Well folks, tomm is our first day of The Velocity Diet. I’m setting up this particular blog in order for us to have a meeting place to log your progress, ask questions pertaining to the diet, give and recieve tips and lastly a place for all of you to curse me for saying yes to this crazy challenge. Alright, here we go! We have 28 days, how hard could it really be? Good Luck!
Jane’s Jungle Workout Part 2 By Paul Chek, HHP, NMT Founder, C.H.E.K. Institute 3. I Want More Energy The human body is one of the few things in the world that gets better with proper use! Although many trainers are aware of the fact that exercise does help improve energy levels, they don’t seem to realize that the nervous and hormonal systems not only govern all aspects of one’s physiology, but both can be developed with correct exercise methods. When females perform the same exercise routine over and over again for months and even years, their body adapts and even stagnates with regard to progress. Solution To keep the body stimulated we must choose exercises that challenge both the nervous and hormonal systems and the muscular system in addition to being interesting and new to the body. The “Dead-Row” (Fig. 4A thru 4D) is an exercise I picked up from BodyPUMP pioneers Emma Barry and Mike McSweeny while working in New Zealand. The exercise combines the dead lift and the bent over row to create a great challenge for the body. 4. I Want to Feel Better When you look better, you feel better! As I point out in my “Equal But Not the Same” correspondence course, females often have poor posture as a result of growth and development factors such as breast development and hormonal aspects. An essential step toward feeling better is to improve posture, which not only enhances looks, but also allows more efficient function. Additionally, with improved posture comes improved energy flow and efficiency and with improved strength from training like I suggest here, females commonly develop a greater sense of autonomy. Solution
Jane’s Jungle Workout Part 1 By Paul Chek, HHP, NMT Founder, C.H.E.K. Institute If you ask any woman to describe the goals of her exercise program, she will certainly tell you such things as: I want to lose fat! I want to tone my butt and thighs I want more energy I want to feel better I want to lose my pooch belly In almost the same breath she tells you her goals, she will be sure to tell you she DOESN’T WANT TO GET BIG! Tarzan would certainly never want to stop Jane from achieving any of these goals, yet females flock to the gym attempting to accomplish these objectives with a battle plan skewed by misconceptions. To aid Jane of the modern jungle in achieving her goals, let’s look at each issue, the common misconceptions and a logical approach to its achievement. Unless your client has unusually large amounts of testosterone in her blood stream, the fear of getting big is unfounded! Competitive female body builders train approximately three hours a day and perform five to 10 sets per exercise in hopes of getting a fraction of the size their male counterparts achieve. Getting big muscles is no easy task for a female. If it were, it would have been Jane swinging from the vines and swimming with the alligators, not Tarzan! To assist Jane of the modern jungle in achieving her goals, let us look at them individually: 1. I Want to Lose Fat Most females feel that they must wear the seat out on an exercise bike or get a gold star for attendance in the aerobics studio to get the fat off, but it obviously doesn’t work that way! Initially, most people will have a slight or moderate change in body shape with aerobic exercise. In a relatively short time, their bodies adapt to the specific stress of a given exercise, becoming very efficient. The result is progressively fewer calories consumed per minute exercised. This is exactly why you so commonly see the same people on the same machines and in the same classes month after month and their body shape rarely ever changes.
This is a really cool article that decribes how animals will act when taken out of there natural environment. It’s written in this manner to show that humans(animals) have also been taken out of there natural environment and it’s quite frankly been disastrous. Just look at the state of health in the United States. Zoologic by Frank Forencich with special thanks to Troy Corliss “The city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.” Desmond Morris Everyone remembers their first trip to the zoo. We all have a deep fascination with our living relatives, whether we’re willing to admit our close kinship or not. Zoos are one of the most popular of all leisure-time activities for Americans, consistently ranking above popular pastimes such as sports. Things were a bit different in my home town, though. Everyone wanted to go to the zoo, but aside from a local petting park, we didn’t have much to boast about. A few goats, a pony and a lama on loan from a local farm were about all we could muster. So, we resolved to take action. We passed a bond issue, raised some money and began to build. Our zoo was going to be fancy, just like the big city zoos. Somehow, I got roped into the process. Someone said that I knew a lot about animals and would be good to have on the board of directors. I did my best to duck the job, but they persisted and I soon found myself going to meetings and pondering the merits of zoo design, funding and administration. I was right in the thick of the action. Everything went according to plan, at least at first. We consulted a raft of experts on animal behavior and habitat. We laid out plans for humane and species-appropriate sections of our zoo. We built a rain forest, an African bushland, an alpine forest and a coastal swamp. How we fit it all into a city block, I’ll never understand, but we did it and we were proud. All the plants took root, the cages and moats all fell into place and everything looked great. But then we made a big mistake. After interviewing dozens of qualified applicants, we hired a zoo manager who, as far as we could see, had all the right qualifications: degree from a major university, experience in big city zoos, impressive resume, the works. And, to top it off, he had an MBA and a graduate degree in marketing. He was a real go-getter. Our man had a sharp “new zoo” concept designed on a business model. As he saw it, the whole point of the zoo was to raise money for shareholders. “You’ve got to run a zoo like a business,” he explained. And so, we needed a twist, a new concept that would appeal to our target audience. He told us that consumers were bored with the “old-school zoo” and standard animal displays. “No one wants to see lions on the savanna or monkeys in the jungle anymore,” he told us. “People are tired of seeing animals in places where they would actually live. They want contrast. They want different. They want new.”
What an insightful poem. Life is so short! Take a deep breath and just enjoy the moment. From now on I promise I will start to appreciate and notice the little things in life. I bet you forgot how beautiful the clouds are? Or how about that flower bed? The sound of the ocean waves? It’s June already! Look how much of year is already behind us. Life is so short, stop taking life so seriously and enjoy right now. This poem was written by a terminally ill young girl in a New York Hospital *SLOW DANCE* *Have you ever watched kids On a merry-go-round? Or listened to the rain Slapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight? Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?* *You better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last.* *Do you run through each day On the fly? When you ask “How are you?” Do you hear the reply? When the day is done Do you lie in your bed With the next hundred chores Running through your head?* *You’d better slow down Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last.* *Ever told your child, “We’ll do it tomorrow?” And in your haste, Not see his sorrow? Ever lost touch, Let a good friendship die ‘Cause you never had time To call and say,”Hi”?* *You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last.* *When you run so fast to get somewhere You miss half the fun of getting there. When you worry and hurry through your day, It is like an unopened gift… Thrown away.* *Life is not a race. Do take it slower Hear the music Before the song is over.* It is the request of a special girl who will soon leave this world due to cancer. This young girl has 6 months left to live, and as her dying wish she wanted to send a letter telling everyone to live their life to the fullest, since she never will.
written by: Matt Pack Impack Total Fitness First of all I am by no means trying to change you. I am honestly not trying to help you at all and want you to stay exactly as you are. In fact I would rather you don’t even read anymore after this sentence. Put in the trash can! You are my competition and I think I forgot that when I decided to write this. So that being said, if you think I’m an asshole or I’m full of shit after reading this it’s fine with me. You know I hope you do, and everything I’ve said goes in one ear and out the other. That’s just more money for me! So if you’re happy where your at than disregard everything in this email but if your broke and don’t know why than I suggest you listen up, I didn’t mean that. Look there is allot of things I don’t believe in like: Cow’s milk( low fat, 2%) it’s all nasty, high rep abdominal training, too much aerobics, spinning, low fat diets and The Loch Ness but something I do passionately believe in is continuing education. I use continuing education not only to learn new, faster, efficient and effective ways to get results but more often to find out what I’m doing may be a waste of time or even worse flat out WRONG. I do come down hard on trainers in the industry who are either too lazy or too egotistical to pursue higher knowledge daily as a means of becoming the best professional they can be. I’m not saying that you have to start throwing kettlebells around or push trucks around the block. I’m saying that exercise science is just that, a science. You can’t get around that. The Science changes all the time and you have to stay up on that! I also don’t believe you can get the “science” off the magazine shelf or even your certification study guides. You have to search for it either on the internet, certs, workshops, seminars, school or finding a credible mentor in the industry who you relate to who gets RESULTS. I loved a quote by Charles Poliquin that said, ” don’t be surprised if you hear or read something I’ve said in the past that I don’t do or believe in anymore, I either did away with it because it didn’t work anymore or I found a better way of doing it.” I’m sorry but I am constantly looking for a better faster way to get my clients results. The faster they get them the better I look. Hey and guess what? What worked for Jane may not work for Sally and the same goes for Tom and Jerry. Increasing your knowledge will increase the size of your “toolbox”. This will give you anything you need to deal with any client(geriatric, athlete, pre/post natal, adolescents or weekend warrior)you encounter. Knowledge makes you more marketable. Marketability makes you more money. In this industry if you’re not staying up on Nutrition, Strength and conditioning, Pre-hab/Re-hab, Stress management and Recovery methods you’re missing the boat and probably won’t last. To have a grasp of these things are imperative not only to the health of are clients but the results of them as well. Come on people! It’s embarrassing! This profession is a joke! Anybody can do what we do. Go online and get that Certification. You don’t need a degree. There’s no regulation on the industry all you need is that weekend cert or be a bodybuilder to be considered an authority. I for one am embarrassed to call myself a personal trainer and as a matter of fact feel belittled and disgraced when put in the same sentence. Call me whatever you man but don’t call me a personal trainer. I guess what I’m saying is if this is you’re profession and livelihood and you want to be successful in this industry and you want to help people at the same time you have to increase your knowledge. Get your CEC’s, read a book a month, travel to an internship once a year, attend a seminar. I’ve read that if you read an hour a day on a specific subject for 3 years you can be considered an expert in your field. So what do want to be? An expert or just another personal trainer with that weekend certification?
Alright everyone strap your seat belts on and get ready for my first official interview. This first interview is actually one of three that I conducted over the last couple of weeks and I want to personally than Donnie Raymond for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer these questions. These are 3 questions that I felt people would like to know more about and Donnie came through for me with some unique answers. This guy is honestly one of the most intellegent and well read people that I know so I know you’re going to love this. Stay tuned for Interview 2 of 3 when I go in depth with one of Maryland’s most well rounded Strength Coaches Thomas Strong. Enjoy! INTERVIEW #1 Donnie Raimon, owner of Elite Health & Performance (www.elitehealthperformance.com). Donnie is a 15 year veteran of the U.S. Navy SEAL, Athletic performance specialist with emphasis on injury recovery and prevention. Donnie also works with multitudes of Professional, Olympic, Collegiate, and amateur athletes. Question #1 What is the state of the industry in your opinion right now? Where did we go wrong and how do we fix it? In my opinion, our industry hit rock bottom about 3 years ago, but is making a slow but steady climb. There so much contradictory information being spread around by unqualified people trying to get rich off of gimmicks the public has stopped trusts us. The public is fed up, and they are doing their own research instead of trusting these quacks. I believe it all went wrong when the pharmaceutical and insurance companies got involved with the fitness industry. The current system is based on “Sick Care” not “Health Care”. There is virtually nothing in our current system to keep people healthy and this problem trickles all the way down to the personal training industry. Health clubs are now full of machines instead of free weights, because the clubs insurance policy won’t cover them if a client gets hurt squatting or deadllifting. Seem’s they think it’s more cost effective to buy machines, than it is to give the trainer more education than his/her weekend correspondence course provides. As far as a fix I think we just keep spreading the truth, and making people healthy. When there are enough of us doing it, hopefully it will become mainstream and the population will start demanding more from everyone in the industry. Question #2 Are there any significant differences in the way you train male and female clients? Please explain.
5 Resistance Training Myths in the Running World By: Eric Cressey To some, resistance training is the Rodney Dangerfield of the running community; it gets no respect. To others, it’s like Tom Cruise; runners think it might be useful, but it just doesn’t make any sense to them. And then, there are those to whom resistance training is like Abraham Lincoln; it’s freed them from being slaves to ineffective programming. As a performance enhancement specialist who has a lot of “Abe” endurance athletes under my tutelage, I’d like to take this opportunity to bring the Rodney and Tom runners in the crowd up to speed. With that in mind, let’s look at the five most prominent myths present in the running community with respect to resistance training. Now, I know what you’re thinking: this Cressey guy is just another meathead who doesn’t run telling me what to do. We’ve had lots of pigheaded guys like this over the years, and none of them understood us. They were all like this guy. Myth #1: Runners don’t need to resistance train. I figured I’d start with the most obvious of the bunch. I had been under the impression that – now that we’ve done a ton of resistance training research over the past 20 years – that this wasn’t still a myth at all. Then, just last month, one of my marathoner clients brought in a copy of a popular running magazine; it included a “debate” that featured two experts arguing over whether or not runners needed to lift weights. Huh? This is what some people within the running community have taken from over two decades of dedicated resistance training research from some of the most brilliant scientists in the world? I thought back to the hundreds of hours I’d spent working in the human performance laboratory at the University of Connecticut as I worked for my master’s degree; time and time again, our research had proven unequivocally that resistance training was important for making and keeping people healthy, strong, fast, and lean. Had all our efforts been in vain? At that moment, if someone had told me that the Easter Bunny isn’t real, I might have lost it altogether.
1. One recent study showed that high intensity running increased natural, muscle building testosterone levels up to 76%… while extremely high volume training brought testosterone to “near castrate levels” 2. A Canadian study demonstrated that a group who did high intensity sprints lost 9 times more blubber than a low intensity training group 3. Another study at the National Institutes of Health in the United Kingdom showed a 500% increase in natural growth hormone production from near maximal sprinting 4. A study done by the University of Glamorgan in South Wales found that high intensity training brought the same gains in strength and loss of body fat… but in 1/3 the time of low intensity training 5. Danish scientists at the University of Copenhagen saw runners who performed high intensity sprints increased their V02 max by 7%… even though they ran half the mileage of the control group 6. An Iowa State University study demonstrated that marathoners who ran sprints could run half as much training mileage… with no change to their race performance 7. A study in Japan showed that athletes who did a total of just four minutes of sprints gained both power and aerobic capacity 8. A recent study from the University of Missouri-Columbia shows that high-intensity exercise, like sprinting, is superior in reducing stress and anxiety. So there you have them – my top 8 reasons to include high intensity sprinting in your workouts. Stay tuned to my daily emails for more and more of the great benefits of running sprints. Run Fast Not Hard Coach K PS Other studies have shown that it’s never too late to start sprinting… high intensity workouts have been shown to help people of all ages – even those with cardiac problems and severe arthritis. Be sure to check with your doctor if you have any doubt about running sprints. You can always start slowly and gradually build your speed and intensity. Copyright, Tim Kauppinen, 2006
Yo Pack, I wanted your thoughts on a good fat loss program for Suria. She wants to “tighten up” for the wedding and would love to hear your thoughts. I have her doing mostly HIT training with some heavy stuff worked in and a variation of aerobic routines on days off- yes, sprints too! What do you think? Peace, MP Coach Pack’s Reply: Teach her how to perform barbell complexes. Do you remember the one that you did here in Miami with me? If you need a visual theres a client of mine on my website thats doing one. I think these are the most effecient and effective tools for fatloss. Also I love intervals! Especially ones performed in a ladder sequence, 1-10. Pick like 4 exercises, a push(push-up), a pull(seated row), a leg movement(squat,dead or kettle bell swing or snatch pull) and a cardio movement like burpies or squat thrusts. First round perform 1 rep of all 4 exercises Round 2: 2reps of all 4 exercises Round 3: 3 reps of all 4 exercises…… You get the idea Perform the exercises until you get to 10. If it gets too easy than go back down the ladder. You can also make up your own dumbell complexes. A Complex is simply a group of exercises (8-10) strung together for a certain amount of reps (6,8,10) without rest. Use your imagination. I would use the Ladders and Complexes mixed in with Heavy weight (6-8) and a little steady state cardio mixed in. Let me know! MP replies: Thanks dog! I knew you’d come through. You know I’m coaching her on nutrition. Peace. MP Coach Pack: There is one more tool that I use for fat loss and it’s the Tabata Method. Pick any exercise(bodyweight squats, sledge hammer swings, squat thrusts, mountain climbers, med ball slams, shadow boxing, burpies etc.) and perform as many reps as you can in 20 sec, rest 10 sec and repeat. Repeat the 20sec on, 10 off sequence for 8 cycles. This will come out to be 3:50 of total work. It can be thrown in at the end of a Energy System day(complex day or sprint day) or it can be used as a training day all on it’s own performing 3-4 different 8 round cycles. This is very taxing so be careful! Another fatloss gem which isn’t used as much as it should be is stair running or hill running. Notice all of the suggestions I’ve made have included some sort of HIIT(High Intensity Interval Training). My belief is that there just isn’t anything that works as fast. Not to say that steady state aerobics shouldn’t be used, Im just saying that HIIT is the most efficient and the best bang for your buck modality that I know of for true FAT LOSS. As far as Nutrition is concerned, here are a couple of tips: There are 4 ways to speed your metabolism 1. Eating 5-8 small meals a day 2. Eating Protein with every meal. This is called TEF(the thermic effect of food). Protein raises your metabolic rate to digest protein. 3. Resistance training. I prefer 6-8 rep range due to the muscle damage it causes. The more muscle break down the harder your body has to work to repair the muscle tissue. If your body has to work hard to repair it has no choice than to increase you guessed it, metabolic rate. Resistance training must never be left out of a fat loss program for the simple fact the more muscle you possess the more calories your body burns at rest. This allows for increased cheat meals! Ha! 4. HIIT(Cardio)- Remember that Aerobics is cardio but cardio isn’t necessarily aerobic. HIIT is primarily anaerobic and increases something called EPOC( Excess Post Exercise Oxygen Consumption) which in a nut shell means that when you get done with your session you aren’t done burning calories for up to 18-24hrs later! But obviously whether it’s aerobics or anaerobics you’re still putting yourself in a caloric deficit but the more intense the bout of exercise the greater the EPOC. So with all that said I’m not going to say move more and eat less. On the contrary if she is going to be using steps 3 and 4 for a combined 4-5 days a week than I would suggest she significantly increase her caloric intake. Why? See numbers 1 and 2. To explain step one further understand that caloric intake chases caloric expenditure. The more energy you expend the more energy you need to intake. So the more you expend(HIIT, weight training, steady state etc.) the more calories you burn and speed your metabolic rate. Add that with increasing your calories and protein intake(step 1 and 2) and you even further increase metabolic rate and her chances for shedding some major body fat in a short amount of time. I hope this helps!
