are they dealing with the weight gain and body changes associated with a recent pregnancy, but also the demands of caring for their children make it harder for them to actually get their training in.

In this article, I hope to give you some quick information that will make it easier for you moms to bounce back as quickly as possible.  The good news is, abs training is cheap and relatively easy.  You don’t have to belong to a gym and the two pieces of equipment I usually recommend (stability ball and medicine ball) cost around twenty bucks each.

 Plus, you can do it in your home and sneak it in pretty quickly.  You first have to make up your mind that you can do it, though.  Once you try it out a few times, you’ll see that even with a mom’s crazy schedule, you too can fit in some effective abs training.

 First off, avoid heavy resistance.  You don’t need to mess with any heavy dumbbells or gym equipment… in fact, I suggest you avoid all that.  Heavy resistance training builds bulk and you don’t want that.  Stick with very light resistance or body weight based exercises.

 Next, split up your training.  What I mean by that is, remember that you have front abs, side abs, and what I like to call the “rear abs” or lower back extensors that make up your core.  Each needs to be trained… but they don’t all have to be done at one.  You can more easily sneak in your front abs training alone, then come back later to side abs, then later still for the extensors, much more easily than trying to find the time to do them all together.

 By separating them out, now you only need a few spare minutes here and there to get your training in.  It’s MUCH easier to fit in, say, five minutes of exercise three different times, than fifteen minutes straight.  Make things easier for yourself.

 Finally, target your lower front abs and tranversus (that’s a deep muscle that goes around your stomach like a girdle).  These are usually the problem areas for moms, and here’s a great exercise to handle them.

 It’s called the ball transfer and it’s what it sounds like.  Lie on your back with legs flat and arms overhead holding a medicine ball or exercise ball (your choice).  Lift up your legs and put the ball in between your lower legs and squeeze to hold it there.  Lower your arms and legs to the floor (the ball is still between your legs).  Lift them back up and take the ball from between your legs and hold it in your hands.  Lower your arms and legs to the floor.  Now you’re right back where you started, so just repeat.  You’ll feel it soon enough.

 While you do the exercise, visualize pressing your belly button to your spine (or sucking your gut in, whichever image works).  This will engage that deep transversus muscle.

It’s quick to do and very light resistance.  So now that you have the ab workout information you need, for all you moms out there, all you need to do now is start doing it… and you might be surprised how easily you can do it if you follow my recommendations in this article!

If you want to learn more about abs training and fitness, visit my new mini-site called www.roadmaptoabs.com.  It’s still under construction, but there’s already a lot of information up and, so check it out!

If you’re like me, you consider plodding along on a treadmill at such and such a pace for some blah amount of time to pretty much equate to slow, agonizing death.  Maybe it’s my ADD, maybe it’s weakness,  I don’t know and I don’t care.  I’m not a big believer in making myself miserable with my exercise… it’s contrary to the goal of having an exercise program for the rest of your life.  After all, who’s going to volunteer to beat themselves up on a regular basis?  Sooner or later, you’re going to get tired, or overwhelmed at work, or the kids are going to set the house on fire, or SOMETHING is going to come up and make you say, “Nah”, when it comes time to exercise… IF that exercise makes you miserable.

So don’t fight it.  Human nature is Natural Law, and fighting against it is like swimming against the current.  Instead, create a cardio program that you WILL stick with, because you either find it enjoyable, or at least tolerable.

Case in point… I hate running for distance at a constant rate.  HATE it.  I think it’s because I used to run cross country when would really have rather played football.  Instead of doing what I wanted, I felt forced by my track coaches to run cross country, which is, of course, running for distance at a (relatively) constant rate.  So, once I graduated, I said the hell with that, I’m never doing it again.

It took some time to get past that and acknowledge that I had to do SOME cardio, and I finally came up with a routine that I really ended up liking.  The only drawback is, it’s time consuming.  But still, if I have the time, I will gladly do this cardio all day long if I can.

It’s a mix of surge training, jogging, and hiking.  You see, I like to sprint, and I like to hike.  And by constantly changing it up with no rhyme or reason, I remove that feeling of “I HAVE to keep this pace up” that a lot of people dread when they do plod-along running.  I don’t know about you, but I hate being told what to do.  So when I get out to play, I don’t want anybody telling me I have to run at X speed for Y length of time.  When that happens, my inner rebellious teenager comes out and I say “Whateva!  Whateva!  I’ll do what I want!”

Again, why fight that?  Instead, I go out on the trail and start hiking.  When the urge comes on, I’ll start jogging, and then ramp up into a sprint for maybe two to four hundred meters, then back down to a jog, then hike, then sprint, then jog, hike, jog, hike, jog, sprint…. and so on and so forth.  There’s no pattern.  I just go and play outdoors.

Stop beating yourself up with your workouts!  You know, exercise CAN be fun… it doesn’t have to be slogging drudgery that you feel you have to drag yourself through out of some sort of obligation to the Gods of Fitness.  Play with it.  Change things up.  Do what’s fun.

Now, this doesn’t work too well for people who are training big-time for an event of some sort.  This is advice for you folks who can’t seem to keep up with some part of your workout because you secretly hate it.  Of course, if you’re training for a half-marathon or something like that, you’re going to have to exercise in a particular way in a regimented program if you want to accomplish your goal.  That’s different.

For most of us, though, we’re not trying to break a twenty minute 5K time or something like that.  So try out my cardio play day if you find you can’t bear to chug along at the same nine minute mile for four miles or whatever you have learned to hate.  Get out on a running trail, start hiking, and when you feel like it, break into a jog.  Or a sprint.  Then switch back and forth as you want to.  That’s right.  Nobody can tell you what to do.  Go as far as you like, then that’s it.  You don’t have to measure distance, time, pace, anything.  Just get outside, explore, and get the ”play” back into your exercise routine.  Ipods are also a blessing for this.

You may just find yourself going longer, further, and faster than you ever thought you would- and, God Forbid, you might enjoy it!

Stay healthy!

Okay everybody, I finally got around to shooting a video demonstrating the side plank, the best exercise you can do for the side abdominal muscles (the obliques).  Remember, there’s more to the abs than just the front “six pack” abs.  I know, I know, the six pack gets all the press, but the abdominal muscles form a ring all the way around your waistline that acts as a built-in weight belt to protect your spine and support the contents of your abdomen (i.e., your guts).

A huge mistake in exercising the obliques is the use of heavy resistance.  You’ll sometimes see somebody in the gym holding a heavy dumbell in one hand, bending at the waist the other way.  Bad idea.  First off, that’s not the way the joints are aligned in the lower spine, so you’re asking for an injury.  Also, heavy resistance builds bulky, big muscles, not sleek, slender muscle.  I don’t know anybody who’s thinking “You know what I want?  A thicker waistline!”

The side plank will offer a low level of resistance for a sustained period, which is what you want to create a slimmer, sleeker look in the abs.

So there it is, the mighty side plank.  Be sure to check out the other videos on my youtube channel, healthyandy9.  Why healthyandy9?  Because some dirty SOB already took healthyandy, that’s why!

Did you find this video helpful?  Questions?  Comments?  Post them below, and as always, if you see someone in the gym screwing themselves up with dumbell side bends, tell them about this video and healthyandy.com!

Stay healthy!

Fibromyalgia is tough disease to deal with, on many levels.  First off, are the symptoms.  It’s characterized by a lot of wide-spread pain and fatigue, often without any discerable cause.

Second, we don’t know much about it.  In fact, we’re so clueless as to how fibromyalgia works, that a lot of doctors wonder if it’s even really a diagnosis.  Other doctors use it as a “trash can” diagnosis… hell, I don’t have any idea what you’ve got, I’ll just call it fibromyalgia and call it a day.

But, it’s a very real problem for a lot of people, and the lack of knowledge leads to a lack of effective treatments.  A new study shows that short bursts of exercise can improve symptoms for some fibromyalgia sufferers.

It’s not sprinting up bleachers or anything crazy like that.  Basically, about thirty minutes of exercise intense enough to make the person breathe heavily, but not so intense they they couldn’t speak, seemed to do the trick.

This is an important study to have out there because the symptoms of fibromyalgia- pain and fatigue- tend to lead people to become sedentary.  Now, they know they need to keep moving, in order to be able to keep moving.

Source article: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/183938.php