I love training! I love going hard! i love going as hard as I can and then digging deep and going harder! Pushing myself and refusing to five up no matter how bad it hurts. That's me. Not everyone is like that. I have often heard stories about how much it hurt going to the gym and how much someone hated it and never wanted to go back. How much it sucked and how insane i am to like something so horrible.

What sucks is that those initial forays into the world of fitness were so bad. Not a very caring (or skilled ) instroducer to the art of physical culture.

All that is to say, not everyone, perhaps even most people do not enjoy pushing like i do. Guess what, you don't have to. You just need to engage in regular physical activity and be somewhat mindful of what you eat and drink.

If you're getting pudgie move more, eat smarter.

Play. Hang out with your kids and chase them around tha park. Join a social league/sport. Swim. Go for a jog 20 min a day 3 times a week with a friend.

You don't have to go hard , you just have to go.

I find it intersting that the world is currently suffering an obesity epiemic when, with the vast knowledge vailable to us in an ever shrinking world, everyone should be educated and concerned enough to combat it. Millions ( billions) of dollars are constantly being funnelled into medicines to counteract obesity and its side effedts ( disease and sickness). Pharmaceutical corporations, politicians and doctors are getting (green) fat on our ( yours and my taxes and hard earned wages ) dollar while we are getting fat, poor and sickly. There has been constant development of drugs and treatments to attack fat and its related illnesses. Its always affronting us, to the point that I'm sick of it. Drugs for everything. A quick fix. Not a mention of healthy eating. Try this drug. Not a mention of exercise. Try this operation. If your Doc cared wouldn't e tell you to get up and move. Wouldn't that be the first line of attack. Why do intelligent (?) people stand around smoking and eating hot dogs ?
Why do we start every day with a sugar filled coffee and doughnuts? shouldn't we take some responsibility and start the day with a glass of water! Shouldn't your health professional be advising you to detoxify your system and spend sometime breathing and moving?
OK, so that's the ranthere's the rave!
I challenge you!
wake up every morning for a week and drink a glass of cool or cold water.
spend 5 min warming up. That's building up to a sweat.
spend 10 min training.
spend 5 more mn cooling down.
20 min
can you give yourself 20 min a day for a week?

I'll break it down further for you
1 min walking, slowly building up speed
1 min skipping, yes just like kids on a play ground
1 min jump rope
1 min side shuffle
1 min jumping jacks
( 5 min warm up)

circuit done twice; 1 min per exercise
squats ( hands held behind head, back kept straight)
sit ups ( hands held on chest; feet not locked down)
pushups ( work through the movement until 1 min is up)
gymnastics bridge ( hold it for a min, or up and down for a min)
bear crawls
(10 min of exercise; breathing and moving)

walking lunge (slow)
walking
kneeling thigh stretch
kneeling side bends
sitting butterfly stretch
( 5 min cool down)
20 min.
Can you do that for a week, I promise you will feel better.
If you do that for 6 days, do you think maybe you could do it for anouther week. 12 days
could yo do that for 2 weeks? what about 2 more?
could you make moving and breathing in a structured format a habit?
If you can then you will live longer, happier, healthier and save thousands of dollars that would have been spent on drugs and doctors.
20 min.

recovery

Considerations for recovery of young athletes

Sleep: the human body and mind need sleep. We need considerable amounts of sleep especially as youngsters and young athletes. Lack of sleep is why we wake up cranky in the morning. Its one reason thousands of people wake up feeling ill on a daily basis. Lack of sleep leads to wasting of muscle tissue, increasing fatty deposits, stomach upsets, sleeping disorder due to habit forming, inability for proper thought processing and sensory observation, hallucinations and insanity.

Early to bed, early to rise may not make you wealthy but it will go along ways towards keeping one healthy. Human beings are designed to slow down and rest at nightfall and get up and move at sunrise. Don’t believe me, go camping without any technological convenience. See how early you wake up and how good you’ll feel resting and sleeping when you’re designed to.

Young athletes should try going to bed as early as they can make themselves. Try not to stay up late watching the late shows, playing video games, texting, etc. etc.

Eating: young athletes, so long as they are active and not overweight (rare amongst active youngsters, youth should be lean and if they are not then something is wrong in their environment.) should be shovelling down food. WARNING: McDonalds, burger king, Wendy's, subways,KFC, bakeries, candy bars and cereal are not food! The kids need calories to supply energy levels, and nutrients for their quickly growing bodies. Their bodies are breaking down through execise just like an adults and they need food to keep up with this process and keep ahead of it. Also, because they are growing, their hormonal output is out of control, they need calories to keep the vast chemical furnace of their maturing bodies keeping up with its natural output. Kids should not diet. They should eat healthy but unrestricted, or unrestricted but healthy. I’m always seeing fat kids at McDonalds, I seldom see fat kids eating fruit.

Water: human beings need water, most of the planet is water, most animal life forms are predominately water, adult, healthy human beings are about %60 water. Fruit juice, powerade, coffee, milk, milkshakes, cordials are not water. They’re sugar drinks. You need WATER. Drink more water and you’ll find you don’t require so much “sport replacement” drinks (sugar water).

You should be sipping water all day. Keep yourself hydrated and you don’t need to rehydrate so desperately.

The beach: I say the beach because its so usefull, but any outdoor place where you can relax (without mobile phones and laptops) will help you recover.

Here’s how you can use the great outdoors to help you recover from sport and training

Summer time beach: the beach acts like a great out door contrast bathing environment. Spend a couple of hours during the weekend at the beach. Warm up in the sand, cool off in the water. Warm up– cool down. Easy contrast bathing. The heat from the sand relaxes the muscle and drains tension, the tidal action of the ocean acts as a passive massage and pulls toxins from the body. The water floats the body and relieves it from the forces of gravity.

In the winter time, if you have too, dress warm (hot) then go polar bearing?. You’ll then discover the wow factor of outdoor recovery.

If there’s no beach but you are able to find some quiet park or woodland/wilderness area the air and atmosphere can do more for your ability to relax than you possible realize. The trick is to allow yourself to relax. Clean air, quiet, 2 things becoming more and more rare today. Seek them out .

the fast and the furious

I've spoken before about short workouts and i thought today i'd give an example of a short workout i preformed over the weekend.

i planned to do some tire flips, sprints, jogging, and stone carrying.

it was very hot and muggy.

walking to the tire I'd already broken out into a sweat,
i flipped it 10 times and was left breathless, but jumped into my 40meter sprint right away , gasped a couple of times then went for my jog. i jogged about 6 1/2 min. which is about 3/4 of a mile for me at the moment.
when i returned to my point of origin i then hefted a 66kilo stone and carried it up and down a short flight of stairs and across a distance of about 10 meters. (maybe a little further??)

thats it . training session done.

13 min 50 sec.

i used a lot of muscle, and a lot of stamina by the time i got to the stone carries.
power training, endurance, mental toughness, guts, strength and conditioning all in one relatively brief session.

could i do more. yup
did i need to. no
and doing more would have required a bit of a rest . probably half an hour to finish 2 such sets.
and what would i have gained from that 2nd set? character building but not much else. push hard enough on the first set and the second one (in this secenerio) is more prohibative than productive

"I can't afford to die..."

" I can't affort do die, it will wreck my image!"

so quoteth the legendery fitness guru, Jack Lalane. Not too many people deserve that title, guru, but Mr. Lalane is one of them.

Jack Lalane practiced what he preached until he was 96 years old, or young as he would undoubtly have put it.

check out these feets.

age 40 swam the entire length of the golden gate bridge, under water

age 41 swam the bay at alcatraz while handcuffed

age 60 repeated the alcatraz swim while tied to a boat

age 65 towed 65 boats while hand cuffed and shackled

aged 70 towed towed 70 row boats hand cuffed and shakled, under bad conditions for 1 mile

Mr Lalane maintained an active, fit lifestyle all of his adult life. It kept him physically well and mentally keen.

Many people live well into their 80s and 90s with deteriorating health and increasing dependancy but Jack kept himself hearty and whole untill he moved on to further adventures in other realms.

Isn't that a better way. Able to do as you please and rely upon yourself. To wake easy, sleep easy and feel great all of your days.

I reckon, we should be paying attention to Jack Lalanes lessons. Live longer, stronger, happier, healthier.