Warrior Fit Boot Camp Fitness Fun!

The staff and I are taking the day off to honor the holiday, but I didn’t want to let the opportunity slip by without extending my gratitude to you, the MDA community. To all our readers, I want to say thank you for your incredible enthusiasm and involvement (in the comment boards, in the forum, and in spreading the word about the site and book). It’s been a truly amazing and transformative year here at Mark’s Daily Apple, and I hope it’s been a successful and enjoyable journey for you as well. Of course, I realize that not everyone is in holiday mode today. Actually, MDA had visitors from 189 countries worldwide last month – Australia to Sweden, India to Brazil, Canada to Hong Kong, and on goes the list. Nonetheless, I hope you all have much to be grateful for today. Happy Thanksgiving – and best wishes – to […]

Original post by Mark Sisson

If you have watched any TV or logged into a computer the past couple of weeks, you have probably seen or heard of Taylor Lautner. This past Friday, I took my girlfriend, her 14 year old daughter and 14 year old niece to see New Moon (opening night). I realize that this movie isn't aimed at my demographic, but actually enjoyed the movie. Taylor Lautner, the guy who plays Jacob Black, got in outstanding condition for this role. What really struck me was the reaction of many of the teenage guys and girls in the theater. Every time there was a shirtless scene with Taylor Lautner you could hear a bit of whispering back and forth. Then it struck me: This could possibly be the first time this generation has had a blockbuster movie written for them, with an incredibly fit actor they can relate to.

[New Moon was shot just […]

Original post by admin

In case you haven’t noticed, the human body has a basic shape.
By and large we are all roughly related in how we look.
If I put a person, a gorilla and a hippopotamus together in a room, chances are you would easily pick out the human.
If I was abducted by aliens right now, and was forced to describe the male part of the human race, this is what I would say:
They average about 5′10″ in height, with about 148 pounds of lean mass. At any given height they can vary greatly in weight, but this is due to their ability to store energy in the form of fat mass.
If I was asked to explain further I would say this:
Their height is normally distributed with a standard deviation of about 3 inches. This means that 95% of all men fall somewhere between 5′4″ and 6′4″ in height.
At any given height their lean […]

Original post by Brad Pilon

Wow.
It isn’t often that I write book reviews (have I ever? – serious question), but it isn’t often that a truly important book like Lierre Keith’s The Vegetarian Myth pops up on my radar just begging for one.
You may remember it from a brief mention I gave back in September, or maybe from Dr. Eades’ endorsement of it. You may have even already read the book yourself. If you haven’t, read it. And if you have? Read it again or get one for a friend.
That goes double for vegans, vegetarians, or anyone on the cusp of adopting that lifestyle. If you fit the bill, especially if you’re considering veganism/vegetarianism for moral reasons, drop what you’re doing and run to the nearest bookstore to buy this book. It’s incredibly well-written, and the author has a real knack for engaging prose, but that’s not the main reason for my endorsement. The real […]

Original post by Mark Sisson

This post is for all of those readers who are getting on in years and still think that carrying a “spare tire” around their middles is no big problem.
Researchers have found that women who store body-fat around their midsection (see Apple) are more than twice as likely to develop dementia when they get older.

FYI, the symptoms of dementia include:

Progressive memory loss
Inability to concentrate
Decrease in problem-solving skills and judgment capability
Confusion, severe
Hallucinations and delusions
Altered sensation or perception
Impaired recognition (agnosia)
Impaired recognition of familiar objects or persons
Impaired recognition through the senses
Altered sleep patterns

The Study
The research is based on the Prospective Population Study of Women in Gothenburg, which was started at the end of the 1960s when almost 1,500 women between the ages of 38 and 60 underwent comprehensive examinations and answered questions about their health and lifestyle.
.
A follow-up 32 years later showed that 161 women had developed dementia, with the average age of diagnosis […]

Original post by healthhabits

It’s no secret – I love High Intensity Interval Training.

I love that it’s great for melting body-fat
I love that it’s great for improving aerobic fitness
I love that it’s great for improving anaerobic fitness
And I love the fact that I get all of these benefits without having to spend hours on a treadmill like some kind of human/gerbil hybrid.

BUT, one thing I don’t like about HIIT/Tabata Training is that intensity is highly subjective.
When I tell a client that I want 100% on a set of interval sprints, how can I know that they are giving 100% effort.
How do we measure intensity?
Well, up until now, here’s what I have been doing (I will use HIIT bike sprints as an example)

After an adequate warm-up, I set the exercise bike at the appropriate level of resistance.
Then we start banging out 10 second sprints going as fast as possible
I help things along by “encouraging” my […]

Original post by healthhabits

 
If you ever ask someone how they gained so much knowledge about their profession or their hobby, chances are they’ll tell you,”I read, and read, and read.” If you really want to become knowledgable in something, there’s no substitute to sitting down and taking the time to read about it.
When I was a teenager, the best book I ever came across for learning the basics and getting practical knowledge that I could immediately use for weight-lifting is hands down, Bill Pearl’s “Getting Stronger”. It has now been renamed to “Getting Stronger: Weight Training for Sports” but it’s still the same book.
This book, simply put, is amazing. A lot of the information that I routinely give out on this site both in articles and on the forums, when it comes to getting strong, stem from this book. The author, Bill Pearl, is a four time Mr. Universe, as well as a […]

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

One benefit of the national debate over health insurance is the spotlight on health care itself. I don’t pretend to have the answer to the political quagmires, but I have to say I’ve enjoyed the deliberation (most of it anyway). Most of all, I appreciate seeing health care issues hashed out in a wide public forum. (I’m holding out hope that it will lead to a real discussion of genuine health itself. A few public figures have tried to steer it that way to little avail so far.) While politicians and talking heads bicker and vent, I tend to take more interest in the stories of independent-minded people who’ve learned to steer the system in their favor, those who’ve fought it tooth and nail and those who’ve checked out of it altogether to go their own route. (Gee, no one fitting that description here … wink). In the last year […]

Original post by Mark Sisson