Christie's One Hour Body Weight Workout

This is a one hour workout designed to focus on abdominal strength, but mixing in elements of cardio and power. Its enough of a mixed bag that you will train a little bit of balance and agility too.  When I say one hour, I mean you can get through it in an hour if you work fast and hard.

Warm-up:

5 minutes light cardio:  Start by jogging then add in side-shuffle.

• 45 seconds jog
• 15 seconds side-shuffle ...continue untill you reach 5 minutes.

5 minutes joint rotations and light stretching:  Warm up your joints by moving them through their full range of motion. This will pump blood into your joints and muscles better than stretching and will also warm up your mind-body connection. 

For example you will be doing push-ups, so do wrist rotations and swing your arms in circles.  If you've been sitting staring at a screen shrug your shoulders in circles and do semi-circles with your head to warm up your neck.  Keep on going to warm up all the parts of your body, quickly, but not missing parts.

Circuit 1: (repeat the circuit 3 times)

• 12 burpies *see video
  
• 30 tuck-crunches
• 12 chin-ups,* if you can't do chin-ups modifiy by jumping at the start of each chin-up, or doing chin-ups under a table so that your heels are touching the floor and your body is on a diagonal
• 1 minute V-sit
• Walk 10m in hand-stand (or try to do a hand-stand against a wall 10 times)
• 30 supermans
• 30 bicycle crunches

Circuit 2: (repeat 3 times)

• 10 walk-lunges forwards, return jumping backwards on one foot, REPEAT only varying which foot you jump backwards on.
• 30 reverse crunches
• 400m sprint
• 1 minute of the plank
• 15 squat-jumps with a heel click at the highest point in the jump
  
• 30 side bends with your arms sraight out in a T
• 30 russian twists in a v-sit

Cool-down:

• 3 minutes light jogging 

• 2 minutes fast walking - be sure to take long steps

• 5 minutes stretching.
  

Train for Tremendous Triceps

The triceps makes up 66% of the mass of your upper arm.  So make sure to include triceps training in your routine.  One of the basic triceps exercises is the good old triceps dip.  In the most basic form, it does not require machines or weights, just a bench.  I love going running for cardio and a lot of times if you are running through a park you will see benches.  It feels really great to get off a couple of sets of 20 dips on those benches and then continue the run.  Your arms will just love the attention!



Watch the video to see how Mr. America 1999 does his triceps dips. One of the most important points is to keep your back right up against the bench. That way you concentrate the effort in your triceps and it keeps stress off your elbow joint. Stress on a joint is not going to build muscle, it is only going to hurt the joint. You want the stress in your muscles. If you are doing your dips in the gym and you need more resistance, you could put a weight plate on your upper legs.

The triceps dip is a great way to blast your triceps and you can do it almost anywhere. Keep it in mind!

Guest post by Bryce.

Plan For a Good Diet

Okay, we all have busy lives and we are rushing all the time.  But if you let that impact your diet, you will wind up eating lousy stuff.  And that will undermine all the hard training you have done.  So we are going to talk about ways to plan so your diet will be good no matter how much helter skelter happens in your life.

The key here is to make a plan.  To make a big change you have to prepare.  If you don't, the change either won't happen or it won't stick.  When you want to change houses, you make a plan for how to sell the old and buy the new.  You think about and plan for changes in your job.  Well, your diet is just as important as that.

Pick a day of the week to do your grocery shopping.  Then always go to the grocery store on that day.  Make it a routine.  Make it a LAW.  You always go on Wednesday.  Even if you only need a couple of things and it takes an hour to go, do it.  Just like your job at work, make it be something that you just have to do, no questions asked. 

Make a shopping list before you go.  That will take only 15 or 20 minutes.  This way you can think about what you should buy without the distraction of seeing all the food in the store.  Remember that grocery stores carefully set up displays of food designed to make you want to buy them.  It works.  If you go in there without being prepared, you will find that over time you are buying stuff that they want you to buy, not necessarily the stuff that is best for your diet.

Your list should include breakfast items like for example fast-to-cook oats, corn tortillas and natural high fiber bread with some natural peanut butter.  Eggs, low fat string cheese or cottage cheese and nuts could be the protein sources.

For snacking, you could put on your list celery to use with the peanut butter.  Remember that for training hard you should be having around six meals a day.  Eat something in each 4 hour period, or even every 3 hour period. 

You have to decide if you will buy your supplements (like Hydroxycut, vitamins, protein powders etc) in the grocery store with your food or separately from a specialty source.  But don't let the availability in the grocery store make the choice of what supplements you will use.  Choose your supplements first, and then look for where you can get them.  If the grocery store carries something you are going to get and the price is good, why not pick it up with your food?

Eating well is just like training.  It is for the long haul.  It is a marathon, not a sprint.  You can't go to the gym for a couple of weeks blasting your muscles and then completely abandon your routine and expect your muscles to just magically keep on growing without work.  Well eating right is just like training.  You have to do it constantly, each and every day.  Make a plan and stick to the pace.

That means just like you make time for the gym out of your busy routine, you have to make time for the grocery store, for planning the shopping list and for preparing healthy food.  It has to be on the same priority level as gym time.  You will see the benefits.  And applying the self-control you use on your training routine to your food routine will show you just how strong your willpower really is.  Once you see how you can control both training and eating, you can use the same technique to anything else you want!  Need to learn a new language?  No problem, just think of it like another part of your routine and blam! Done deal.

So go ahead, take it day by day and plan for a good diet!

Guest post by Bryce.

Take stairs, Save the planet, Save your A** (Literally)

Want to improve your fitness without having to schedule in extra workout time?  Take the stairs.  Stair climbing will exercise your quadriceps and glutes, similar to lunges.  Going up stairs is low-impact and can be an intense cardio workout.  It also can help save the world.  In the UK the Guardian, a major newspaper, estimated that Brittish people could reduce their carbon footprint by 1% by totally eliminating elevators from their lifestyle.  The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy found that elevators in air-conditioned office buildings account for 5 percent of building electricity use in North America.

Stair-climbing meets the guidelines set by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) for exercise intensity. Especially going up stairs. The physical intensity of going up is similar to that of jogging at a speed of 6.2 miles per hour. Going down is similar to brisk walking at 2,4 miles per hour. 

Karen Lee, the deputy commissioner for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in New York said that studies have shown that if the average adult climbed two minutes of stairs every day, it would overcome the weight-gain trend that American adults are experiencing.  The European Heart Journal showed an average increase of 8.6 percent lung capacity among 69 hospital employees, after they took the stairs for 12 weeks. Participants also showed a 1.7 percent decrease, along with decreases in waist circumference, diastolic blood pressure and LDL cholesterol (bad cholesterol).


Part of the benefit of eliminating elevators is that you can insert quick intense bursts of exercise into your life.  For example people who work in an office will often face a sedentary work day.  By taking the stairs at the start and end of the day, as well as on their lunch break, coffee breaks and when they need to visit the photocopy room they can insert 5 or 6 short bursts of exercise into their routine, helping increase blood flow to the lower body. 

My challenge: Eliminate the elevator (and escalator) for 2 weeks.


If you want to figure out how many calories you burn follow the steps below.

1. Count how many steps there are.
2. Count how many times you walk up the stairs in a week.
3. Multiply those two numbers together
4. Multiply the total by 0.16.  That is how many calories you burn in a week.

I´m Back! - and speaking of backs...

Hey everybody! I´m back. I had to step out for a few days because of the flu, but now I´m back and more motivated than ever. A million thanks go out to Bryce for stepping in to do guest posts.  He´s one of the most enthusiastic guys that I come into the gym and I hope his enthusiasm was contagious.

Today I thought I´d write a little about the back. A human back is a wonderfull thing.  It is the support column of the body.  Flexible to an amazing degree, yet capable of withstanding heavy loads, the vertebral column enables us to stand on our hind feet and use our arms like we do.  But really, what makes our back strong, what makes our back mobile is the capability of the muscles that surround it.


If you look at the skeleton in the picture you can see that the back is not completely flat.  It has 3 curves, one going back (in the rib area) and two going forward (in the lower back and neck).  Those curves are very usefull, they act as a shock absorber, help support the weight of the head, and assist in connecting the pelvis and shoulder baldes to the body's core. 

But you should be able to use your core muscles to control that curve.  You can see in this picture what happens when your posterior and abdominal muscles relax and let the lower back curve exggerate.  If this person tried to lift weight with the "bad posture" you see on the right they would put a lot of unneccesary stress and strain on their back.

Athletes, body builders, even people who have to stand all day in their job should really take care with their posture.  Like any other aspect of fitness, if you train your posture you will reap benefits in your everyday life.

How? Core stabilization exercises!  By strengthening and learning how to use the muscles that influence your back you can make a positive impact on your posture.  You will seem taller, thinner and more toned.  You will be able to stand for long periods of time and lift weights without straining your lower back.

Here´s an analogy I like to use. Go stand in a doorway.  Press your arms hard against the door jamb so that you´re trying to lift your arms up and out, but the doorway keeps them close to your sides.  Keep pressing hard for 1 minute.  Imediately afterwards step forwards and your arms will "float" up.  Now go do the same with your core stabilization muscles.

Here are some exercises I love to use.  They have had a big impact on my back health and on the safety and performance of my athletes.  Just remember you will do in real life what you train.  Breath well, keep your posture correct, do the exercises to your maximum, but not beyond.  I think the first video really does a great job of showwing how to align your trunk.  The second has a wealth of exercises, just remember to tuck in your but and look for maximum elongation of the spine in the plank positions.

How to Train Your Abs

A lot of people are really concerned with their abs. The number of infomercials talking about ab machines is truly incredible. And they are an important part of your body, but they are not the only part. Just before we go on I want to say it is not a good idea to be overly focused on any one body part or muscle. You want to train everything and blast every last muscle.

First off the abs are really a group of muscles which are divided into three categories. There are the rectus abs which you use to curl your stomach when you try to touch your nose to your bellybutton. Under them you find the oblique abs, which also help in torso curling. They are also used to rotate or twist your torso. Under them we find the deep or transverse abs. They help with breathing and hold your torso in position over your legs.

Here are some tips to think about when you plan to train your abs. Many people go for really astronomical numbers of sit ups, but the truth is that high reps will not really help to strengthen abs. One reason is because sit ups mainly work the muscles that flex your hips. Therefore a lot of sit ups will build stamina in your hip flexors and your abs will escape. Also the abs are made mostly of slow twitch muscle which means they can take a lot more reps than most other muscle groups. You will burn out your hip flexors before your abs have to take on the load.

Related to this, beyond about a 30 degree bend in a sit up or crunch your hip flexors are taking most of the load. So keep your sit ups shallow. Also go ahead and do them slow ... the abs are slow twitch remember? Also don't hold or fix down your legs. Fixed legs encourages use of your hips again. There is a layer of fat under your skin over your abs. This layer of fat will hide the definition of your abs. It doesn't matter what kind of muscle you have under there, it won't show up ripped as long as that fat is there. Getting rid of that fat takes a lot of time dedicated to a fat control program. So don't be fooled ... your abs are getting stronger and bigger even if you don't have as much to show for it as you might hope.

Here is a set of basic ab exercises you can use to get yourself off and running.

• Do a couple of sets of 12 crunches to warm up in a crunch machine
  
• Do a couple of sets in the machine until you can't do more (failure sets) adjusting resistance to fail between 10 and 12 reps
  
• Do another set of 12 crunches on a level bench
  
• Do a couple of failure sets to about 10 or 12 crunches on a declined bench with chest weight
  

That will get you started. As you need more, customize and expand to train your abs how you want it done!

Guest post by Bryce.

What is a Good Diet for Training Hard?

The older I get the more I hear about how important diet is. Young guys eat any old junk and then train hard in the gym blasting their muscles and it all works out good. When you start to get a bit older or if you are beginning to train with a really flabby out of shape body then diet will have a greater importance. Not to say that a good diet can't help young people too of course. Let's talk about a good diet for going from nothing to muscle in a short time. One of the most important things to remember about getting a fast start from zero is that to drop fat and gain muscle you have to eat really often. Six meals a day is the minimum.

Eat frequently. Do not go more than 3 hours without a meal. What should you eat and how much? Well, don't eat any complex carbohydrates soon before hitting the sack. Lay off of them at about 5 for a 10 or 11 bedtime. Gobble up a gram of protein for each pound of your weight daily, but break it up so you never have more than about 75 grams in one meal. Remember you will be eating 7 or 8 meals so you have a lot of opportunities to get those proteins. No rush!

Carbs are your main fuel source. If you don't have enough carbs then your body will start to break down muscle to get energy, and we don't want that. But if you take in too many carbs, they will be converted into fat. So regulate your carb intake to just provide enough energy and not a shred more or less.There are basically three categories of carbs. It is a good idea to know them.

• Sugar: These are digested and converted into available energy really fast, good for a short term fuel boost.
• Long Chain Carbs: These are more difficult for the body to break down, and give you a slow release of energy throughout the day.  An example is oatmeal.
• Roughage: This stuff is pretty much indigestible and just goes snowplowing through your system scraping it clean.  It gives you no energy though.

Now about proteins. While carbs are the fuel your body runs on, proteins are like the concrete your muscles are build out of. Protein is a muscle structural material. If you don't have enough protein, you can't build muscle. Period. Because there is nothing to make it out of. And if you are undersupplied with protein your existing muscle cannot be repaired if it suffers damage either. The most important thing about protein is to get it from a lot of different sources. That is because each source has a different breakdown of amino acids, and you need all of the different ones.

When it comes to fat, avoid the saturated fat. These slippery little buggers will just coat up everything in your body. They are found mainly in fatty meat. The unsaturated fat that comes from vegetable sources is much more fluid and is needed to help with housekeeping in your body. Don't worry about having it in your diet. Get unsaturated fat for example from avocados.

And finally make sure you are drinking water. Drink as much as you can whenever you can. It can't hurt you and it helps out with all sorts of body housekeeping!

So when you think about training hard and blasting your muscles, don't forget to help them grow by eating a good diet!

Guest post by Bryce.

Should you Train Through Pain? Yes!

Everybody who trains hard and lifts heavy has had to deal with injury. The common sense response is to stop training and stay away from the gym for weeks until the injury has healed. Many doctors will tell you the same thing. You had better listen to a doc who has experience in lifting or training injuries. It is possible that what seems to be a small pain in your lower back could paralyze you. Buy doctors who are not training specialists will usually just say to lay off training in all cases. The human body has a powerful ability to heal itself and often does not need weeks of rest to recover. Sometimes what it needs is actually more training.

To illustrate let me tell you about what happened to a training partner of mine. He started his workout with a good warming up and stretched everything out. Then he started in on his usual progession, upping weight in his usual sequence. He did everything right, just like always. But that time, something went off in his lower back during a lift. He described it as feeling like his muscle came loose from his spinal cord. He put the weight down, packed up and left the gym. He told me that by the time he got home his back was so stiff and painful he could hardly walk up the stairs to his door. The next day he did no training, stayed at home and said he moved like an old man.

But on the second day, he was back in the gym. He was a real monster and nothing could keep him from training. His back was still killing him but he had a plan: he would blast his chest. He could do this laying out on his back on a bench. And guess what? As he trained, it actually made his back feel better! The next day he was back blasting his shoulders. He did lifts that kept the stress off his back and again training made him improve!

Training boosts blood supply to the muscles in your body and that helps them heal. That is one mechanism that nobody can deny. For those of you who believe that the mind has power over the body, continuing your training is a great way to focus your mental energy on healing. It helps develop that "Can do" attitude your body needs to recuperate. When you get hurt, train as hard as you can without damaging yourself more. Do not lay off the weights.

If you train through the pain you will teach your body not to give up and it will get into high gear rebuilding itself!

Guest post by Bryce.

Get a Perfect Butt!

A lot of people forget about their butt when they are concentrating on blasting their muscles.  One reason for this is that the butt is not readily visible to its owner in a lot of positions.  Another is that the butt does not directly contribute to most people's idea of a powerful physique.  There is no "Olympic butt lift" for example.  So the butt can be overlooked far too long.

The butt can be worked out while doing your leg training.  It takes careful attention though because if you overdo it your butt will easily become too big.  You don't want the same mass increase on your butt as you do on the rest of your legs to have a balanced overall shape.  But if you exercise the butt too little you will wind up with an undersized or worse poorly toned butt.

Squat rows are a really great exercise for blasting that butt.  They also rip your back.  Check out the video for an example of how a squat row is executed.  But be careful because his posture in the video is not the best.  It would be better if he was more erect.



If you want some tips on how to shape up your butt try The Butt Book or if you would rather blast that butt read this butt book.

A big soft butt is a convincing signal of bodily neglect.  A toned and shaped one attracts attention wherever you go and bespeaks pride in your physical condition.  So put in the effort to build a butt you will be happy to uncover on the beach.

Guest post by Bryce.

Update on Body Circuit workout

I had a hectic day yesterday, with no time for my usual training schedule.  So I tried out the body weight circuit, modified a bit.

I combined the squats and pushups into burpies, did the lunges in the "touch down" position and added in a modified chin-up.  The mountain climbers I left as they were, and they were more effective than I thought they would be.  I will have to use those next time I go for a run on a rainy day and would like to do abs without rolling around in the mud.

In total it took 21 minutes, all done in the hallway between my bedroom and the bathroom.  I literally rolled out of bed did the workout and hopped into the shower.  Unfortunately today I´m really feeling the effect in my abs and chest.  Probably because I didn´t warm up propperly or cool down like I´m used to.

So here are some of the stretches I will be doing today to help ease that muscular tension.

Power

According to physics power is force times velocity.  Translate that into English and you can say that to be powerfull you must be strong, and fast about it.

Here's an example of how power works:

Right now you can do a vertical jump of 26 inches.  You would like to improve.  You weigh 135lbs, and unless you tie on some helium baloons or put some weights in your pockets you will keep on weighing 135 lbs for the near future.  So to be able to jump higher you will need to push against the ground faster.  You need to be able to explode.  

Here´s inspiration.  I plan to show this to my 13-15 year old team before I increase their box jump sets from 12 inches to 18.  (We all start somewhere)

Now obviously strength is a factor, someone who can do a full set of squats with 150lbs on the barbell (correct technique!!) will be able to push their body weight up faster than someone who uses the broomstick in their squat exercises.  You can't neglect your strength training, but the ability to explode is what will carry you higher, and that needs to be trained specificly.


Here are two examples of training exercises targeting explosive force.  There are lots of things you can do.  Bouncy medicine balls, lateral jumps, lunge jumps... I even saw a guy once jumping into a handstand and pressing out to work his shoulder strength.  (He practiced capoeira and had trained handstands and other stuff like that for years)










One important thing to note is that you really want to warm up, stretch before and cool down after doing power exercises.  When you do these "reaction jumps", or upper body exercises with the same principle, you get more explosion out of your muscle beacuse you stretch the muscle fibers first, causing the reaction contraction to be much stronger.  But that means that your muscles and joints will be challenged in a new way.  Be sure that you have a good level of basic fitness and are using good technique... Have fun and enjoy.

Get rid of cellulite.

I think every adult woman alive knows about cellulite.  We all have patches, on our posterior or legs that we watch with caution.  Maybe it's not so bad now, but we all know that it could get worse.  But you can minimize cellulite with a simple dietary change. Just drink lots of water and reduce your salk intake.

Salt causes fluid retention. When you consume lots of salt your body will retain excess fluids. This causes cellulite to be more pronounced. The areas of cellulite will swell and be more noticeable.

Most people eat a lot more salt than they need. The current recommendation is to consume less than 2.4 gram.s of sodium a day. That equals 6 grams (about 1 teaspoon) of table salt a day. The 6 grams include ALL salt and sodium consumed, including that used in cooking and at the table

Here are some hints to help you reduce your salt consumption.

• Remove that salt shaker from the table.  Or at least get a salt shaker with less holes.
  
• Use fresh poultry, fish, and lean meat, rather than canned or processed types.
• Use herbs, spices, and salt-free seasoning blends in cooking and at the table.
• Cook rice, pasta, and hot cereals without salt. Cut back on instant or flavored rice, pasta, and cereal mixes, which usually have added salt.
• Rinse canned foods, such as tuna, to remove some sodium.
• Reduce the amount a little each day until none is used. Try spices and herbs instead
• Processed foods account for most of the sodium and salt consumed, so try and eat fresh, home made fare.
  

Beautiful skin begins on the inside. And the lifestyle changes you make will not only reduce the appearance of cellulite, but will improve your overall health in more ways than one.  For example low salt intake will also help keep your heart healthy as it lowers blood pressure.

Strength

Do you want toned muscles, strong bones and healthy joints?  Or maybe you would like fast metabolism, high levels of good choloesterol and lower blood pressure?  These are all benefits of regular strength training.  Some people also say that strength training can give you better posture, better balance and a better mood.  I certainly think that when you are strong, every day tasks are much easier.



The experts reccommend doing a strength training workout 3 times a week.  Most people will find going to a gym the best option, you can access a variety of machines, and other equipment as well as trained staff to answer your questions.  But sometimes you can't make it into the gym, so here's a bodyweight circuit that can work some of the major muscle groups....Happy training

Balance

Balance is related to posture and grace.  It is something that you might not always notice, but on that first icy day of winter when the sidewalk has "surprise spots" or when you try and walk up the stairs with your arms full of stuff and you find that someone left a stack of newspapers....

One cool thing is that when you train balance you also train your abdominal (core) strength, general body strength and to some extent your agility.


How can you train balance?  You can go to a beach with smooth round rocks and walk barefoot.  You can stand on one foot on a mini-trampoline and play catch.  You can use a wobble board. All of that is good, but what looks really fun is slack-lining.  It really challenges your balance, and pushes your abdominal and pelvic stabilizers to the max.  As long as you have 2 solid things to tie your rope to and a soft surface like grass or sand you can do this activity anywhere.  (Safety tip: keep the rope low, learn how to step off safely before trying anyting else, and leave things like handstands to the circus.)

Boulder-hopping on the beach.

 Playing catch, one footed on a mini-trampoline.

The wobble board.

Flexibility

Flexibility is my favorite component of fitness.  Stretching out my quads after a hill run, or doing a back arch the day after a particularly demanding abdominal workout is heaven.  You can feel the muscle fibers elongate and the oxygen enter your cells.  When you have good range of motion you can feel free, relaxed, mobile, elongated.

The benefits of stretching are:

• improved circulation
• wider range of motion
• better posture
• less joint stiffness
• less muscle tension
• more ability to relax

I didn't always love to stretch.  For many years I struggled and pushed, as I suffered and strained.  I tend to be competitive, and am not naturally bendy, so I spent all my time looking over my shoulder at other people, jealous of what they could acheive and impatient to get similar results.  Then one day I went to a drop-in yoga class and the instructor made me shut my eyes and concentrate on what I was feeling.  A light-bulb went on, and I realized where I had been going wrong.

It took me a whole year of yoga to fully understand, but slowly I learned how to benefit from stretching.  The key is to focus on aligning your body and lengthening the target muscle.  For example, if you think "I must touch my toes!" you will probably hunch your back, squish your breathing, and strain mightily.  You may or may not reach your goal of touching your toes, but you probably will not stretch your hamstrings to their fullest extent.  If you perform the same stretch, but think "I want to legthen the muscles in the back of my legs" you will probably stretch your spine, breathe calmly and extend your legs fully.  My challenge to you for today is to do the hamstring stretch both ways and note the difference in how you feel.  You will be convinced.

                         Good way - elongating hamstrings.

 

                          Bad way - touching toes.

To improve your flexibilty you could take a yoga class, or dedicate 20 minutes after your workout to totally stretch out your major muscle groups.

Stamina

Yesterday I wrote about cardiovascular endurane, one of the ten basic fitness components. Today's post is about stamina, another basic component of fitness.

Stamina is probably the component of fitness that I find most difficult to train, but in terms of general health and quality of life it is one of the most important.  Think about how you feel at about 6 PM on a Wednesday, your workday is coming to a close, but you still need do get home, get something to eat for dinner, and do some chores.  You probably would like to do something fun as well, be it bike home from work, play catch with your kids or go to a drop in salsa class, but do you have the energy?  Like the energizer bunny we all would like to keep on going and going.

One of the best ways to work on staimna is to do something so enjoyable that you don´t notice the hours and kilometers tick way.  I was going to suggest going for a hike, and really its not a bad idea.  You get fresh air, see some nice scenery, get to know your local area... It's nice, but its cliche.

What I am going to suggest is that next time you hear about a beach clean up, or a trail maintenance day at your local park, you should sign up.  You will get to spend 6 or 7 hours climbing up and down hills, dragging things and pushing things and generally using your whole body.  There´s a clear goal so you have a sense of purpose that will motivate you all day long, and afterwards you can truly say that you gave back.  Do it often enough and you will have stamina to spare : )

Respiratory and Cardiovascular Endurance

You breath in and the oxygen enters your lungs. It slides past some membranes and dissolves into your blood, binding quickly to the red blood cells.  Within moments your heart beats and your oxygenated blood races off through ever narrowing arteries untill it squeezes into the capillaries that permeate every muscle in your body.  Then "pop" the oxygen unbinds from the red blood cells, re-dissolves and diffuses its way over to your eager muscles.

How do you improve the process? How do you get more oxygen  to where you need it when you exercise? The answer is simple: do Cardio Training! When you train cardio you positively influence almost every step in the process of bringing oxygen to your muscles.

One of the best ways to get a cardio workout is to go cross-country skiing.  Experts agree that cross-country skiing is among the most aerobically complete activities due to the high level of involvement and intensity of use of the upper and lower body muscles.

First Post Inspiration

I am totally amazed by the stuff they do at CrossFit.  Check out this video, the woman is a monster, a true example of a lean, mean motion machine. If I, or my athletes could accomplish a third of what she does I would be very content.  I plan to visit a facility as soon as I can find one reasonably close to where I live.  (It´s a strength and conditioning facility, not a gym).



It seems that the main idea is that they concentrate on functional movements and improving the ten basic components of fitness.  Here´s a quick breakdown of the 10 components of fitness

1. Respiratory and Cardiovascular Endurance- Your ability to get oxygen where it should go in the body.

2. Stamina - Your body´s energizer bunny function, to get, keep, and use energy.
3. Strength - The force your muscles can produce.
4. Flexibility - Your rage of motion at each and every joint in your body.
5. Power- Your use of strength in a hurry, or producing force fast.

6. Speed - Your body´s ability to repeat a given motion quickly.

7. Coordination - Your capacity to combine several distinct movements into one coordinated motion.
8. Agility - How fast you can switch from one set of movements to another.
9. Balance - Your control over your body's center of gravity in relation your support base.
10. Accuracy - Your control of movements and their direction and/or intensity.