Weight loss super tips

Fitness, from a biological point of view, is the extent to which an organism is adapted to or able to produce offspring in a particular environment.  An organism that is fit, or has great fitness, is the one that has the greatest chance of survival and passing on his genes to the next generation.  In other words having fitness will help you live longer and get laid more often.

You probably relate being fit with six pack abs and the models you see in magazines and TV. Well you are wrong. Being fit depends on the environment that surrounds you.  Having a low body fat content does not increase your fitness if you live in Alaska.  Fat helps use keep warm, thus having some extra fat helps Eskimos withstand the cold weather and snow.  Now if you take a couple of Eskimos and take them to the desert, you will see that they will get hot very easily and have a hard time under the sun.

Fitness training doesn’t mean you have to have a six pack or have a body fat percentage under 7%.  Being fit means being prepared for the task at hand, be it something you do on a daily basis or something that catches you by surprise.  It is about prevailing through any challenge that you have at hand. By challenges I don’t only mean a tough workout, but also the stress from work and home that you face everyday.  To me the fittest people are not the ones you see on TV and magazines, but those that have to survive day in and day out life threatening situations in environments that they are not used to; and who might these people be? Well soldiers, firefighters, coast guard rescue swimmers, etc.

These people wake up everyday of their lives with death breathing down their necks.  They can’t afford not being fit or prepared for the tasks they face at work.  Not being prepared gives them less of a chance of making it home to their families every night. I guess this is why we admire them so much; this is why most kids say they want to be like them when they grow up.  They kind of have a super hero aura that is irresistible.

As you can testify most soldiers, marines, fire fighters, and law enforcement officers are not ripped or look like fitness models, yet very few people can do they stuff they do and survive through what they go through everyday of their lives.

How do they do it?

I asked myself this very question for a long time. When I was introduced to the internet, I researched Yahoo and Altavista (no Google at the time) for “marine training”, “fire fighter training”, “police training”, etc.  I never came up with anything worth while until a couple years ago, when I was introduced to TACFIT Commando.  This program changed my few of being fit.  It has helped me reduce my weak spots and has made me better in every mental and physical aspect of my life.

Up for a challenge.  Try this <<<<<<<<<Israeli Special Ops Challenge

This exercise is one of my favorites, and one rarely mentioned on the web.  I first learned it in gymnastics a few hundred years ago, and it reappeared in my life in the book written by Christopher Sommer titled “Building the Gymnastic Body”.  The exercise is called reverse leg lift-  headstand and you will love it.  Watch the video below where I show a demonstration.

Things to keep in mind

1. For a triangle base with your head and hands.  The longer the sides of the triangle are, the more stability you will have.

2. Pull your feet lose to your head by driving your hips above your head.

3. Keep your back straight (crown to coccyx alignment)

4. Tighten your core and pull your feet up.

Progression.

1. Bend your knees until you reach a tucked position.  Then tighten your core and drive them upwards.

2. Knees straight. Tighten core and lift your legs.

3. Add some weight with ankle straps or with a medicine ball between your legs.

This exercise is great for developing core strength and six pack abs.

WARNING: If you start to feel disease, nausea, or any such symptom, please stop.  It might take a while for you to get used to standing on your head.

My sister started Cross Fit Training and she is loving it, which makes me really happy because she is finally working out.  She is not overweight or has any weight problems, she just didn’t move much.  She was starting to complain about moving and lifting things as if she were a woman 3 times her age.  She is starting to see results and she is loving it.  I have seen and read a little bit about Cross Fit, but enough to judge it.

The past week I went to Bogotá for my cousins wedding, and I decided to give Cross Fit a chance.  My first impression was, ” Finally a gym were people actually come to TRAIN, instead of making social life”.  My second impression was,”this isn’t anything new”.  Considering I’m still quite ignorant on the subject, to me Cross Fit was the same old calisthenics with some kettle bells, dumb bells, and medicine balls.  The workouts of the day (WOD) are tough and are real high intensity, but there were a couple of things that I didn’t like:

1. Warm up:  First of all it included static stretching.  It has been shown in the scientific literature that static stretching is not good for warming up. Why? Because it affects our performance by reducing our ability to express power.  Secondly the mobility exercises we did only targeted about 3 joints (shoulders, hips, and knees), and left the rest starving for some juice.  Finally, the used plyometric exercises like knees to chest.  Plyometric exercises require a lot of power and energy, and if you are not properly warmed up, you can injure yourself easily.

2. They don’t work along the 6 degrees of Freedom.  The 6 DOF is a term taken from aviation that describes the way we move through space.  We can  heave (moving up and down), sway (moving right and left), surge (moving forward and backward),  pitch (bending forward and backward), yaw (twisting right and left), roll (turning right and left).  What I saw from Cross Fit is that it fails to work on the last two or three.

3. Sophistication.  To me the exercises just seemed too simple.  I was told in the introduction that Cross Fit worked the mind, but I haven’t really seen this.  As I said before, the workouts are tough, but not complex.

As a former gymnast, I’m a real admirer of sophisticated movements and body weight strength.  I just love it when people try to imitate what I’m doing and find themselves really tangled up.

Aside form these three things I loved Cross Fit, it is something the fitness industry really needed.  I was tired of the traditional gyms full of tough guys that fall apart when the going gets tough.  This brings up a story by the way.

Story:  A few years ago when I was becoming a Red Cross Volunteer (In Colombia volunteers are asked to do a lot of rescue work.  As a matter of fact the best rescue units in the country belong to the Red Cross) we had a 3 day field trip where we had to walk for hours, carry rescue people, and learn how to navigate through a forest at night.  We were allowed very little food and water, so fatigue was our most loyal companion.  Within my team we had a personal trainer.  This guy was big, his legs were like tree trunks and he was wide as a bull.  At he beginning I thought he was an asset to the team, but after we had to carry him twice, I changed my opinion.

He fainted on us twice during the three days.  The skinny guys like me had to carry his muscular ass about a mile all the way to camp.  Thanks to him I realized the big muscles are not an advantage in the real world.  Hell, the girls preformed better and complained less than him.

End of story

I loved the community.  I think this is Cross Fit’s biggest Plus.  Competing against a friend is the best way to improve and challenge yourself.  A lot of people under estimate the power of motivation and Cross Fit has a lot of it.

Circular Strength Training on the other hand is my preferred training technology.  It differs from Cross Fit because it is more involves more mobility drills, more sophisticated movements, and CLUBBELLS!!!!  I will use this space to express the awesomeness of club bells.  Believe me you will never know how weak you are until you have used club bells.  I got mine a few days ago and I’m loving them.

In CST you don’t only progress in reps, rounds, and sets, but also in sophistication.  Your movements become more complex and challenge your brain a whole lot more.  This helps you become more body conscious.  You kind of get a feeling of where everybody part is doing.

CST has a little bit of yoga, martial arts, science, and psychology.  In other words it is packed with benefits for your health.  Most athletes that have tried them have become champions, due to its injury free nature.

If you want to learn more about it go to RMAX International.

Personally I think Cross Fitters can benefit a lot by incorporating some of the things taught in CST.

Social acceptance is very important for us humans.  I just recently learned that we look for it because it gives us or gave us a better chance at survival.  What I’m trying to get to is that we usually runaway from different things because we are afraid of being mocked, and not being accepted.  That is why when we are at the gym we train the same way everybody else is training, we are afraid of attracting stares.  If you have ever tried any of the bodyweight programs I recommend on this blog you know that they attract stares.  If you have ever trained in the park with these exercises, I bet more than one guy has fallen off his bike thinking, “WTF is this guy or gal doing?”.  You may even find the occasional girl or boy that will try to imitate you with very little success, only ending up in giggles.  If this has ever happened to you don’t interpret it as something bad, because it isn’t.  Don’t believe that you are a weirdo, because your not, ok maybe just a little (just look at all the people that Circular Strength Train, their definitely not normal).

Why are they not normal? Well, first of all they train with heavy baseball bats (i.e Clubbells), they move around like something got in their pants, and well they’re champions at what they do, literally.  Scott Sonnon the founder of all this weirdness won 4 gold medals at the World Martial Art Championships (most 40 year olds have trouble getting out of bed, yet win 4 gold medals); Alberto Gallazzi is in charge of RMAX Europe, and he is a jiu jitsu champion as well.  Here are some reviews (click on link below) from some of his clients.  If you look carefully you’ll see that most of them have been champions in their sports.

http://www.rmaxi.com/cst/reviews.php

This is why I don’t mind being the weirdo in the park. Training the way normal people train only get you normal results, train like a weirdo will get you out of the ordinary results.  You won’t only look good, but feel great.

If you want to join this community of weirdo’s I’m going to give you a couple of free workouts so that can get started.

This first workout is from the guys at Bodyweightcoach.com and their program the Bodyweight Revolution, and the second one is from Coach Sonnon and his TACFIT Commando program.

FUN-damentals (Right Click here to download)

Israeli Challenge (Right Click here to download)

Prepare for some stares.  I now declare you an official weirdo.

I’ve had it!!!  I just finished reading an article about a new eating disorder called “Manorexia”.  Boy are we getting good at messing up our nutrition and health.  Eating disorders used to affect mostly women, with just a small percentage of men.   In this article it says that the UK has shown an increase in 66% in the admissions of men with eating disorders.  The reason:  they want to look like fitness models.

When men hear their lady friends rave about the abs on Brad Pitt or so and so model, this gets to them, especially if they like one of the girls.  They start hitting the gym and taking advice from the wrong people and the wrong places.  They might look up “Brad Pitt workout” or “Brad Pitt diet” on Google and find a bunch of information.  They might find that Brad Pitt went on a diet of no carbs and tons of protein, and that he worked out with this routine (Men’s Fitness does this a lot).  After 4 or 5 weeks they still look the same and start to get frustrated, and this frustration eventually leads to eating disorders, and a long list of health problems.

I’m going to tell you a little thing about fitness models and movie stars… They don’t look like that year round!!!  They don’t grow beer bellys from October to December, but they are not shredded like they look in the magazine cover 365 days a year.  If you have ever wasted your time reading a tabloid, you might recall seeing something like” So and So is Fat” ,” Look at the cellulite on …”  Well guess what? Movie stars, singers, and fitness models are human!!!  They also gain weight and have fat.

Fat is not a sick joke that nature decided to pull on us.  We need fat for several health reasons (i.e reproduction, to fight infections), and that is why it is so hard to get rid of;  our body does not want to let go of it.  The people that appear in magazine covers, movies, music videos etc., know when they have to look good, thus they prepare.  They get a personal trainer, nutritionist and start going through “hell” in order to look shredded.  In other words they have a plan. Keyword being plan.  Their diets match with their workouts so they have the right amount of energy to obtain results and stay health. The diets and workouts you read about are small piece of that plan.  Once the shoot or movie is over, they go back to living a normal life, where they eat all the stuff that you eat.

You might argue that there are models that look good year round, which is true.  The difference between you and them is that they live from their bodies, which makes working out and nutrition their work, and believe me, it is work. Having six pack abs is hard work; more than what a lot of people are willing to put in.  It requires tons of discipline in your diet and in the gym (no miracles).  As I said before, our body needs a certain amount of fat to stay healthy, and thus, it resists losing it. That is why it takes a lot of work to shed it off.  Motivation is key in order to stick through the hard times. You really need to find something that motivates you more than “looks”. Believe me looking good isn’t enough.  Just take a look around you and and ask yourself,  how many people have 6 pack abs?.  Very few, right? But I bet a great deal of them would like to have them, yet they don’t. Why? They aren’t motivated enough to make the tough changes that are required.

Another thing you have to take into account is the time these people dedicate to their bodies.  Very few of us can spend 2 or 3 hours in the gym everyday, or buy all the organic food that they eat.    As you can see, if you compare your life to theirs, you’ll see you are in a clear disadvantage.  But don’t get me wrong, it is not impossible.  There are a lot of people that have managed to have fitness model physique.  Tomorrow I’ll tell you about someone that did it and the plan they used.

In a recent poll, taken by a popular magazine in my country (i.e Colombia), 77% of the population is unhappy with they way they looked in front of the mirror.  WTF!!! How can it be possible?  There are tons of solutions out there.  So why haven’t these people done something about it?  Chances are they have, but with little success.  We care a lot about how we look.  Men and women stress out about this day in and day out.  This is why the fitness industry is worth billions.  Yes, there are tons of bogus products out there, but there are also tons of good ones (like the ones I promote on my blog).

In my country we have a saying,” The problem is not the arrow, but the Indian behind it”.  I have come to learn that looking good is just not motivation enough, especially in a society were being fat as become socially acceptable (the skinny guys are actually the minority now).  I have learned from personal experience that I can live a happy and healthy life without looking like a fitness model.  What I can’t live with is being sick and crippled?  And I’m sure you’ll agree with me on that.  At the first sign of sickness you run to the doctor, but you don’t do the same with the gym on the first sign of excess fat.  You can live with excess fat, just take a look around, a lot of people do, but you can’t live being sick (take another peek at the people around you).

My motivation when I go to the gym is that “buzz” I get after I finish, it’s that sense of “mission accomplished” mixed with the endorphins and adrenaline that I love.  My motivation with my diet is feeling great day in and day for the last decade or so (I haven’t had a runny nose, during the last 10 years).  It’s feeling high on energy 24/7 and being able to play around with my dog and nephews.  These are the reasons why I kick my butt, and look at the devil straight in the eye during each and every one of my workouts.  Believe me if you feel great, you’ll look great.

Looking for results in the mirror can sometimes be depressing, they don’t appear as fast.  You may think that what your doing is not working, because you haven’t dropped a size or because you weight is the same.  Stop judging your program by the numbers on your scale; look at how much better you feel, and how much more energy you have.  If you are on a good and respectable program, the pounds will eventually come off.

The Lesson of the Day then becomes:

Look for motivation outside the mirror. Science has shown that all diets work the same if you stick to them long enough.  Keep a journal of your time or reps and see if you are improving, this is the best way to find plateaus and know when to make adjustments, it is also great for motivation.  Seeing progress where you can find is what keeps you going to the gym and sweating like a big day in and day out.