Bill Hartman Tells Women how to Finally get rid of Cellulite, here’s the breakdown:

Now the bigger question is how do you that as quickly and effectively as possible?

1.  eliminate all processed carbohydrates from your eating plan
2.  Reduce your overall carbohydrate intake (DO NOT eliminate all carbs)
3.  Perform progressively challenging metabolism enhancing resistance training
4.  Perform progressively challenging fat burning interval training
5.  Burn more fat at rest

See my Exercise List for ideas about how YOU can get into the best shape of your life!  Or better yet, if you live in Portland, email me: Coach@dojoathletics.com 

Mike Roussell Hammers the Hoodia Hoopla

My personal opinion is that Hoodia doesn’t work AT ALL and that if it did you would be hard pressed to find a quality hoodia extract because the market is flooded with low quality hoodia  products that are the equivalent of eating bark.

USA Weightlifting’s Executive Director, Mr. Rodger DeGarmo, passed away while on a business trip this morning.

He really wasn’t very old, so the news comes as a bit of a shock.  I feel for his family, the wife and children he leaves behind.

OK, I’m responding to this late.  In the September Issue of Scientific American there is an Article entitled, “Can Fat be Fit?”

As you’d expect, they answer “no.”  The article is in response to a very well publicised and horribly flawed study done by Katherine M. Flegal, a researcher at the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.  She did a Statistical analysis of mortality rates of obese people verses people at a “healthy” weight.  She concluded that obese people had LOWER mortality rates than the people in healthy range.  And that, in turn, got a whole bunch of idiots who don’t know the first thing about the health sciences exited (I’m sure for monetary reasons) to write books and articles spouting off about how the medical establishment is all wrong, and being fat is wonderful.

Here are some key points:

 Flegal’s work didn’t factor out smokers and those with chronic illnesses.  That is, the thin people weren’t healthy to begin with.

Professor Meir Stampfer, a professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health says (of Flegal’s research and the corresponding hoopla), “It’s complete nonsense, and it’s obviously complete nonsense, and it’s very easy to explain why some people have gone astray … when you get sick, you lose weight, and you die.”

Another researcher, James A. Greenberg, did a similar statistical analysis.  Except that he DID account for other unrelated health factors and found that those who were Obese had 3 times the mortality rate of those who were of “healthy” weight.

If your BMI rises from 20 to 25 your risk of Diabetes quadruples.  If it goes past 30, your risk increases 30-60 fold … that’s not a typo!

The three factors you should look at (according to Dr. Wilett, a collegue of Professor Stampfer) are:

1. keeping your BMI within the range of 20-24.9 (I’m a little uncomfortable with BMI, but it’s better than nothing)
2. getting you weight to what it was when you were 20 years old (assuming you weren’t fat when you were 20).
3. Getting your waist circumference down to what it was when you were 20

Clearly those last few rely on you being within “healthy” range when you were 20.  For younger generations, this is becoming less and less possible.  20 year olds today are WAY fatter than they should be, on average.

As for my uncomfortable-ness  with the BMI:  it doesn’t take into account muscle.  ALL of my routines (and the routines of any good trainer) are designed to put a lot of muscle on my clients.  This has a few major effects.

1. Their metabolism goes way up
2. they are able to complete daily tasks easier and with a lower risk of injury
3.  Dieting becomes easier
4. They look more shapely, better.

And that last one is part of the point isn’t it?  Whether we like to admit it or not, most of us want to look as healthy as we are.  It isn’t the main point, but it’s there.  The simple fact is, it’s really not that complicated to have both a healthy body and a healthy look.  Just workout a lot, do intervals, and stop eating crap.

My routines are designed with maximum results in mind.  But, anything is better than nothing, and the ridiculous response to Flegal’s research leads to more people believing that they are not damaging their health by being fat, when in fact they are.  And that is irresponsible.

“Constantly expose your
athlete to what they can’t do, then fix it.”–Dan John

Dan John has just released the latest issue of the Get Up! FREE newsletter.  As usual, it’s packed with great information!

Part 1

Part 2

Alwyn  Cosgrove posted a list compiled by Jimmy Smith of the 25 best reasons to drink Green tea.

Here’s my favorite:

21. Green Tea and Herpes
Green tea increases the effectiveness of topical interferon treatment of herpes. First green tea compress is applied, and then let the skin dry before the interferon treatment.

It was long believed that after your youth was gone, your brain stopped going through neurogenesis, that is, stopped “getting smarter.”

From NYT:

Conventional wisdom had long held that animal (and human) brains weren’t malleable: after a brief window early in life, the brain could no longer grow or renew itself …

Gage’s mice proved otherwise. Before being euthanized, the animals had been injected with a chemical compound that incorporates itself into actively dividing cells. During autopsy, those cells could be identified by using a dye. Gage and his team presumed they wouldn’t find such cells in the mice’s brain tissue, but to their astonishment, they did. Up until the point of death, the mice were creating fresh neurons. Their brains were regenerating themselves.

All of the mice showed this vivid proof of what’s known as “neurogenesis,” or the creation of new neurons. But the brains of the athletic mice in particular showed many more. These mice, the ones that scampered on running wheels, were producing two to three times as many new neurons as the mice that didn’t exercise.

2 or 3 times!  There’s more:

This spring, neuroscientists at Columbia University in New York City published a study in which a group of men and women, ranging in age from 21 to 45, began working out for one hour four times a week. After 12 weeks, the test subjects, predictably, became more fit. Their VO2 max, the standard measure of how much oxygen a person takes in while exercising, rose significantly.

But something else happened as a result of all those workouts: blood flowed at a much higher volume to a part of the brain responsible for neurogenesis. Functional M.R.I.’s showed that a portion of each person’s hippocampus received almost twice the blood volume as it did before. Scientists suspect that the blood pumping into that part of the brain was helping to produce fresh neurons. …

Those with the biggest increases in VO2 max had the best scores of all.

AKA, the wimpy training you get from those “Globo Gym” trainers isn’t really gonna do you as much good as a solid, and truly tough routine.

Train Hard, Get Smart!

The researchers also found that higher levels of aerobic fitness corresponded to better standardized test scores among a set of Illinois public school students.

PE class is absolutely essential to a thriving student body … but it has to be a class dedicated to actual exercise, not the ridiculous junk that most PE classes are in practice.

Gage, by the way, exercises just about every day, as do most colleagues in his field. Scott Small at Columbia, for instance , likes nothing better than a strenuous game of tennis. “As a neurologist,” he explains, “I constantly get asked at cocktail parties what someone can do to protect their mental functioning. I tell them, ‘Put down that glass and go for a run.’ ”

 ”Tofi”:

An acronymn for “thin outside, fat inside”; a person who doesn’t eat enough to be overweight but has excessive levels of internal fat.   –Jimmy Bell, Ph.D., Imperial College, London

Intramuscular body fat is highly correlated with diseases such as type-II diabetes and insulin resistance.  Luckily, regular weight training is one of the best ways to get rid of it.

Another term, that I like to use instead of Tofi, is “Skinny Fat.”

An Article in Olympic Coach Magazine suggests that grit, or the ability to work hard and consistently over the long haul, is equally (and in some cases more) important than talent for individuals seeking to become successful in their field of interest.

Grit is perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Grit entails working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining both effort and interest over years and years—despite failure, adversity, and even just stalls in progress. The gritty individual approaches achievement as a marathon; his advantage is stamina. Whereas disappointment or boredom signals to others that it is time to change trajectory and cut losses, the gritty individual stays the course.

This seems obvious to anyone who takes seriously the children’s story about the Tortoise and the Hare. We all know that the Tortoise won. And we know why. He didn’t work hard for just one moment and then get lazy. He consistently worked within the bounds of his capacity, never gave up, and always stayed focussed on his goal. The far more naturally talented Hare didn’t have grit, and he lost.

As a trainer, I can tell you that talent doesn’t mean a thing if you don’t use it. Some of my most successful athletes started at the bottom of the talent pool. But, they have a work drive that is staggering.

Check out this “grit” test, and see where you are and where you could improve.

UPDATE:  Turns out the aforementioned “grit” test doesn’t actually give you a result, but simply sends in your info for the study … still interesting though.