Get into the Flow.

Winners forget they're in a race, they just love to run.

Have you ever had a day when you went out on a run and the day was just so perfect, and you felt so good, that the miles sped by and you were surprised, even sad when the path came to an end?  Or maybe there was an afternoon that you spent playing basketball/soccer/whatever and you lost track of time so totally that you only stopped when you had to?

That sense of being totally in your activity, of being right with the universe, is called Flow. 

Flow is the mental state in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.  Sometimes people describe being in a flow state as being  on the ball, in the zone, or in the groove.

Sucessful athletes often enter into flow when they are training or competing.  So do musicians, artisans, even people who program computers.   If the conditions are right you can enter into flow state in any activity that requires concentration.  And when you do, it feels good.

Psychologists describe being in the zone as a loss of self consciousness, it happens when action and awareness merge.  Athletes have described the feeling as"being the ball".  It happens when there is a balance between ability level and challenge, and the activity is intrinsically rewarding:  People have noted that while in the groove there is an effortlessness of action.

So how do you get into the flow?

• Do something you like.  Something that you enjoy doing, just for the sake of doing it.  
• Set a realistic goal, don't waste your time on stuff that is too easy, and don't frustrate yourself with stuff that is to hard.
• Spend a couple minutes getting ready before you start your activity.  Maybe that means do a warm-up.  Maybe you have to reveiw your goals, or your points of inspiration, or listen to music.
  
• Avoid distractions and interruptions.  You can't be in flow state and monitor your cell phone.
• Keep your training area a "positive zone".  Keep critics, and the people who doubt, or pressure you away from where you train.  Those people have their place and time, but not when you're training.
  
• Give yourself time.  You need to concentrate on an activity for about 15 minutes before your brain will "switch over"

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.