I was WRONG!

Hey guys, 

 

This summer has been super busy and it got me thinking about how busy you guys must get. I realize time is at a premium for most of us. If we spend an average of 9 hours a day working, 1 hour a day commuting, 2 hours a day eating, 7 hours a day sleeping that leaves us...5 hours to do our own thing. This doesn't include the morning ritual of waking up and getting ready for work. That could be another hour!

 

I've spent blog upon blog telling people how important it is to record what they eat. The main idea behind this was for you to see how many calories you're eating. As well as But often this would become overwhelming. In the past our nutrition evaluations would have a printout with what percentage of your meal should be carbohydrates, protein and fat.

 

But we don't eat protein, carbohydrates and fat. We eat food. So I thought the evaluation needed to be redesigned. 

 

So here I am saying I was wrong. When I designed our nutrition evaluation, I placed too much emphasis on calories, macronutrient distribution and activity level. 

 

In reality, nobody needs a program that is exact. Why? Because nobody would follow it. If an eating plan is too strict, most people will be too busy for it.

 

So what should you look for instead? Look for guidelines. But here's the kicker.

 

If you're given rules to follow instead of a strict diet and meal plan, then you need to follow the rules!

 

And there are some pretty simple rules:

1. Eat 4-5 meals per day
2. Eat fruits and vegetables with every meal.
3. Eat a lean protein with every meal
4. Don't drink your calories.
5. Only eat grains (bread, pasta, oats, pancakes) during your first meal

And in reality, you don't even have to start all of those habits at once. Pick one that you can succeed with and then do it. When that becomes a habit, simply choose another habit and add to it.

But whatever you do, do something. Exercise is great for increasing strength, improving cardiovascular fitness, increasing flexibility and other performance measures. But it's not all it's cracked up to be when it comes to fat loss. If you want to lose fat. You MUST follow the 5 rules above.

Want to really work your abs? Do THIS!

Bret Contreras is a pretty smart guy. He's one of those strength coaches that practices what he preaches. He's got the real world experience to go along with the Master's degree from Arizona State. 

Although Bret is mostly known for being the go-to guy for women looking to add some size to their glutes, he's done a TON of EMG research. 

A while ago, Bret did some work and found which exercises utilize the lower abs, obliques and lower back to the greatest extent. Here's what he found:

Just another reason to do chin-ups ladies.

For lower abs he found that chin-ups beat out every other exercise in muscle activity! Can you believe that?! But you have to do them with correct technique. Basically keep a straight line from your shoulders to your knees, keeping your lower back from hyper-extending.

He found that Turkish Get-Ups (TGU) also had the overall highest levels of combined activation for lower abs, obliques and low back extensors. 

In summary here is the best Ab-blasting circuit to really give your abs a good workout. You'll see it works other muscle groups as well, showing that isolation may not be the best formula for abs.

1. TGU x 5 each side
2. Chinup x max -2 reps
3. Body saw (think slideboard ab slides, or stability ball roll-out) x 12
4. Kneeling cable lift x 8 each side

In the Hi-5 FitCamp we've done all of these exercises. But we've never done them back to back to back in a circuit. I smell a challenge!

How URGENT is your health?

As I sit here planning out my day, I have to distinguish between things that are important and things that are urgent. 

This is a great question because many people can't separate the two! Until I thought about it, the only things that were urgent in my day were important. And things only became important when they became urgent. 

I touched on this last week a little bit, but you really have to lay down your values in life. Now most people will include honesty, family, faith, integrity, etc. But often health is left out. And perhaps its because in our country people tend to think that as long as they aren't sitting in an emergency room they are healthy. 

I don't think that's health food!

There was a study out recently that reported 90% of Americans think they are healthy. Now obviously we know this can' t be true because 68% of the country is overweight! So at this point the question becomes how do we define health? What is the criteria?

Getting back to stating of values, health has to be a value and a PRIORITY. Our families, friendships, jobs, and so much more rely on us being healthy. 

 Concern and protection of our health through proactive measures. Planning your meals and planning your exercise will make them both much easier to accomplish and be consistent with. 


Now I am going to open up to you a little bit. My wife and I had a talk the other night and she really opened my eyes to something. What it boiled down to was that I can plan out my schedule at work, plan workouts, plan my eating habits, plan things to do with my daughter, plan out my schedule for grad school. But when it comes to our relationship, too frequently I just "show up." I fail to plan anything and I put all the emphasis of maintaining our relationship on her.

Is this your threshold for health?

So I started thinking back on what my values are. I can say and write down that I value family, faith, health, honesty, hard work and friends. But where have I put each of those on the priority list? 


For most people, their health and fitness isn't near where it should be. If we neglect our health as a nation we are basically saying that its not important. But it will become important when our health becomes urgent. And this is NOT what you want! Because at this point, the only time you think of your health is when its rapidly deteriorating and we end up running around in "crisis" mode. 


Here's the final point. Don't let your health get to the point that it becomes urgent. Urgent health means that your body is failing you. 

Your health is important. But don't wait until you're in the emergency room to start thinking about changing your life to include health in your list of values.

The BEST Ab exercises for you and yours...

The single arm row is a GREAT spine stabilization exercise.

Dr. Stuart McGill is one of the top researchers in the field of spinal health and exercise. He's coauthored hundreds of research studies on how the lower back functions, how it is injured, how it is used during strength training and the effect of poor spinal control.

So along the way you can understand that he has explored what exercises work best for developing a fully functional core. Not surprisingly we do a lot of these exercises in our Hi-5 Fitcamp.

• Plank
• Cable Chops
• Hand Walkouts (aka Inchworms)
• Side planks
• Single Arm Rows

Smooth sailing requires a stable spine.

These exercises force the transverse abdominus, external and internal oblique, quadratus lumborum and psoas major to stabilize the spine while the muscles of the shoulder and hips create movement at their respective joints.

Briefly put, the core is made up of muscles that support the spine like guy wires support the mast of a ship. If any of these wires were to lose tension, the mast would begin to tilt in the opposite direction.

From a rehabilitation/corrective view point, we see this a lot in people with back pain. These are exercises that the average person should be doing to maintain a healthy back. These are not just for athletes or for rehabilitation patients, they are for everybody.

So the next time you think of ab work, remember that the abs are not there to create motion at the spine. They are there to prevent spinal extension and flexion, rotation, and  lateral flexion.