Energize Fitness Solutions

Dan John, is one of those guys that just plainly puts it like it is.  His stuff is easy to read but easy to get a lot out of it.  He has a very easy way of putting things that can apply to almost everybody.  A link from the his latest blog post says this:

Why strength training? Good question. My good friend and mentor, Brett Jones, once told me this: Absolute strength is the glass. Everything else is the liquid inside the glass. The bigger the glass, the more of “everything else” you can do. So, lifting weights is the quickest way to build strength. As your strength goes “up,” everything else can be expanded, too.

The more I teach this point and listen to the excellent feedback, the more amazed I am to hear “real world” examples about it. Recently, a woman told me that her friends can’t “make a mistake.” What? Well, what she told me basically was this: Since they were attacking fat loss with just aerobic work and strict dieting, they didn’t have any wiggle room. The woman, who holds herself nearly year round at just 19 percent body fat told me that she enjoys desserts, cocktails, BBQs, and fine food. But… and this is a “big but”… she can also do 10 pull-ups. She is very strong in the weight room. In other words, her glass is so big, she can afford to cheat a little here and there.

And, that made no sense to me. Then, I watched her train and thought about some other women I work with in the gym. When she presses an impressive bell overhead (half her bodyweight with ONE hand), her entire system has to gather up resources and then adapt and recover from the effort. When little Edna at my gym thinks that the five-pound dumbbell is “heavy,” she isn’t going to tax her body very hard. So, Edna can’t eat cake.

Simply put.  Just get stronger.

Link to the article:

http://www.greatist.com/fitness/an-exclusive-excerpt-from-dan-johns-intervention-022912/#

Link to Dan John’s website:

http://danjohn.net/

Not saying that they’re all bad and don’t know what they’re doing, but:

Is your doctor overweight?

Is the person you’re getting advice from the appropriate person?  I realize you can’t judge a book by its cover but when someone can’t follow their own advice, how are you expected to do the same?  Eating and exercising are easy enough and just a little prep work goes a long way in making sure that we are moving in the direction of accomplishing our goals.

Oh, how I loathe that word, “toning.”  It is a combination of two different things.  Both maintaining (or even gaining) muscle while losing fat.  Muscles aren’t “toned”.  Muscles either get bigger or smaller.  There are no two ways around it.  If you want your muscles to show better, get rid of the fat on top of them.

For some reason, folks don’t always believe me when I tell them this.  I don’t know if people think I’m just trying to make their life harder and I’m holding some super-secret formula to make the big bucks.  I’m not driving a flashy car so let’s assume that I’m not lying to you.  If you still won’t believe me every time I run across another author saying the same thing, I’m going to post it.  Here’s one already this year:

http://www.bettermovement.org/2012/some-myths-about-toning/

I won’t lie, I love caffeine.  There’s a host of reasons, but I like feeling energized.

Science Blogs has a nice article about optimizing caffeine usage and also how to prevent/minimize it’s addiction.  Give it a read.  Definitely some good info in there if you’re a caffeine lover, like myself.

Caffeine: A User’s Guide to Getting Optimally Wired

We’re in the “Diabetes Belt.”

Who would’ve thought that the good old country food that we’ve been eating for years was unhealthy for you.  Fried chicken, green beans cooked in bacon fat and desert of fried twinkies and elephant years.  Nah.  Surely that can’t be bad for you.  C’mon people.

Elite Fitness Training Systems (www.elitefts.com) has a wonderful series called “So You Think You Can Squat.”  It’s a fabulous video series that details learning how to squat.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen just some atrocious squatting (if you can even call it that) being done/taught in the gym.  This lays it out nice and easy and should be required viewing for anybody before getting in the squat rack.

This is for the Ladies!

This is an excellent article.  I can’t tell you how many times I have to convince women that lifting something heavy won’t make them big.  Hell, for that matter, men too.  ”I don’t want to get big.”  News flash, it won’t happen.  You have no idea the amount of time and dedication I’ve put in to look only slightly larger than most.  To get huge… ha!  Not happening.  Lifting heavy things does have a great impact on the body and produces a whole set of adaptive responses that will make you feel and look better.

Again, read and then re-read this article.  Please.

WebMD has a nice article up on diet sodas and weight gain.  It mentions that if you do a search for diet sodas and weight in popular web search engines that the returning hits all point to a couple poor studies that might lead one to believe that diet sodas have something to do with weight gain.

More than likely people are assuming (and you know what they say about assuming) that since they aren’t drinking any more calories that maybe they can get away with eating a few more calories.  Inevitably, the consumed calories are just too much.  Here’s a hint: it isn’t the calorie free drinks that are making you gain weight.

I spend countless hours scouring the internet for information. Mainly fitness related as this link is. I’m constantly harping on increasing protein intake for the majority of people. Post workout is no exception and is probably the most important. Want proof?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21092368?dopt=Abstract

This kind of combines a couple different things.  This is a series from diet guru Lyle McDonald that deals with his experience in volunteering at his local Animal Shelter.  I’m a big proponent of animal rescue and coming from a diet guy, it kind of ties in two subjects I spend a lot of time studying.

Part 1:

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/miscellany/volunteering-at-the-austin-humane-shelter-part-1.html

Part 2:

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/miscellany/volunteering-at-the-austin-humane-shelter-part-2.html

Part 3:

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/miscellany/volunteering-at-the-austin-humane-shelter-part-3.html

He’s updating it with 2 more parts later this week.  Please read these and the upcoming ones.

Will.