Momentum

The crazy thing about momentum is, momentum cannot change direction without slowing down and stopping first. It physically impossible. So what about momentum in a figurative sense? Like in diet or healthy lifestyle? It means you can't just reverse your momentum. You have to slow down and stop before you can go the other way. So the less bad habits you have, the easier it is to slow down, stop, and make a change. If you have a million bad habits and are morbidly overweight, the momentum catapulting you to a very dangerous life is far greater than the momentum of someone who's only problem is they don't exercise enough.

This now can be literally applied again to exercises. The way you set down weights, how you pick it up. Especially with exercises where you swing or explode. For example the kettlebell swing or an power clean. Both have ways to load the weight, create momentum, then catch the momentum and set it down or re-rack. So with a swing for example, the momentum of the ball must slow down on the way down and stop against your thigh before being set down again on the ground. This also prevents injury as well as building a sensitivity for energy.

Things that are examples of reversing momentum in a dangerous way is any of those things I call a dance class. Dance class not meaning literally dancing, but exercising to music, and to the rhythm of the music, not to your body's natural rhythm. Where you are leaping, stepping, kicking, punching, lifting, etc. All without worry about momentum, so a lot of times people are overextending everything, and relying on their ligaments and tendons to hold tight and reverse momentum for them. This is how a lot of injuries can occur.

Momentum exists in everything you do. Make sure you apply the proper protocols and you are patient with yourself.

Strange Military Fact

All the different militaries of the world run less and less in their training each generation. But each generation suffers more and more from leg injuries. One theory is that the cadets come in walking and running less their whole life and wearing shoes that have too much padding.

No Rocket Science

Eat in a way so you don't have to work out all day to be lean...Inversely if you don't eat healthy, you will have to work out like crazy not to gain weight.

Not Enough Sun?

15 minutes a day may keep the doctor away.

http://lifehacker.com/5823591/tanning-can-cause-cancer-but-not-tanning-could-cause-a-lot-worse

Running

Running for a long distance all the time is hard on your body. Even if you do it with good form, barefoot or in barefoot style running shoes. It's a lot of impact, and nowadays the most commonly used running surface is hard pavement.

Content Based

I am lucky to have the clients that I have and the readers that I do. Because my blog is no frills and all content based, those are the types of clients I get. People don't care about the frills, who want to be motivated through education. Who want content and substance. It's why my niche market has become CEOs. It's why so many of my clients end up making more money than they did before training, even though training can be considered a luxury expense. They are driven people who become more driven, who feed off of information instead of being intimidated by it. 

I could spend all my time trying to make my site look hipper, nicer, flashier, or I can spend my time writing in it every day. With my clients, I can spend all my time listening to their problems and being their best friend, or I can always keep up to date on the latest training information and make them train harder.

Obesity Trends

http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html?s_cid=tw_cdc704

This is all self reported data. So things may be even worse.

BDD

Does this sound like you?

"Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) (previously known as dysmorphophobia[1] is sometimes referred to as body dysmorphia or dysmorphic syndrome[2]) is a (psychological) somatoform disorder in which the affected person is excessively concerned about and preoccupied by a perceived defect in his or her physical features"

I see this in people who lose so much weight and no matter how much weight they lose, they still don't think they look good. Or guys who can never get big enough.

What's Harder?

Starting to question what's harder, quitting drugs and alcohol, or quitting bad foods? With all the people who relapse off their diets, I am starting to think bad foods hook people more than the worse drugs.

Lopsided

One of the most common dysfunctions people have, is being lopsided. It is also a common way to injure yourself. Meaning your right side is much more developed than your left side. Your front pulls way too much and your back is too weak. Your arms are too strong compared to your legs.

Once these things are evened out, not only will you be more flexible, but more coordinated, athletic, healthy, have less pain, and look much much better.

A Man Who Is Free

I've known people who've had family members that were prisoners in one form or another. My own family during the Japanese occupation of Korea were the prisoners of the Japanese. I also know people who have family members that were holocaust survivors. They told me in the internment camp, all they had sometimes was toast, coffee, some salted meat, and potatoes.

The ironic thing is, once people are free, they eat that voluntarily. But now they want lots of it. Big toasts, lots of it with butter, coffee with sugar and cream this time, all kinds of meat with tons of salt, and potatoes. Everything made of potatoes! Eating more but still malnourished.

With my own family, it was lots of white rice, beans, kimchi, and again potatoes. They were eating this and people were dying of starvation. Now my parents will tell me, if people don't eat rice, they will die! They think the problem was the lack of rice, or the rationing of it. They didn't think it was the fact that all they got to eat was rice that killed them. People who prior to this used to eat very very small bowls of rice, but had a table full of all kinds of colorful plants and vegetables and different meats and seafoods. Nowadays you need a huge soup bowl full of rice with every meal.

In a way they are still a prisoner. They eat the same types of food that wasn't nourishing, but now they are free to eat more of it.

So there's a difference between a man who is free and a man who's been freed.

Hip To Waist

A better measure of health, better than fat percentage or weight or BMI is your hip to waist ratio. It compares the size of your waist to your hip, the hip ideally being much larger. With weight or BMI, large athletic people always come out looking overweight. And thin people looking healthy. That is not always the case. Someone let's say who has a 1 to 1 hip to waist ratio, meaning the size of their waist is the same as their hip. Making their body look basically like a box. Whether they are large or thin, they are still a box, and not very athletic. A powerful person has a very pulled in waist and a larger hips.

Now if my waist-line is larger than my hip-line, that is even a bigger sign of poor health. Now I am starting to look dysfunctional and inverted. This is regardless of weight, someone thin could also have a waist line larger than their hip. A common misconception that thinness means small waist, not so. If my waist is now larger than the most powerful part of my body, I am not weighed down, inefficient, and most likely will be sluggish. I will always feel like a small person carrying a big box. Instead of an athlete who's body feels like a small box being carried by a large person with powerful legs.

Another common misconception is that, the larger you are, the more curvy you are. She's got curves, or a bigger women have curves, or real women have curves, as the saying goes. But in actuality, if you are larger and your waist is the same as your hip, you are by definition lacking any curves. You are a large box. It becomes more of a masculine bulky guy build. The inverse then, a thin girl with the same waist to hip has the body of a small boy.

Ideally for women, they want a waist to hip ratio of 70% to be considered athletic. For a man a ratio of 80%. Meaning their waist is 70 or 80 percent the size of their hip.



About the Author:

Sam Y. is a Personal Trainer, Coach, Performane Enhancement Specialist, Corrective Enhancement Specialist, and holds multiple certifications. He is also an avid Martial Artist, training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Kickboxing, Boxing, and MMA. He is also the author of the popular fitness blog All Out Effort as well as the popular martial arts blog Inner BJJ. You can find him in the Los Angeles area personal training his clients, or at home annoying his wife, or on Facebook at his personal fitness page.

Time Management

Give two people the same job, one person thrives under the pressure and finishes their work and has time to do other things. The other person is stressed and complains about not having enough time to finish their work. Not only that they spend all this time and works super hard just to do adequate work.

Moral of the story is, it's not about the amount of time, it's about your ability to manage time and be productive. It's more about focus. If you are not focused, the simplest task takes a long time.

Whenever people complain about never having enough time to work out because of their job or this or that, I know plenty of CEOs that I train who work 15 hours a day and travel every week, who always find time to work out, time for their families, and time to golf or tennis.

It's just a matter of perspective. You act like you have no time, you will have no time. You act like you have lots of time and you will find yourself being productive.

Make your work outs less routine, more intense, and shorter.




About the Author:

Sam Y. is a Personal Trainer, Coach, Performane Enhancement Specialist, Corrective Enhancement Specialist, and holds multiple certifications. He is also an avid Martial Artist, training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Kickboxing, Boxing, and MMA. He is also the author of the popular fitness blog All Out Effort as well as the popular martial arts blog Inner BJJ. You can find him in the Los Angeles area personal training his clients, or at home annoying his wife, or on Facebook at his personal fitness page.

F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America's Future 2011

"Twelve states now have obesity rates above 30 percent. Four years ago, only one state was above 30 percent."


http://www.healthyamericans.org/report/88/

Injury And Pain

There is a major difference between an injury and a chronic pain, or a chronic issue. Most injuries happen all of a sudden, due to a sudden trauma or impact. Our ancestors suffered more from injuries and died from those things more than they did from any disease.

In the modern sedentary world, we are hurting more than ever. But it's not from injuries, because it's not caused usually by something traumatic or sudden. It's something that causes pain over time, that is from something repetitive, that turns chronic. Sometimes injuries will turn chronic because we never strengthen the injured site so even though it heals, it heals in a weakened state because it's never strengthened up again, then repetitive motions make it worse.

Sometimes one day, it just gets really bad, my knee hurts or my neck or my back, etc! And they will blame the last thing they did. But most likely it was already a chronic issue from something repetitive and it finally got bad. A lot of people when they first start working out, will stop because something hurts and they think, oh not this training stuff is dangerous. Sometimes accidents happen but the majority of the time it's everything you did to your body prior to training that causes all the pain, and it's just expressing itself in training. Poor posture, being inflexible, tight muscles, improper breathing, etc.

Nutrient Dense Foods

Forget about how much or how little calories the food you are eating has, just eat nutrient dense foods!

Dog Food

Most modern foods would be inedible for our pets. So why is it okay for human consumption?