Weight loss super tips

Chin ups without a doubt are one of the best exercises you can possibly do to strengthen your back, abs, and biceps.  They are not very easy to do, they require a lot of strength, and for this reason many people shy away from them, especially girls (you know I’m right).  If you happen to be one of these people then I suggest you go read another one of my post, because today I’m going to teach you a chin up variation I learned from Nick Nilsson.

I follow Nick because he always comes up with some cool exercises that challenge me.  Whenever you think you have dominated a certain type of exercise head over to Nicks Website and try one of his variations, you won’t regret, or maybe you will.

To perform it, you should be able to do at least 8 to 10 regular chin-ups. It’s a tough exercise and requires some base chinning strength to perform.

For this one, you’ll just need a chin-up bar. I’m using the one that goes across the frame of my power rack and that works just fine.

So first, go to one end of the bar and stand perpendicular under it (NOT like you normally would directly under the bar).

Take a staggered grip on the bar (like a baseball bat grip).

Now pull yourself up to one side of the bar – the side you’ll want to pull to is the same as the hand that is FURTHEST from you.  Basically, if your left hand is furthest away, pull up on the left side of the bar. Now lower yourself down PART WAY…NOT the whole way. You should have some bend in your elbows.

At this point, move your furthest hand over behind your nearest hand (hence the hand-over-hand name!).The key here is to be sure you’ve got a bend in the elbows and tension on the lats. Because when you take one hand off, you’re basically putting your entire bodyweight (just for a moment) on the one lat. VERY big time tension here.

Once you’ve placed the hand, pull yourself up to the OTHER side. Lower yourself down, step your hand backward on the bar again. Now pull up to the other side again. Continue along the bar until you run out of bar then go back the way you came, moving your hands forward this time. Keep going forward and backward along the bar until you can’t do any more reps.It’s a BRUTAL back exercise that makes regular chins look like nothing.  By the time you’re done, your entire back and your biceps will be so swollen full of blood, you won’t believe it. The continuous tension and bodyweight combination really makes for a potent back attack!

For pictures and video of this exercise in action, click on the following link:

http://www.thesuperherobody.com/deal/chinupNN

One of the most misunderstood subjects in the fitness industry is strength training.  Most people relate having muscles with being strong.  Even though this has some truth true it, they are not directly proportional.  What I mean is that having big muscles does not mean you are going to be super strong.  I don’t know were this belief came from – maybe comic books- but it is definitely not from real life experiences.  Take female gymnasts for example.  They are not precisely big, but they can hold a handstand, flip, kip, etc.  All those exercises require a great deal of strength, and as I said before they don’t look like this:

I bet most bodybuilders couldn’t preform the stunts most gymnasts can do, not even what a 7 year old gymnasts could do.  My point is that women don’t have to worry about waking up like She-Hulk if they lift heavy weights, these are some reasons why:

1.  You don’t have the testosterone to grow big muscles.  Women have very little testosterone (male hormone), which is the reason why they have fewer muscles than men.

2. Muscles take time to grow.  Forget about waking up and looking like She-Hulk.  I know this is your number one fear, but believe me you have nothing to be afraid of.  If you start seeing that you are getting to big, just stop; let your trainer know, or just go on to lighter weights.  Truth is muscle goes away faster than it grows.

3. Growing muscle requires a high calorie diet.  If you are trying to get in shape, you’re probably not on a high calorie diet.  Your body needs a surplus of energy in order to grow.  If you keep your diet in check, you should not have to worry about bulking up.

Here are some reasons why you SHOULD strength train:

1. Sarcopenia is a degenerative loss of skeletal muscle.  This isn’t a disease, but part of the natural process of aging.  When we hit forty – or somewhere near there- our bodies begin to lose muscle tissue.  This is one of the reasons old people are weaker than younger people.

If you want to avoid being confined to a wheelchair in your later years, I suggest you start strength training.

2.  Confidence.  You will be amazed by how much better you will feel about yourself once you feel a little stronger, or once you achieve a certain skill if your training with gymnastics.  I got to tell you there is no better feeling.  Just ask Jenn (you may find her to look a lot like Julianne Moore ) from FitBottomGirls.com; read  her post n strength training.

In conclusion forget about looking like She-Hulk after night, and stop training like a girl!!!!  Go hit the weights and go feel better about yourself.

PS.  Tomorrow I’ll let you in on some cool programs made exclusively for you.

Today I wanted to spend some time surfing the web searching for unique topics to write about -not very easy in this niche- and I stumbled upon this blog http://www.escapefromobesity.blogspot.com/ where an obese woman writes down the changes and symptoms she feels from gaining and losing weight.

I have written a couple hundred times about how bad excess fat is, but Lyn shows in a more personal manner.  I have never been obese so I have to admit it is pretty hard to talk about the subject.  I know most obese people don’t want to be obese, but sometimes it feels like their is no choice.

I just wanted to share some of the symptoms Lyn felt while weighing 275lbs

1. constant headaches
2. daily heart palpitations
3. bad skin, face is always red, many pimples
4. cannot wear my contacts, red itchy eyes with clogged ducts
5. my teeth hurt (hot/cold sensitive)
6. bleeding gums
7. ache all over when I get up in the morning
8. hobbling
9. knees crackle and grind when I sit
10. going up and down stairs is painful and difficult
11. cannot walk more than 1/2 block per day
12. severe joint pain
13. cannot sleep well
14. wake up choking on my reflux
15. eating lots of Tums for heartburn
16. waking up many times through the night
17. always tired
18. sore feet
19. very bad PMS
20. back hurts
21. pains between my shoulder blades
22. note: size 3X clothes, size 26 jeans are snug.

It’s official I’m addicted to Clubbell training.  I discovered this amazing tool or technology (call it whatever you want) a couple years ago, but I never got to try them until a month ago when I bought my own set.  I was introduced to this ancient tool by one of my favorite martial arts coaches, Scott Sonnon.  I watched tons of videos of him and his followers swinging clubbells around, but I never saw anything beneficial from their use.  The movements did not look complex, to tell you the true they didn’t look very challenging.  As I said before it took me a couple of years to try them.

A month ago I received my first pair of 15 lbs clubbells to help be prepare for my CST Certification.  You may think the 15lbs is not too much, but believe me they are tough.

When I first tried them out I couldn’t believe how heavy they felt (15 pound dumb bells do not feel like this).  I hated them for making me feel so weak.  I bought The Encyclopedia for Clubbell Training and started with the “easy” exercises.  Right now I have managed to do mills, but I’m still far from reaching the 100 reps necessary for my certification.

After researching the web these are some of the benefits you get with clubbell training:

This is a video of me playing around with my Clubbells.

 

I was a tennis player for most of my teenage years.  I wanted to turn pro, but I have to admit I didn’t have the temper to become really great.  I had a tough time accepting unforced errors.  Every time I made a double fault or every time i placed a ball on the net I burst into rage and smack the racket against my head, and yell at the umpire.  I was a young McEnroe without all the trophies.

The point of this post is not to talk about my teenage years, but to give you a new option at exercising.  You got to admit that gyms are not fun, and that barbells are not that exciting.  People don’t line up money to go see some one curl or bench press, but they do line up to see a guy like Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer train.  Why? Well because it is more fun.  In a previous post I mentioned that being in shape has nothing to do with having a six pack (very few tennis players have one), and that it is all about having fun.  So, if you haven’t tried tennis I suggest you give it a shot.

How to start playing tennis

First of all you need a tennis racket.  Go to a tennis shop and have one of the experts advice you on which racket is best for you.  While you are at it, go ahead and buy one pack of three tennis balls.  The next step would be to enroll in tennis lessons, but if you don’t have the cash (I get we are in middle of an economic crisis) you can use a wall.

How to grab the racket

There are various ways in which you can grip your new racket (check out youtube.com), but I’m just going to show you one.  Place the racket so that the grip is perpendicular to your body, and the strings are perpendicular to the floor.  Now make believe that your going to shake the grips hand.  This is will be your forehand grip.  For your backhand grip, place the racket parallel to your stomach with the grip pointing to the right, if your right handed, or to the left if you are left handed.  Make sure the strings are perpendicular to the floor.  Once the racket is in this position grab it.

Now that you know how to grab the racket you can go hit the ball against a wall.  You’ll soon find out that it is not as easy as it looks.

This is the technical part of the sport and I really recommend you sign up for lessons.  To be honest with you, practicing this won’t make you lose much weight, so I won’t waste more time on this.

Learn how to play tennis in 49 steps

The physical part of the sport lies in knowing how to move your feet.  If you have ever watched a tennis match, you might have seen that the pros never stop moving their feet while the ball is in play.  They are always moving right and left, forward and back, and in diagonals.  How fast they get to each ball is what determines how well they hit the ball.  Speed, power, and agility are key to success, and thus are very important part of their training.

Drills you can use.

1. Place a tennis ball on every corner of the singles court, and place your racket in the center (on the T).  Use a stopwatch to time how long it takes you to pick up each ball, and placing it back on the racket.  You can only pick up one ball at the time.  If you don’t have tennis balls you can use any other object.

2. This drill helps your lateral footwork and your speed.  Start on the top left corner of the court.   Follow the lines on the diagram below. In this drill you must always be facing the court.  So when you come up against a line pointing sideways you must use a lateral step.

If you feel with enough gas a the end, try going back.  Use a stop watch and try to better your time.  If you have a partner you can race each other, each one on one side.

If you incorporate this drills at the end of your training you will surely lose weight.

Rest days are one of the most underrated parts of training.  A common misconception is that rest days are not part of training, and this is not true at all.  A lot of trainers and programs out there include rest days, but they don’t tell you what to do.  Telling you to rest is like telling you to train high intensity, but without telling you what exercises, reps, or sets.  I just finished two months of training, and I’m half way through my 4 day resting phase so I thought it was a good time to show you what I do.

I used to be one of those people that thought that resting was just laying down on my couch watching TV. After all isn’t resting about doing nothing? WRONG.  If you have ever adopted this method of resting, you might have found yourself more tired after your resting day than before it. Why does this happen?  I’m not quite sure, but I have a theory.  After training for a few days your tissues get injured due to the stress imposed on them by your training.  When you rest your body initiates healing, which produces scar tissue where ever injuries were produced.

Scar tissue serves the sole purpose of protecting the injured area and making sure it doesn’t get injured again.  For this reason it is tougher and harder than normal healthy tissue, thus it is less mobile.   This contributes to the stiffness and soreness (DOMS syndrome) that we feel the day after a strong training session.  This eventually makes us feel tired.

So how can we avoid this?  With active recovery.

Since I don’t plan on committing the same mistakes I have done in the past, and I want you to learn from mine.  This is what I doing on my 4 day rest period.

You guys know I’m a fan of Scott Sonnon and his programs (check them out here). I learned active recovery from him so it is pretty obvious most of the things I’m about to teach you are from his programs.

Before breakfast I do some Intu-Flow to get the juices flowing and my joints lubricated.  Never underestimate the power of these movements.  You will immediately feel better after doing them.  I like to go through all the ranges, circles, and infinities of each joint.  I may eventually do clovers, but I have to admit I almost never do them.  This may take me a total of 10 to 15 minutes.

Around noon, before lunch and if my upper body is feeling really sore, I get my broom stick and work on the Healing Staff program; if my legs are sore I just do the Archimedes program.  I kind of  have kept this from you, because I don’t think it is sold separately.  I got them along with the TACFIT Gym program that you can get here.

Get TACFIT Gym

The healing staff will get make your shoulders, chest, and elbows feel like new.  The Archimedes program will help you heal your legs, and help you prepare for the splits.

As the day comes to an end and I prepare myself to go to sleep, I like to do some Ageless Mobility (very much like Intu-Flow but with static flexibility).

That is it.  That is how I rest on my rest days.  Sometimes I may go out and shoot some hoops or go for a small swim, nothing that can get me to tired.