Over the past months, GetSERIOUS.info served as a personal blog for Eric and I where we shared our thoughts about health and exercise. Sadly, we have moved on and no longer have time to maintain the site. It will remain online for posterity. However, no new articles are planned.
Good luck and take care.
“If you had only a mind, and not a body, the world of economics would disappear. You wouldn’t need a house, or food to put in your body, or clothes to cover it, or cosmetics to disguise it, or an automobile in which to move it around. Marriage would not be necessary, because sex would not exist in the physical sense and would not result in children. It is the body that causes economics, marriage, politics and war. Read the rest of this entry »
You don’t need fancy or expensive equipment to achieve and maintain a healthy body. All you really need is intent (and a body of course). Everything else is simply a tool to help you reach your goal. Luckily, nature has provided us with all of the tools that we need in order to perform resistance exercise – gravity, air and water – and best of all, they are all free! Consider this – since the human body is constantly adapting to its environment, any environmental changes will render a physical state temporary. Therefore, in order to maintain a healthy body, why not perform exercises that are sustainable regardless of your environment? One way you can do this, is by utilizing your own bodyweight.
Perhaps the most fascinating thing about bodyweight training (besides the fact that it focuses more on compound movements) is that your results (or rewards) are always directly proportional to the work that you do (work being a function of mass). Assuming constant intensity, a heavier individual looking to lose weight will be doing more work in order to exert the energy required to shed fat. As he/she becomes lighter, they will continue to do less work until their muscle mass begins increase. Greater muscle mass equals more work, and so on. There is no need to worry about how much weight you “should” be moving – your body has that covered. Another advantage of bodyweight training is that you can experiment with many different variations of exercises without be hampered by heavy equipment. This allows you to work many different muscle groups simultaneously and greatly reduces the risk of injuries.
Finally an excellent method of visibly affirming your progress is by scheduling a daily, weekly, or monthly “Bodyweight Challenge”. Basically, the idea is to choose a bodyweight exercise as well as a quantitative or qualitative measure, and perform it once a day, week or month to track your improvement over time. Measures can include number of reps, time spent performing a number of reps, time spent in a particular position, recovery time, heart rate, feeling of fatigue, etc. The point is to have fun by challenging yourself to push your limits and to motivate yourself to continue. Best of all, you can do it pretty much anywhere on earth!
Suggestions:
Have you ever stopped to marvel at the magnificence of the human body? Have you ever taken time to communicate your gratitude for everything it has done for you? Although this may sound utterly ridiculous to most people, the truth is that we are in constant communication with our physical bodies. This kind of communication comes in many forms – the food that we eat, the activities that we engage in, the way that we feel (which is a reflection of much more than you may know) and most importantly, the way that we think. It’s no surprise therefore that the least healthy people are often the least happy, have the least amount of sleep or choose to be abusive to their bodies in many other ways. Read the rest of this entry »
Over the past two decades, fat has developed a bad reputation. This is not surprising considering the steady increase in obesity rates and higher availability of calorie-dense food products. Having been exposed to societal and social pressures in our youth (as well as the mass media), most of us have been externally conditioned to associate the word “fat” (like most other words) with specific images, emotions or experiences. However, what is extremely important to understand is that these associations are merely the result of years of cerebral mapping that takes while our brains are still relatively malleable and thus, more open to new concepts and ideas (such as in our youth). This malleability tends to decrease as we get older and weight-loss companies are well aware of this. The truth is that lipids (fats) are extremely important molecules in the body. They form the surface of cells, secrete hormones, keep you from starving to death, serve as a thermal buffer, cushion your organs, and even support a growing fetus. We absolutely need fats in our diet. Read the rest of this entry »
These days, people seem to have more and more difficulty finding time to exercise. The good news is that regardless of your fitness goals, there is always a solution to the “time” problem. Finding the motivation to pursue the solution is another matter. In this article, I will describe a fantastic 8-part exercise that works virtually every muscle in the body. When broken down into its separate components, you will notice that it is actually a combination of 5 different compound exercises rolled into one – the squat jump, the sprawl, the push-up, the chin-up and the hanging leg-raise. The only equipment that you will need is a tree branch (growing horizontally and at the right height) or any kind of bar that you feel comfortable hanging from. In a nutshell, here is how “the 8″ is performed:
Preparation: Stand below a tree branch and make sure you have enough room on the ground below you to perform a push-up. When you reach up toward the branch, it should be a hands’ length above your fingertips. Once you become more confident with the exercise, you can increase the height of the bar or branch. Shoes are optional, but I would definitely recommend going barefoot.
1 – The squat – beginning with your feet shoulder-width apart, slowly squat down towards the ground and place your hands on the ground beside you. Try to keep your back as straight as possible.
2 – The thrust – With your hands on the ground, quickly thrust both of your feet back so that your body is in a push-up position.
3 – The push-up – perform 1 proper push-up (nose or chin to the ground)
4 – Inward thrust – quickly thrust both of your feet back in toward your chest so that they are back to the starting position. Keep your back straight and look up.
5 – The jump – from this position, explode straight into the air, reaching for the branch or bar above you. At the top of your jump, grasp the bar firmly with an underhand (chin-up) grip. This is the most important movement in the exercise and should be performed with speed and intensity (and caution for the first few times). This is also an excellent exercise to help you overcome the natural anxiety that people have when grasping objects that appear out of reach (this is another reason why an explosive jump is necessary).
6 – The lift – using your momentum gained from the jump, raise yourself quickly so that your chin is above the branch or bar (first half of a chin-up). Hold this position. Focus on bringing your elbows to your body rather than flexing your biceps.
7 – The leg raise – While holding the chin-up position, raise your knees to your chest (arching your back) and slowly lower them back down again.
8 – The return – While still holding onto the branch or bar, slowly lower your body back down (second half of a chin-up) and prepare yourself to land back onto the ground into the squat position.
That’s one repetition. Do as many as you can until you reach failure. Once you have become adept at performing the exercise, try different variants such as “the power 8″ which includes a tricep pushup (hands are close together), wider overhand grip (pull-up), straight-leg raise or a muscle-up in the place of the chin-up. Although this exercise may seem intimidating at first, it becomes easier with practice because your body eventually falls into a natural rhythm, resulting in greater confidence and efficiency performing each movement. The bottom line – if all you have is 5-10 minutes in your day to exercise, you need to make each minute count. The great thing about “the 8″ is that it combines all of the “best” exercises for each muscle group, so if your goal is to develop practical strength and muscular endurance in a relatively short period of time, this is all you really need. Now go out there and try it.
Listing all of the health benefits of fruits and vegetables (F&Vs) is pointless. There are a million and we seem to discover more of them every month. But even though we know that they are good for us and should comprise the majority of our diets, we continue to neglect them. Here are the 4 main reasons (or excuses) why: Read the rest of this entry »
No bull, as promised: Read the rest of this entry »
If you have ever watched a movie with the sound off, you may have noticed how quickly it became boring, uninteresting and “empty”. This is because music, apart from existing as a physical combination of tonal frequencies (visualized through cymatics), activates various areas of the human brain associated with emotion and memory. Although this sounds like common sense, it is a fact that is often taken for granted. Understanding the significance of music (and sound in general) as a means of Read the rest of this entry »
A friend sent me this article today and I found it an interesting (and somewhat disheartening) read.
Phys Ed: The Men Who Stare at Screens (via the New York Times)
