Vanity

Hello my friends,

not this vanity

I hope today's post finds you well.  Today I want to talk about why we workout, exercise, eat healthy, go to great lengths to stay as healthy and fit as possible.  We as humans and more specifically Americans, we spend over a billion dollars a year on exercise equipment, trainers, diets, videos, and everything under the sun health related.  I think a lot of it is money well spent, unless you keep buying shake weights, please stop buying shake weights and go spend the money on good running shoes.  Anyway what I'm saying is some people feel the need to come up with some supremely noble reason why they work out, sighting that they have a family history of high blood pressure, or their father had a heart attack at age 55.  These are all great reasons and I'm not saying that they aren't real or valid. 

However I do want to touch on the fact that no matter who you are and what you say there is always an element of vanity.  I feel that the word vanity gets a bad wrap sometimes VANITY, say it with me "van i teeee"  but it doesn't have to be an ugly word.  I am here to tell you that it is PERFECTLY fine to have a level of vanity.  I mean honestly it's human nature.  Everyone wants to look good, no one wants to look bad and that's OK.  You look good, you feel good, you feel good, you do good.  This works with everything.  If you feel good about yourself and how you are looking your whole attitude, spirit, and confidence is up.  This leads to a nice positive vibe and tends to rub off on others and lead to more good things.  This is not really an arguable point so don't sit there and try to counter with anything, just accept it as fact, thank you for not arguing. 

So I want everything for you.  This is what I always try to get across, all the time.  I want you to be super fit I mean super DUPER fit, and be able to run for your life.  I want you to be super strong and be able to push a bulldozer out of your way, I want you to be healthy and disease free and live just about forever, but I also want you to look your best and feel your best.  It is an important part of life and it's nothing to be ashamed of.  You deserve to feel good about how you look and I want you to get to that place, wherever it is. 

But it does take work, none of that stuff comes easily, so you will need to put in the time exercising and eating right.  You can improve on everything I just talked about, your health, your well-being, and your overall look.  So get focused and get going.  That's all for this time peeps.  A short one I know but hey that's all I have for you.  Until next time embrace the burn and thanks again for reading. 

Want to get stronger?

Hello, hello, one and all,



see if your strong enough you can just carry trees around



How is everyone today?  Oh me? I'm just fine thank you.  We all have goals in the world of health and fitness.  A lot of times one person's goals are not the same as anothers, however most of us would like to be stronger.  I'm not necessarily refering to the fact that everyone wants to be able to deadlift 500lbs (I would like to be able to do this, but that doesn't mean that everyone does) I'm just saying however strong you are or aren't, almost everyone could benefit from being stronger.  It makes a lot of sense, the stronger you are the easier everyday tasks become.  Picture this.....You get home from the grocery store..... Are you picturing?  OK, you have a lot of bags.  Do you want to make more than one trip in with your bags? NO! I will literally carry a bag on each finger damn near breaking my fingers off, while stacking things on my chest and slinging dog food over my shoulder, just so I only have to make one trip.  I do all this and I have about a 25 step walk to my apt from the car, it wouldn't kill me to make extra trips, but I've done it a thousand times and will continue to do so until I have invented some sort of conveyer belt from the driveway to the house that will take my stuff in for me.  Well the point I'm getting at is that I am strong enough to accomplish this, and it is awesome.  I can name any number of day to day tasks that one could use a little extra strength for.  Such as; if you are moving and you need to lift couches, tables, beareaus and things of that nautre, maybe you are packing for a trip and need to get your bike on the bike rack on top of the car, maybe while your on that trip your car breaks down and you need to push it off the road, you may be able to do all of these things, but they'd all be easier if YOU were STORNGER.  See what I'm saying here?

So this brings me to my next point, which is how do we get stronger?  Well this is not rocket science, there is no trick to the answer either.  You lift up heavy things often. I repeat to get stronger you must PICK UP THINGS THAT ARE HEAVY AND DO IT WITH REGULARITY. Over time your body and muscles will adapt, adjust, and grow, then next thing you know TADAAAAA, you are stronger.  Now it is a little more complicated than that, but really not much.  I don't want this post to take a turn and start talking about nutrition and protein and bla bla bla.  That is boring.  I'm not going to do it, and it's my blog so you cant make me.

not working hard enough

Lift heavy and lift heavy a lot, you will get stronger.  Do execises that big strong people do and have been doing for years and years.  Doing planks, one legged deadlifts, burpees, and squats on a bosu are all great, they really are, they're great.  I do them, I have my clients do them, I wouldn't tell anyone not to do things like that, but you can't stop there or rely on exercises like these to get you a lot stronger, they are benficial but they aren't going to get you that real deal overall strength.  No what you need to do are the basics, back squats (heavy) deadlifts (heavy) bench press (heavy) overhead press (heavy) lunges (heavy) you see the theme here right? I don't feel like listing more exercises and inserting (heavy) after them.  If you are easily working through your sets of whatever exercise or lift you are doing, you are definatly not going heavy enough and not exercising intesly enough.  You should be sweating, you should not be able to carry on a conversation while you are actually lifting, you should have a slight fear of not being able to complete a rep, or set, you should not be able to check out the cute guy or girl getting off the eliptical.  This is the way to get stronger, this is how to make the body take notice and adapt to your needs.  Thats it. Done.

So let's get to work people, getting stronger and more awesome at life, after all thats what it's all about right? Kicking life's ass and dong it with a smile. 

Until next time my friends embrace the burn, have a nice day, and thanks for reading. 

And I raaaaaannnnn I ran so far awayyyyyyy

Beunos noches,

Friends, family, ditcated readers.  I often times talk to people about extra exercise aside from what is done in the gym.  Time spent in the gym is typically a small part of ones day, that is if it is an everyday occurance.  Generally people feel happy to get into the gym for exercise 3x per week.  That leaves a lot of extra time in the week to eat, and not work out.  You may have a nice healthy active lifestyle, and go hiking a lot, or kayaking every weekend in the summer, and skiing every weekend in the winter.  Well if so, thats awesome kep it up.  However you can always add a little extra to your regimin cant you? Ya you probably can.  A great way to start your weekend when you have the time is a nice saturday morning run.  I don't mean you have to get up and start running at 6am, I mean we all wake up too early as it is, you can sleep in a little.  But when you do get up, if you strap on your trusty Asics, and go pound the pavement for a little bit, I can all but gaurantee you, that you will feel pretty good about it.  I can also tell you that you will probably be at least slightly more healthy throughout the rest of the weekend. 

Picture this for example you get up on a Saturday and go knock out some running, any amount is good, lets say for the sake of our example that you crank out 3 lovely miles.  Well then you get home, you feel good, energized, you probably take a shower (I hope you are going to shower) and then eat.  However while your feeling great and productive, I highly doubt that your going to sit down to a stack of pancakes for breakfast, and ruin everything you just worked for.  These healthy feelings may indeed spill right over into lunch and you might have a salad or a small sandwhich instead of going out for nachos and burgers like you do most weekends(hopefully not really MOST weekends).  In the eveneing reallity might set in and you go out to din, and have a few drinks but hey at least the first part of your day was nice and clean and healthy right?  A better Saturday than you were expecting and right there you see the value in this activitiy. 

So there is really no excuse.  People ask me ALL THE TIME about what they can do while they're away on a business trip, or visitng family and they wont have much equipment "Pat what are some good hotel exercises I can do until I'm back?".......... All you need is sneakers and shorts my friends, I'm sure you can sneak these items past airline security, but dont try to bring a full bottle of mouthwash, or a swiss army knife, they will take that  stuff away quick and give you the old "you can either check this bag, or throw the item away" Then next thing you know you need a new swiss army knife.  Back to the topic you can also change things up if running gets boring for you.  So maybe you dont have an hour to go out and run 6-7 miles but you still want a really good workout that kicks your ass.  Well you are in luck, all you do is go out, get nice and warm with a terrific dynamic warm up, and do 1 of 2 things either

1. Find a steep hill and run up and down that sucker a bunch of times (trust me this will NOT last for an hour)

2. Just run SPRINTS! I mean real sprints, as fast as you can.  As though you are running for your life.

If you choose one of the above activities, you will be dead in a matter of a few minutes, the harder you push the faster you will die, you will be hunched over breathing heavy and sweating like a maniac.  It will be over quickly and again you will feel good about it and hopefully make a few more good decisions for the rest of the day/weekend/trip/vacation.  This is obviously not limited to weekends.  If you feel you need a little bit extra one day, go out, warm up and run 1 mile as fast as you can.  The mile will be over in a pretty short amount of time, you'll feel better for doing it and you can get on with yoru day, or evening, or whatever.

That's all for now peeps, until next time embrace the burn and thanks for reading.