This is one of those ‘thinking out loud posts’

Your Metabolism Made Simple…

And today I’m thinking about metabolism.
It kind of dawned on me today that things that increase our metabolic rates are most likely stressors or irritants.
Things like the components in green tea (EGCG) are able to minimally increase our metabolic rates…most likely because they are stressing or irritating our systems, causing them to work harder.
In fact, in the case of green tea (and caffeine) this result is short lived, most likely as a result of hormesis; which means our bodies adapt to this stressor and there ceases to be an effect on our metabolism after repeated doses.
In other words, your body can ‘get used’ to constant coffee/green tea consumption causing them to stop having much of an effect (if at all).
It could probably be argued that the ‘health’ benefits of these types of compounds occur once the ‘metabolism’ benefit ceases.
Regardless..thinking […]

Original post by Brad Pilon

If you’ve been lurking in the Primal/Paleo community for any length of time, you already know who Art De Vany is. If not, here’s your chance to get a quick glimpse of the man who is billed as the grandfather of the modern Paleo movement. He’s been living this way for a quarter century, and his personal results speak to the long term benefits that come from emulating a hunter-gatherer existence. All of us who dabble in the Evolutionary realm owe Art a debt of gratitude for his early and continuous exploration of this lifestyle and philosophy that we all hold so dear. In fact, my own first few essays in the blogosphere were actually guest posts on Art’s site. And it was the enthusiastic response to those posts that helped convince me to try my own hand at this “blogging thing” back in 2006. Thanks, Art.
His long awaited book […]

Original post by Mark Sisson

Things are nice and clean nowadays. You can easily go a day without seeing a single speck of visible dirt, while hand sanitizer stations dotting the modern landscape take care of the less visible stuff. This is, of course, an environmental novelty with big implications. We”re all familiar with how the extreme sterility of modern environments negatively impacts the ability of our immune systems to do their jobs. We get more exaggerated and sustained inflammatory responses to things that don’t really merit them. We get a lot more asthma and allergies, especially as kids. Well, a recent review in the Archives of General Psychiatry suggests it goes even further – all the way to clinical depression. To be more precise, dysfunctional inflammatory responses of imbalanced immune systems due to sterile environments are causing depression in kids. A lack of exposure to “old friends,” or the microorganisms normally present in dirt, […]

Original post by Mark Sisson

<p>The basis of Tabata Training is 4 minutes of intense interval training/circuit training. What you are doing is taking an exercise we'll use sprints as an example here.</p>
<p>Sprint as hard as you can for <strong>20 seconds</strong></p>
<p>Walk for <strong>10 seconds</strong></p>
<p>Repeat 7 more times for a total of <strong>8 sets</strong>.</p>
<p>So what you have is a total of <strong>4 minutes of workout time</strong>.</p>
<p>Tabata Training can be done with a number of different exercises the idea is to use an exercise that gets the whole body involved or at least the major muscle groups.Tabata Training can be done with Barbells, Dumbells, Kettlebells or just Bodyweight exercises. I'll give you some other exercises and routines to try in a minute but first let me give you some background and how Tabatas work.</p>
<p>Tabata Training was developed by Izumi Tabata (imagine that) at the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Tokyo, Japan. They did a study […]

Original post by WP-AutoBlog Import

Clipped from: johnbarban.com (share this clip)

via s.tt
For some people, spending 4 months eating nothing but egg whites, chicken breasts and broccoli is easy. For the rest of us it’s good to know that you don’t HAVE to go to such extremes to get lean.
As John Barban illustrates in this post…a donut a day can still be fit into a lifestyle that gets you lean.

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Original post by Brad Pilon

 
After saying to myself that I was going to do it for over a year now, I finally took the time and practiced until I was able to do my first muscle up. I had forgotten what it’s like to do an exercise you never were able to do before – and I will tell you it feels great.
What makes the muscle up so fun to learn is that most people can’t do it. It’s the same idea behind getting really good at the butterfly stroke for those of you who swim. It’s not really necessary for a good workout…but you look sweet doing it. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with a little showing off here and there.
What is a Muscle Up?

A muscle up is when you do a normal pull up, and then continue to go up pushing your arms down into a dip like movement. At the […]

Original post by rafael@thefitnessadviser.com (Rafi Bar-Lev)

Brisket is a little like meatloaf, in the sense that it’s a simple, unglamorous comfort food that everyone claims to have the best recipe for. The recipes all turn out to be pretty much the same, with minor variations, and they all lead to the same place: a hearty, gut-warming meal that will have you licking your plate at the end.
Brisket is a cut of beef that comes from the breast section. It’s relatively thin and relatively tough, which means that long, slow cooking is the best approach. Many people favor slow grilling for brisket with a crispy coating and smoky flavor. This time of year, however, we favor braising because it requires very little effort and warms our house up with a savory, meaty aroma. The magic of slow-cooking never ceases to amaze, as the transformation brisket undergoes from a relatively inexpensive cut of meat to a meal that […]

Original post by Worker Bee

Bryan Maher, Slim and Trim

Hey everyone! Big news today, or should I say slim news? I’m not sure, but either way, Bryan Maher is back on the site with a new weigh-in! You might remeber the last post about Bryan, where we detailed his journey from pizza to punching bags. Well, the story didn’t end there. Bryan continued his journey of physical improvement, and has achieved a level of success that should inspire us all.
As we said before, Bryan came in to KnuckleUp in early March weighing in at 350 pounds. Bryan worked hard in the kickboxing class, and had numerous privates with super-coach Matt Costa. Bryan has worked hard for the weight he lost.
The last time we talked about Bryan, he had gone from 350 to 261 in ten weeks. And his target weight at the time was 220.
Well, he met his goal of 220 and flew right by it, because […]

Original post by knuckleup

Apparently my last blog post resonated with a lot of people.

Sure he's cute, but he's also evil.

The Sloth.
The weird, unseen gravitational force that keeps you on the couch even though you know you should be working out.
The internal dialogue that allows you to just ‘eat’ when you know you shouldn’t.
Not the one that says “go for it, you can burn it off later”, or “you haven’t eaten that much today, you can afford it” but the one that says..”I don’t care”.
Defeating the sloth is the important first step in getting in shape.
The sine qua non if you will.
But the Sloth is tricky.
It can fool you into thinking you are taking action when you really are not.
Making lists is not defeating the sloth. Either is planning your nutrition or spending late nights planning out the exact sets and reps of your workout.
You may feel like you’re taking action…but you’re probably not.
Don’t […]

Original post by Brad Pilon