I have here another great free Ebook from nutritionist Mike Roussell.  As always, his information is easy to get and of the highest quality.  Feel free to download this great new resource and share it with friends.  Remember folks, this is Research Proven stuff, not just a bunch of BS and fluff.  Enjoy.

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In our western culture we have adopted the habit of breathing inefficiently.  We tend to overuse our upper body musculature through lifting our chest and shrugging our shoulders upon inhalation.

This type of breathing leads to the overuse and fatigue of those upper body muscles that are picking up the slack of a weak diaphragm.  This faulty pattern can then lead to pain and dysfunction in the upper back and neck.

The solution: learn intra-abdominal breathing.  A few exercises worth trying out are crocodile breaths, loaded medicine ball breaths, and the practicing of taking in deep breaths while in various postures and positions.

Tips

When inhaling focus on expanding your abdomen 3 dimensionally.

Test your ability take a quality breath by watching yourself in the mirror.  Does your chest raise, do you shrug your shoulders?

It can be hard to strengthen the diaphragm at first.  Be sure to take breaks if you get light headed from training.

Practice one of the techniques in the video below for 5 minutes each day.  Notice a change in stiffness or pain reduction in your upper back, chest or neck.

Once you become proficient in the above techniques, start strengthening your new breath in different positions.  10 strong breaths in any one of these will take you to the next level.

Although I am not a big fan of sit ups and crunches in the first place, people are still going to do them.

We can’t help it.  We’ve been socially conditioned to associate 6 pack abs with doing hundreds of sit ups.  You can thank the media for that one.

Today I thought I’d just bring light to a subject I’ve had a client inquire about lately; working out first thing in the morning.  The conversation started something like this…

Client:  I figured I would wake up 5 minutes early everyday from now on and do 100 sit ups.  That would make an extra 700 a week, 2800 a month etc, etc.

The problem here; upon waking up we have excess fluid accumulation of our vertebral discs during the night’s sleep.  This would create extra stiffness of the spine and also result in extra compression during movements requiring the spine to bend and move.  Not only sit ups and crunches would be a bad idea, but most exercise would not be recommended.

The solution: try not to work out until you’ve been up and about for at least an hour.  Drink your coffee, have breakfast, go for a walk, do some work.

Is the extra 36,500 sit ups a year really worth doing damage to the spine.  I don’t think so.

PS Lay off the sit ups and crunches and do some more reading on The Buff Geek.

I write the occasional article about how people with desk jobs should train and avoid certain exercises.  Since then, I’ve received several questions from people with non sedentary jobs.  People on their feet all day long like my sister, the teacher.  So is there a difference between what I recommend for a stander and a sitter.  Nope.  And I’ll explain why.

The human race has been evolving for roughly the past 2 million years.  During this period our bodies, by natures design, have been built to remain in the standing position for several hours at any one time.

The first chair was invented just a couple thousand years ago.  Between then and now it has been just a blink of the eye in terms of human evolution.

Do you imagine that early man would take its rest breaks by sitting on perfectly elevated rocks?  I don’t.

We have taken this perfect, standing machine and since childhood, taught it that sitting is the standard and the norm.  Eating, schooling, doing homework, and driving.  All of these things done from the seated position during a huge developmental growth period.

It’s no wonder why we see so many orthopedic problems within our domesticated society.

What you have is a build vs. conditioning problem.  You have all the proper pieces to be a standing, pain free machine but you’ve conditioned it otherwise.  You’ve taken the parts from a mountain bike and have turned them into a 10 speed road bike.  Sure you can learn to race a 10 speed off road, and probably get pretty damn good at it too if it’s all you knew your entire life.  But is that ideal?  You’ll definitely have to replace a lot of tires along the way.

I’m not saying it’s a no win battle.  But it is a constant battle that you should always be considering when evaluating your own well being.  We’ve conditioned ourselves to be a lot more fragile than our ancestors.  In our daily lives we can never fully assume that we are in perfect heath just because we are ably performing regular daily activities.  Take a subjective look at your activities and workouts and ask yourself if there could be a better way of doing things.

And here is a quick video about the evolution of tech I thought was fun.  Enjoy.

Your hands; they’re the most sensory rich part of your body.  The amount of nervous system feedback from your hands to your brain dwarves any other part of your body.  Your shoulders, hips, knees, feet and back don’t even come close.

When you go through the paces of everyday life, your brain relies on signals from your hands, especially when something physical is about to take place.

This is why it’s important to have a strong grip.  A tight grip will reinforce a tight posture through that nervous system feedback.  The brain knows, if the grip is taking an activity seriously, the rest of the body should follow suit.

Test this next time you workout.  Grip those weights just a little bit harder than necessary and you’ll feel much more stable in your lifts.  You can even train your grip when opening and closing doors, carrying a brief case, shaking hands or even just putting dishes away (don’t break them of course).

A good but not exhaustive list of exercises that help with grip strength.

• Dead Lifts
• Pull UPs
• Body Weight Rows
• Kettlebell Swings
• Farmers Walks
• Dumbbell Rows

You should be using a variety of these in your workouts in order to strengthen your grip while your arms are in different positions.

By Mike Roussell PhD(c) http://thebuffgeek.com/warpspeedfatloss.php

Weight loss plateaus can be frustrating and detrimental to your fat loss if not dealt with swiftly and properly. Another way to look at weight loss plateaus is that they are actually your body settling in at a new body weight set point.

The set point theory is basically the idea that your body likes to be at a certain body weight and it will work to keep you there. Chances are you have experienced this in your own life. I’m talking about situations where you will gain or lose weight but inevitably after a couple weeks or months of trying to change you end up around the same body weight (I know for me 175lbs was a set point, in my own system for quite some time).

In order to break these body weight set points, it is important to understand the forces that you are working against (know thy enemy, right?). I’m talking about adaptive thermogenesis. Adaptive thermogenesis is the seemingly automatic reduction in energy expenditure that occurs when you diet. Many think that this is the driving force behind people’s body weight set point.

This is important so I want to make sure I’m explaining it clear enough so here’s an oversimplified example.

You are currently eating 2000 kcal per day. Your body is currently burning 2000 kcal per day. You decided that you need to lose weight so you cut 500 kcal from your diet. So in theory your body should now have to dig up another 500 kcal from body fat to fuel the calorie difference.

It doesn’t work that way. Studies show that your body adjusts its energy output so that it can now function on only 1500 kcal per day. This is adaptive thermogenesis. It has been demonstrated that adaptive thermogenesis occurs with both severe and modest calorie cutting.

What is the driving force behind this? Here are some candidates:

• Changes in body weight
• Changes in Leptin
• Changes in Insulin
• Changes in Thyroid Hormones
• Depletion of Fat Stores

 Fortunately you can beat all of these, prevent adaptive thermogenesis, and keep the weight loss coming.

The answer?

Exercise combined with diet.

This seems to help - but not in all cases. We know from research and anecdotal evidence that not all exercise prescriptions work. What does work is intense metabolic resistance training.

If you are currently stuck at a weight loss plateau, you need to break your body’s set point. To do this it is necessary to undergo a rigorous change in diet and training so that you can in essence shock your system.

Here’s what to do next. Once you break though your sticking weight using Warp Speed Fat Loss (or which ever method you choose), maintenance is very important. Get 5-15lbs below your old body weight set point and maintain that weight. Many people lose their fire and drive after they have lost the weight but you need to stay focused so that you can reset your body’s set point.

Maintain your new weight for 4 weeks (this is ideal - if you can’t go that long at least do 2 weeks) before you start losing weight again. This step wise approach will help reset your system to your new body weight and help fight its urge to return to the old set point. The key is keeping your body weight long enough so that your body ‘thinks’ that is the new normal.

About the Author/More Info:
Warp Speed Fat Loss is a complete 28 day diet and training system crafted to help you lose 10,15, or 20lbs of body fat in just 28 day. To start losing weight fast visit http://www.thebuffgeek.com/warpspeedfatloss.php. Mike Roussell is a nutrition doctoral student at Pennsylvania State University. Mike’s writings can be found in magazines such as Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, and Testosterone Nation. Mike specializes in fat loss nutrition and diets for busy men and women who need to lose weight fast without it interfering with their lives. Warp Speed Fat Loss (http://www.thebuffgeek.com/warpspeedfatloss.php) is a complete Done-for-You A-Z Fat Loss Blueprint that gives you exactly everything you need to eat to lose weight in record time.

See the study here in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study uses 180 patients who suffered from osteoarthritis in the knee.

59 Patients received arthroscopic debridement.

61 Patients recieved arthroscopic lavage.

60 Patients received a placebo surgery.

The outcome of the surgeries was assessed over the 24 months following the procedures.

Result:  There was no difference in pain or function between the treatment groups and the placebo group.

The fact of the matter is; there is no evidence that arthroscopy treatments can cure or alleviate pain due to osteoarthritis.

So why are many doctors so quick to prescribe this type of procedure?

For more on dealing with knee pain, check out Lo-Tech Solutions and Mid-Tech Solutions.

For a few months starting March 20th it looks like Pepsi will be going back to beverages sweetened with pure cane sugar as opposed to the HFCS they use now.  

Click here for Article

So what could this mean?

This seems a lot like Pepsis way of admitting that HFCS may not be the best ingredient for their products no?

If this campaign does really well then what?  Will Pepsi revert back to natural sweeteners permanently?

With more and more companies starting to use a minimalist approach to ingrediants like Pepsi and the new Haagan Dazs 5, this might be exactly what our culture needs.  People are finally becoming more informed about the products they eat and starting to make smarter decisions.  I for one hope this trend continues.

So if you’ve been reading my stuff for a while then you probably know I advocate HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) for fat loss as opposed to the low intensity long duration cardio.

HIIT can be performed on just about any piece of cardio equipment; it’s all about the intensity and less about the modality.  

It involves a series of sprinting efforts split with moderate intensity efforts.  We call these work periods and rest periods for simplicity.  Because variety is important I often use several different work/rest ratios.  

Today I’ll be discussing what works best for the ultra beginner when it comes to HIIT or even just exercise in general.  Also, if you’re over 300 lbs these are a good introduction into a new type of training that’s going to help you to drop weight much faster.  This is the same exact cardio routine I use with my current clients when they are first starting out.  I’ve found that it is very unreasonable to expect “sprinting” from a complete beginner or someone whom is much heavier.  Even if it is low impact sprinting on a cross trainer, it’s rarely ever successful or productive.

First off; what I always use for beginners is the treadmill.  Providing they’re not special needs, I already know they can walk.  Maybe not comfortably, but it’s probably the closest, and most familiar bit of human movement that they already have mastered.  This will be important for the beginner because the first few sessions will be spent getting some actual work done and not just learning to adapt to a new movement pattern.  On your first bout of using the treadmill, you’ll want to find the right speed and grade that makes walking just a little too uncomfortable for you.  This should be just enough that you can only tolerate a minutes worth of work.  After that minute is up, safely get off of the treadmill, but keep it running*.  Be sure to record the speed and the grade that you are working at in a journal.  Using a stop watch or a clock, give yourself a 2 minutes rest.  Make the rest active if you can, pacing around, stretching and moving if it’s possible.  At the end of your 2 minute rest period get back on the treadmill and give it hell for another minute of work.  Repeat this 1:2 interval for another 6 rounds, or until you feel you can no longer continue do to cramping, pain, nausea, or exhaustion.  Remember, it’s supposed to be uncomfortable, but you definitely do not want to hurt yourself.  Listen to your body.  Complete this routine 5 days a week, 2 days on its own and 3 days after working out with weights.  If your goal is fat loss it is extremely crucial that you be working out with weights, but that’s a discussion for another day.

This routine should kick your butt for at least 2 weeks.  After that point you should try to shorten your rest periods to just 90 seconds, and then eventually down to 1 minute.  At that point you’re almost ready for some real HIIT. 

*Note: some treadmills have a safety mechanism that will automatically shut the machine down if you step off.  If this is the case at your gym, try speed walking out doors instead; 1 minute fast paced 2 minutes slow.