Personal Fitness Coach

Is Your Workout Too Wimpy?

No matter how hard you exercise, you can always find people who are exercising harder. As they speed past you on foot or bicycle, and lift seemingly superhuman amounts of weight at the gym, it’s only natural to wonder: Am I taking it too easy?

“It all depends on your goals,” say exercise physiologists James Hagberg, PhD of the University of Maryland, and Philip Clifford, PhD, of the Medical College of Wisconsin.

If your goal is to improve your health, you probably don’t need to exercise as hard as people who are trying to lose a large amount of fat, gain a large amount of muscle, or train for competitive sports.

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My Top 10 Favorite Books For Fitness, Nutrition, Health, and Life

Notice I didn’t say these were the “best”, I said they were my favorite.  Different strokes for different folks as they say. . . and that being said, let me also say that these are in no particular order.

1. Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe. You haven’t read this book and you’ve picked up a barbell in the last month?  Stop.  Do not pass Go, do not collect two-hundred dollars.  Go directly to your local book retailer and get Rippetoe’s Starting Strength now!
2. The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain. We can debate diet all damned day.  The Paleo method just makes sense to me and even better, has never failed to give myself or my clients desired results when followed.  Don’t knock it ’til you try it.
3. Th

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Tags: 10 Favorite, Favorite

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How to do Wall Balls

Wall Balls is a silly name for an exercise, I know, but that’s what you get when you borrow exercises from Crossfit. In fact, Wall Balls are a great conditioning exercise that builds full body stamina and endurance. It will also make you sweat.

This is an exercise that integrates perfectly into a high intensity interval training (HIRT) circuit, and can also be used to build high intensity interval training (HIIT) sessions, but do not translate that well into Tabata training.

Wall Balls also can be used separately as a full body conditioning exercise by attempting to complete X reps as fast as possible, or by attempting to complete as many reps as possible in a set time limit. E

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Tags: Balls, Wall Balls

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Small Doses column

MAKE SURE GLASSES ARE 3-D CLEAN

In its July issue, Good Housekeeping magazine tested seven pairs of 3-D glasses, three that were wrapped and four unwrapped, and found that none of them were bacteria-free. While most of the bacteria (collected via swabs that were sent to an independent lab) was deemed harmless, one set of glasses bore Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, which can cause pinkeye and other infections. The magazine, which doesn’t say which theaters it visited, recommends cleaning 3-D glasses with alcohol wipes or even taking them to the restroom to wash them with soap and water. A dry tissue rubdown removed some, but far from all, of the bacteria.

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