Friday, June 27, 2014

Wrist Mobility & Warm Up Routine



 Wrist mobility and warm ups are a necessity. This goes double If you're planning on spending a lot of time on your hands doing handstands or if you're wrists feel tight/weak. It doesn't take long to throw in a quality mobility warm up before your workouts, but it pays off ten fold! Mobility is key when it comes to quality movement and fitness. Your goal should be to move your body weight efficiency, mobility plays a huge roll in this. You may also want to take a look at my "Squat & Lower Body Warm Up Routine". Take the time, do the warm ups. 

- Tim


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Wednesday, June 18, 2014

It's About Longevity, Sustainability, and Movement


 Your fitness program should always be based around longevity, sustainability, and movement. The only exception to this would be if you're an athlete who gets paid extremely well to perform at the highest level of your sport. I'm going to go on a limb and say that the majority of you reading this aren't professional athletes, which means this post is for you! 

 Your fitness program should be designed to enhance the quality of your life. Fitness is about improving your life and building a healthy/functional body and mind. Stop focusing on aesthetics, achieving the "perfect body", or maintaining single digit body fat. When you focus on those things too much, you start making your life about achieving those goals ... rather than using fitness to enhance your life. Your life and body are temporary things, they wont last forever. But, the time you do have should be spent enjoying life with a body that allows you to do what you please. How can you be living your life to the fullest if you're always in the gym spending hours on your physique? How can you experience all life has to offer if you're avoiding social events because of extreme nutritional restrictions? How can you remain active if you're always placing aesthetics over function and improved movement/mobility? You can't! 

 Health is not just physical, it's mental and social as well. SO WHAT if you're physique is amazing?! If you're obsessing and only thinking about workouts/nutrition and missing out on social events because of your fitness program ... guess what? You're not healthy at all! Fitness should fit into your life, your life shouldn't have to fit into your fitness program. 

 What's a healthy fitness program based around? Three things. Longevity, sustainability, and movement. 

Longevity: Your program should be based around improving your body and keeping it that way forever! It should focus on improving mobility, flexibility, and functional strength. It should be designed with the future in mind. This means your program should be designed to keep you moving well and in great shape at the age of 50, and not just looking great at the moment. Make sure your workouts are loaded with a quality warm up, lots of mobility work, and exercises that are designed in a way that builds your body up, not break it down. The same goes for your nutrition! Your diet shouldn't be about bulking, cutting, carb loading, or any other bull shit like that. Those are all short sighted and not about longevity. You nutrition should be something that can be done for the long haul. Base your nutrition around real foods and avoiding made made junk. No one ever got fat from eating lots of veggies, fruit, meat, and healthy fats/nuts. 

                                
                       (Coach Steve Maxwell in his 20's and now in his 60's has always based his programs around longevity, sustainability, and movement. He says he was never concerned with building a beautiful body. But he certainly achieved one none the less.)

Sustainability: Fitness programs should be sustainable. Programs that have you always pushing to lift heavier, move faster, or beat records are not sustainable. Those programs are great for athletes, but not for the average person looking for real health. Your workout should be based around movements that you can do forever at almost any place at any time. Your program should also take frequency into account. A program that has you training twice a day, or working out every single day for multiple hours is not a sustainable program. Programs like this eventually lead to burn out or over training, something certainly not desirable when looking at training for actual fitness. Your body needs time to rest, recover, and deal with the stress of regular life. Training a little less will sometimes yield much better results than training too often.

(An 80 year old woman in China who has always trained for life, movement, and continued strength. Sustainability is key!)

Movement: Your training should always be based around improved movement, or maintaining your bodies ability to move with ease and efficiency. This means learning how to push, pull, lunge, squat, crawl, invert, bridge, run, and more. This also means you should focus on improving these movement patterns and the flexibility, strength, and mobility that comes with each. Avoid machines, learn how to move your own body weight, and then venture into other forms of fitness such as barbell training or kettlebells if you desire. But always, always, base your workouts around movement. If you don't move, you lose your ability to move. Life is about movement, not doing endless curls at the gym. 

 If you follow this method, your body will thank you with long term mobility, strength, and ease of movement. Also, the sexy/lean body is just a bi-product of a healthy life style! When you train for longevity, sustainability, and movement your success is guaranteed ... without all the unhealthy obsession. 

- Tim 


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Thursday, June 12, 2014

Paleo Coconut Curry Soup


I love coconut milk ... well coconut everything for that matter. I'm also a fan of spicy food and easy to make meals. If you're anything like me, then you'll love this Paleo Coconut Curry Soup! You can throw it together in minutes and it makes enough soup for a couple of meals. It's rich, smells amazing, and tastes so good you'll be thinking about grabbing seconds while you're still eating the first bowl! 

Here's What You Need: 

- 2 cans of full fat coconut milk
- 1 red pepper
- 5-6 whole mushrooms
- 1/2 a large yellow onion
- 3-4 cloves of garlic
- 2 chicken breast 
- 2-3 tbls curry powder 
- 1 tsp salt 
- 1 1/2 cups of water 
- Coconut oil

Here's How To Put It Together:

- Dice up your onion and garlic in to fine bits. Dice up your mushrooms and red peppers into small bits, but not as fine as the onion and garlic. Put it all in one bowl together and set aside for now.

- Dice up your chicken into small cubes. Put a large pot on the stove top, place a small amount of coconut oil in the pot, and turn onto medium-high heat. Dump the chicken into the pot and start cooking it in the coconut oil until it's fully cooked.

- Add your mushrooms, peppers, garlic, and onion all into the pot with the chicken. Let it sit and continue to stir it often to allow the veggies to cook and soften. 

- Add your 2-3 tbls of curry powder and your tsp of salt to the pot and stir until it's all mixed! 

- Now, pour your two cans of coconut milk into the pot. 

- Add your 1 1/2 cups of water into the pot and stir until every thing is mixed.

- Let the soup simmer, divid into bowls, and enjoy! 


- Tim 


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Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Squat and Lower Body Warm Up Routine



This lower body routine is perfect for those of you looking to improve your squats, open your hips, and improve your mobility. I would suggest throwing it in at the beginning of all your workouts to prep your body for movement and also on non training days just to keep your body loose and primed for the day. If you experience trouble squatting down because of balance issues or tight calves, I would suggest placing a weight plate or a 2x4 block of wood under your heels to help achieve the full squat. Never stretch or push yourself to the point of pain, be sure to listen to your body and only push to the point of tension. Do everything with complete control! Try it out and enjoy! 

- Tim 


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Wednesday, June 4, 2014

You Are Unlimited Potential!





 The title says it all. You, and everyone you know, have unlimited potential to do or become anything you desire. With enough drive, education, and will ... you can do anything you choose. As people, we often set a “cap” on what we believe is possible for us to achieve. Believe it or not everyone, whether subconsciously or consciously,sets goals that they aim to achieve. These goals are usually designed to make us happy and experience some form of pleasure. The reality is that regardless of what your goals might be, you can always aim higher and achieve a greater goal! 

 Let’s say your goal is to simply get a job serving at a busy restaurant so you can pay your bills. Well, once you’ve attained that job and you’re making some money why stop there!? Why not manage that place! If you work hard enough, and it makes you happy, why not work up to becoming a manager? Or, lets say you don’t enjoy the job and you decide you think you could do a better job with your own restaurant. It’s completely within your abilities to learn enough, save enough, and open your own restaurant. Sure it would be a lot of work, time, and sacrifice. But you can do it! Don’t fool yourself. It doesn’t stop there, now that you have your own restaurant you can take it even further. You could sell it and move onto bigger things or turn it into a chain! You can do it AND you know deep down you could make it even bigger than that! 

 Think about it like this. 

 A long, long, LONG time ago. Before cell phones, TV’s, the internet, or even cars and trains. People lived in small communities and tribes that had no connection to each other. I bet somewhere, there was a community of people living on a remote island that was surrounded by water. When they would look out at the horizon, all they could see was an endless body of water. I’m sure the common thought amongst everyone was that their piece of dirt, and that endless body of water, was the only thing that existed. Nothing else! I bet they felt that their community on that island was the “end all be all”. But one day, someone stood at the edge of the beach and looked out at that endless body of water and as they stared into the distance they thought “There’s got to be more”. 

This is true about your life, goals, fitness, nutrition, dreams, and everything in this universe. There are no limits, and there’s always more out there for you. 

- Tim



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