The Ultimate Mma Strength And Conditioning Program
Combat Core Strength: Advanced Torso Training for Explosive Strength and Power
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Original post by dominic Paris
What to do with the leftover pesto from Tuesday’s post, ‘Heirloom Tomato Salad with Cilantro Pesto Beans‘? (The entire pesto recipe is available there.) How ’bout a quick dinner idea using shrimp? For this recipe we’ll be using the pesto as a marinade instead of a dressing–see how versatile it is! I’ve used pesto to marinate chicken before and knowing how delicious that turned out I was excited to try the shrimp.
Continue reading the full recipe and don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE to the NEW Healthy Irishman Newsletter!
Fueling your body with healthy food. Fueling your mind with the wealth of health.
Copyright © 2009 The Healthy Irishman. All rights reserved.
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Original post by thehealthyirishman
Last month I received an email from a representative of G2 Fitness telling me that you and I really needed to try out their fitness mats.
Right.
Normally, I delete those emails right away. You would not believe the amount of crap people want to send to you if they think you will promote it…..even in my teeny tiny little blog.
However, in the email, the rep mentioned that G2 fitness mats have a variety of stretches/yoga poses/pilates exercises printed on the surface of the mat.
Damn!
It was one of those smack yourself in the forehead , “Why didn’t I think of that” moments.
Simple idea. Anyone could have thought of it.
Potential great upside for a beginner and a good reminder for the trainee who tends to “forget” to stretch.
So, I emailed back and one week later, the delivery guy dropped off 2 new G2 fitness mats at my front door.
And that same day, I […]
Original post by DR
Apparently, a good portion of America has gone completely insane over healthcare reform.
We’ve heard from the politicians – Democrat & Republican.
We’ve heard from the pro gov’t healthcare crowd…[unitelligible screaming]
We’ve heard from the anti gov’t healthcare crowd…[unitelligible screaming]
And we’ve heard way too much from the teleprompter readers on tv – left & right & even more right
So, today, let’s take a look at what America’s favorite celebrity doctors have to say about healthcare reform in America.
First up, Oprah’s personal health guru:
Dr. Oz
Part of the challenge we face is that all eyes are focused on healthcare finance arguments in Washington, but the real action is taking place in our homes across this great land. We cannot have a wealthy country without being a healthy country, but healthcare finance solutions by themselves do not help us care for our health. An insurance card is correlated with, but does not guarantee a clean bill […]
Original post by DR
Jason Ferruggia just put together 5 random muscle building
tips that may make a big difference in your training..
– Don’t exceed 5-6 reps on most of your warm up sets. Your first
set could consist of a very light weight for 10-20 reps just to get
loosened up and get the blood flowing but beyond that you want to
keep the reps low. The reason for this is that you don’t want to
build up too much lactic acid or accumulate too much fatigue with
your warm ups.
– Don’t stretch before your workout in the hopes of preventing
injury. This doesn’t work. The only benefit of stretching before a
workout is to help you get into positions you might not be able to
reach (such as a full squat) because you are tight in specific
areas (such as the hamstrings and hip flexors). But stretching for
the sake of injury prevention is an outdated idea and doesn’t
really work.
– Don’t over-analyze and over-think everything you do in the gym.
This never gets you anywhere. Don’t worry if the incline of the
bench is supposed to be 50 degrees or 55 degrees. Don’t worry that
if you don’t supinate at exactly the right time that you won’t
activate your biceps optimally. Don’t stress out about the exact
grip width on the bar. If someone tells you that a 16? grip on the
bench press hits your triceps better than anything else, but
because of an injury or anatomical difference you can only
comfortably use an 18? grip, don’t sweat it. People over-think
themselves to death and they never get anywhere because of it. Go
to the gym, get stronger, go home, eat, sleep and repeat. Don’t
turn it into advanced calculus. That is one of the best muscle
building tips I can give you.
– Always train both sides of the joint with equal volume. Therefore
if you do six sets per week of pressing exercises you need to do
six sets per week of pulling exercises. If you do two sets of curls
you should do two sets of triceps work. And so on and so on…
– If you can’t get your forearms to grow, try hitting them with
more frequency than other muscle groups. They can easily be trained
three times per week and recover without any problem. Also, try to
hold the bottom stretched position of wrist curls for 3-5 seconds
per rep. When you finish training the forearms, hit them with a
deep stretch for both the extensors and flexors for 30-60 seconds.
These muscle building tips should get the forearms to grow.
With these and other helpful tips from the greatest in the health and fitness field.
To your health and training,
Darrin Walton
I’ve been reading the book “The Tao of Physics” by Fritjof Capra.
I’m about halfway through and had planned on working my way through a big chunk the second half last night.
But, right when I started reading I came across the following quote:
“Before you study Zen, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers; while you are studying zen, mountains are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers; but once you have had enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and rivers again rivers.”
This quote stopped me dead in my tracks.
It was unbelievably eye opening because it perfectly parallels my experience with nutrition. With a couple small changes I could sum up my entire journey in health and nutrition with one (rather long) sentence.
“Before you study Nutrition, food is food and drink is drink; while you are studying nutrition, food is no longer food and drink is no longer drink; but […]
Original post by Brad Pilon
Yeeeha….this is the kind of evidence I like to see. I am an Idaho boy and love my potatoes!
By Mike Geary, Certified Nutrition Specialist, Certified Personal Trainer
I’d like to start a little discussion today about carbohydrates… and in particular, “white foods” as well as potatoes. One reason I wanted to mention this is because so many health and fitness professionals trash talk potatoes about being a bad carbohydrate choice because of the high glycemic index. Some even say such ridiculous things as “avoid any and all white carbohydrates”.
Ok, now while I certainly agree that white bread and refined white sugar are two of the worst things we can be feeding our bodies, I definitely don’t agree with avoiding any and all “white carbohydrates”. Now I know all of the buzz lately has been about colorful foods and the protective antioxidants that they contain. They tell you to focus on colors and stay away from white.
It’s true that colorful foods are great, but it is a big mistake to specifically avoid white foods! There are plenty of white foods that have specific nutrients that are hard to find elsewhere. Let’s look at a few examples…
Onions & Garlic
What about onions and garlic? They are both white and they are chock full of protective phytonutrients, vitamins, and trace minerals that aren’t easy to find elsewhere in a normal diet… such nutrients as allicin, quercetin (an important flavonoid), chromium, and other unique anti-inflammatory nutrients.
Cauliflower
Another example of something white that is great for you is cauliflower. Cauliflower is loaded with vitamin C, fiber, minerals, and special compounds such as glucosinolates and thiocyanates, which are specifically abundant in cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage. And a little-known fact is that some of the compounds in cruciferous vegetables help to combat other estrogenic compounds in our food supply and environment and can help prevent excess belly fat. So eat up on that cauliflower!
Mushrooms
Not many people realize this, but surprisingly, even white mushrooms have high levels of unique nutrients and antioxidants. White mushrooms are high in a couple types of antioxidants called polyphenols and ergothioneine.
Potatoes
Now that also leads us to another example – white potatoes (which by the way, can also be found in red, yellow, purple varieties, etc). Many health professionals claim that potatoes are a bad carbohydrate because they are thought to have a high glycemic index. First of all, if you’ve read my Truth about Six Pack Abs book, then you understand that glycemic index is not necessarily the most important factor in choosing your carbohydrates.
While a generalization can be made that most low glycemic index carbohydrate choices will help you lose body fat easier than high glycemic index choices, it is not all that it’s cracked up to be. There are many other factors that determine how your body will react-to and process the carbohydrates you ingest, such as glycemic load and also how you combine the high GI food with other foods.
For example, using glycemic load as an example… it is known that watermelon has a high glycemic index. However, the glycemic load of a normal serving of watermelon is just way too low for your body to start packing on body fat just because you ate a high glycemic index fruit. You would have to eat such an enormous quantity of watermelon just to get enough grams of carbohydrates to have any negative glycemic effect, that it is just non-sensical.
Not to mention that watermelon is also a great source of vitamins, minerals, and lycopene. There’s just no reason to avoid it simply because it has a high GI. My point is… candy bars, cupcakes, and donuts make you fat… NOT watermelons, carrots or potatoes.
Also, as i mentioned, food combinations are important in how your body processes the carbohydrates and the associated blood sugar and insulin response you receive. For example, if you mix a high glycemic index carbohydrate with an extra source of fiber, healthy fats, or even certain proteins, many times the blood sugar and glycemic response will be slowed down considerably by the way you combined the food. Again, I talk in detail about this entire topic in my Truth about Six Pack Abs book.
Alright, so back to my point that white potatoes are actually a healthy carbohydrate as long as you eat them in the right form… with the entire skin, and please don’t ruin them by deep frying them into french fries either! French fries are one of the most evil things ever invented for your health, but only because we ruin them by soaking them in a scorching bath of trans fats in the deep fryer from the hydrogenated oils that are typically used.
Keep in mind that potatoes contain so many vitamins and minerals that the list is way too long to even try. Also, as long as you eat the skins, you get a decent shot of fiber too.
On the topic of potatoes not being so bad after all, I don’t remember where I saw this referenced, but I recently saw a particular study that had participants eat something like 7-9 whole potatoes per day for several weeks.
At the conclusion of the study, the potato eaters had actually consistently lost weight! I’d venture a guess that the reason the people lost weight is that they were probably so full from eating all of those damn potatoes, that they actually consumed less calories than normal! An average sized potato only has about 100-120 calories, and I can surely imagine you’d be full constantly from eating 7-9 potatoes each day.
Now I would never recommend going to those extremes, but my point is that an occasional potato is not going to hurt your efforts to get lean, especially if you combine it with some other fibrous vegetables and maybe a healthy fat and some protein. On that note, I have one of my favorite recipes for you, using potatoes.
Geary’s Lean-Body Potato Side Dish
* Desired quantity of baby potatoes (I like to use this mixture I found recently at a health food store… it is a mixture of white, red, yellow, and purple baby potatoes)
* 1 red pepper
* 1 green pepper
* 1 yellow pepper
* 1 or 2 onions
* a couple cloves of garlic, finely chopped
* 1 or 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
* a little salt and pepper to taste (I like using a sea salt instead of normal commercial salt)
Cut the baby potatoes into slightly smaller pieces and place in a steamer until soft all the way through. Slice up the peppers and onions into strips and add with the chopped garlic into a pan with the olive oil. Cook the peppers, onions, and garlic until tender, and then add the steamed baby potatoes. Stir it all together and serve. This is a delicious and healthy side dish that goes great with chicken or red meat.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little topic today about potatoes, healthy carbohydrates, glycemic index, and my killer potato recipe idea!
by Mike Geary, Certified Nutrition Specialist, Certified Personal Trainer
So go try this out and don’t be afraid to eat potatoes!
-Darrin Walton
In yesterday’s post, I introduced you to the idea that your hormones are responsible for your personal fat-distribution patterns.
For example, women with an excessive percentage of fat on the back of their arms are likely to have elevated insulin levels or low DHEA levels.
Men unlucky enough to be lugging around a generous set of man-boobs are likely to have high levels of estrogen (often combined with high insulin and low testosterone)
So, as a public service to all of my man-boobed brothers out there, we are going to take a look at how to get those hormones back in balance.
(For this post, I will be using a variety of reference sources. Most of the sources are pretty dry and technical, but one that I can heartily recommend to y’all is The Hormone Diet by Dr. Natasha Turner (Canada). It is a great reference that is easy to read and understand. I […]
Original post by DR
I hope you’ve been enjoying my posts lately. I thought I might do something different today and rustle up a few bits of info from around the WWW. These are some of the news items and blog posts that have been popular over the last few weeks. Leave me your thoughts.
MMA Fighting Stances: Mixed martial arts intelligence from the …
M-1 has spent the last couple of years trying to build an international MMA circuit with its M-1 Global Challenge. The series hasn't gotten much attention … Read More…
MMA Fighting Stances: Mixed martial arts intelligence from the …
From today's Ultimate Fighting Championship conference call to hype the upcoming UFC 101 card, highlights from Penn's dialogue: Joe was on my team for the … Read More…
MMA Fighting Stances: Mixed martial arts intelligence from the …
After winning the Dream Middleweight Grand Prix last year, he spent several months away from MMA competition before returning in […]
Original post by dominic Paris
This is some great stuff by my friend Jeff we all should be practicing on a daily basis. I challenge you to give it a try. I know I will be doing it.
-Darrin Walton
By Jeff Jowers,
If you’ve ever wished that you were more motivated to experience life at your full potential then this is for you.
Most of us set goals and work hard only to find our motivation fizzle out after a couple of weeks. But there are little tricks that will help you harness the power of your mind and propel you toward achieving your goal.
The Two Motivators
When you boil it down, you’re motivated by two simple things:
1. To avoid pain (fear of failure)
2. To gain pleasure (promise of reward)
You are naturally geared toward one of these motivators. To figure out which, think of the last time you accomplished a task and then ask yourself the following: While doing the task were you thinking about what would happen if you failed to finish, or were you thinking about what you would gain when you finished?
Take note as to which motivator works for you – fear of failure, or promise of reward.
Set Your Goal: The first step towards unstoppable motivation is to determine your goal. You know you’re unhappy with your body, but what exactly do you want to change? Why is it important to you?
Perhaps you can relate to one of the following goals:
· You need to lose weight for your health. Your doctor scared you straight or maybe you’ve had a recent health problem that landed you in the hospital. Your goal is to move away from the pain of sickness.
· You want to look and feel incredible. You’ve always wanted to feel vibrant and attractive. The idea of having more energy really excites you. Your goal is to move toward the pleasure and reward of a fit body.
· You’re worried about your kids. They don’t eat enough vegetables, they drink more soda pop than water and they play video games constantly. You have decided to model a healthier lifestyle and to encourage your kids to participate. Your goal is to move away from the risks of a sedentary lifestyle and to propel your kids toward a healthy future.
Train Your Mind for Weight Loss:
With your clear and important goal in mind, let’s take a few minutes to train your mind to achieve it. You know that weight loss comes as a result of eating right and regular challenging exercise, so let’s use your mind to conquer both.
Eating Right: Use this exercise to distance yourself from the self-sabotaging foods you really wish you didn’t eat, and to naturally begin selecting healthy foods.
Take a moment to review your current eating habits. Identify the foods that you should stop eating (hint: sweets, anything fried, refined carbohydrates, sugary drinks). Identify the worst food that you eat regularly but know you shouldn’t.
Now imagine the healthy foods that you should eat (hint: vegetables, fruits, whole grains, lean protein). Identify the healthiest food that you know you should eat regularly.
Now with the image of these two foods in mind, find a quiet place and do the following exercise (seriously this stuff works):
· Draw up the image of your unhealthy food item. This image will likely be quite vivid, with smell, taste and bright color. In your mind, fade this picture to black and white and distance the image until it is dull, fuzzy and remote.
· Draw up the image of your healthy food item. This image will likely be fuzzy and faded. In your mind, bring this picture to life with smell, taste, sound and bright color.
Regular Exercise: This technique can be applied in a way that encourages you to crave exercise rather than avoid it.
Take a moment to imagine how you feel after a great workout (notice the emphasis on the word after). Remember the physical satisfaction as well as the sweet feeling of accomplishment.
Now bring to your mind the aspects of exercise that you dislike. What is your biggest reason for avoiding exercise? Are you too tired? Do you not have enough time? Is physical exertion too much of a hassle? Pinpoint your greatest complaint about exercise.
Now with the image of these two aspects of exercise in mind, find a quiet place and do the following exercise:
· Draw up the image of your exercise complaint. The image is likely to be clear and accompanied by the sounds, smells and sensations. In your mind, fade this picture to black and white and distance the image until it is dull, fuzzy and remote.
· Draw up the image of the wonderful feeling you have after accomplishing a great workout. Magnify this image in your mind. Fixate on how you feel physically, mentally and emotionally. View the experience in bright colors and add a sound track of inspirational music.
Why It Works
If this was your first experience with training your mind (also called Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP) it may have felt a little odd. Many of the world’s top achievers regularly use techniques like these to accomplish astounding goals.
The techniques above work because they train your mind to bring your behavior in line with your values. Think about it, you value health, you desire to be fit and attractive and you want to instill healthy habits in your kids.
These techniques encourage you to avoid self-sabotage and to make choices that line up with what you truly value.
Now that you are ready to accomplish your goals, call or email me today to start your fitness program that will greatly improve your life.
For now classes are 6pm and 640pm at 2840 Wildwood st in the Boise Cloggers studio.
Book your class NOW!
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