I don’t know about you, but having the stomach flu or an upset stomach is one of the worst common “sicknesses” I can think of. Whether you are paying tribute to the porcelain god from one end or the other (or both), a stomach flu bug or a bout of food poisoning is enough to make you never want to eat again . . . EVER. Luckily there are some foods to get you on the way to your old self in no time. Keep reading for the 5 foods to eat (and the 5 ones to avoid) when recovering from a stomach bug . . . or even too much Thanksgiving turkey!

When you have an upset stomach, you will want to eat these foods:

1. Peppermint

If you have an upset stomach, peppermint tea will help ease your nausea and can also quell your upset stomach. The peppermint you choose should not be too sugary and is best consumed in a tea form. Peppermint tea is one of the most soothing foods for an upset stomach and will calm your nausea in no time. Peppermint tea is also ideal for women who are suffering from morning sickness as it does not have any negative side effects but is very effective for squashing nausea.

2. Ginger

Another food that is excellent for your digestive system and can quell nausea is ginger. Ginger is also loaded with antioxidants and is good for your entire body. You can eat ginger raw or you can also use it in meals. If you are suffering from nausea, you can drink ginger tea as this, like peppermint tea, can keep you from getting sick.

3. Rice

Rice is easy on your system and is an ideal food for someone who is getting back into eating solid foods after being sick. Rice is filling but is also a light meal and is easy to digest. Rice can be made with chicken broth as a remedy for curing a cold and as a simple way to get some bland food into your stomach.

4. Crackers

Eating crackers is another way that you can help ease your way back into solid foods if you have been sick and have not been on solid foods for some time. Crackers are often recommended for pregnant women who experience morning sickness. Just make sure you choose crackers that are low in sodium and free of unhealthy fats.

5. Bananas

Bananas are easy to digest and are often one of the first foods given to babies (who simply by their young nature have sensitive stomachs). Like rice, bananas are filling without upsetting your stomach. Bananas are also one of the best foods for an upset stomach as they are not heavy, but do provide you with needed nutrients that you may have lost when sick (such as potassium).

When you have an upset stomach, you will want to avoid these foods:

1. Dairy

Eating dairy after an upset stomach may seem like a way to calm down the stomach, but usually produces an opposite effect. Cheese is very binding and may cause constipation, while milk may cause (or worsen) diarrhea.

2. Caffeine

Caffeine (such as that contained in drinks like coffee or tea, or in chocolate) is hard on your stomach to begin with, so you for sure don’t want to jump right into these drinks/food when recovering from a troubled tummy. Once you’re back on your feet you can go back to your morning cup of java or give in to your chocolate cravings. Until then – hold off.

3. Spicy Foods

Much like caffeine, spicy foods can wreak havoc on your stomach in a normal situation, much less when you’re already sick. If you’re a fan of Mexican, Italian, Asian, or Indian fare,  you should definitely stay away for at least a few days. You’ll enjoy those foods much more when you’re back to your healthy self!

4. Nuts

Nuts are hard to digest for certain people and although they are good for you, they can disturb your digestive tract even more if it is already in distress. Stay away from nuts when you are suffering from a stomach bug.

5. Tomatoes

The lycopene in tomatoes is a tremendous nutrient that you should be getting on a regular basis, but the acidity in this fruit can aggravate an already upset tum. Save  your tomatoes and tomato-based foods for when you’re fully recovered!

Don’t let the stomach flu (or food poisoning, or morning sickness, or too much Thanksgiving fare) get you down! By getting the “good” foods and avoiding the “bad” you can recover safely and quickly (and with fewer trips to the bathroom).

Get Strong! Stay Strong! (and keep your food down!)

Chris

An excerpt from Alwyn Cosgroves article: Releasing the Brakes

Imagine that a guy walks into my gym, and he’s looking to add 10 pounds of muscle — a simple and straightforward request. The first thing we do is go through a short checklist:

1. Is he lifting?

2. Is he eating enough, and eating enough protein?

3. Is he lifting often enough, heavy enough, and with good technique?

Obviously, if someone wants to gain size and he isn’t lifting weights, there’s no mystery about the first step. We get him on a training program, introduce him to the magic of progressive resistance, and watch him grow.Since nobody is confused about the need to lift in order to gain muscle, let’s move on to the next two points.  You’d be surprised how many people lift weights but don’t eat enough total calories to reach their goals. Same with protein intake: It seems obvious, but some people do need to be told to eat more. So once we figure out what he’s eating and when, fixing the problem is relatively straightforward.

“Heavy enough” and “often enough” are subjective, of course, but once we understand what he’s been doing, these are easy variables to manipulate. Technique? Well if you’ve been to any commercial gyms recently, you’ll see a lot of underdeveloped guys lifting with really bad form. If our guy’s form on the squat and deadlift leaves a lot to be desired, we might be able to add size just by teaching him to use the right muscles on basic lifts.  But what if the problem isn’t so easy to detect and fix? What if he’s doing everything we expect him to do with his training and nutrition, but he’s still not making the gains he wants to make, and that we’d expect him to make, given the effort he’s putting in?

Our next step is to release the brakes.  When Pushing Harder Doesn’t Help.  I got the “release the brakes” idea during a conversation with Dax Moy, a British trainer and gym owner. We were talking about “accelerating” client progress, and came to an interesting conclusion:  All of us in the fitness industry, trainers and trainees alike, have been brainwashed into thinking that the only way to improve results is to push harder. If you aren’t making gains, it’s because you aren’t training hard enough or often enough. Doesn’t matter if we’re talking about systemic gains in muscle size or body composition, or strength in particular lifts, or the size of individual muscles or muscle groups. The answer to every problem is to punch down harder on the accelerator.  But think of a car with the parking brake on. If you push harder on the gas pedal, you’ll only run out of fuel quicker, right? But if you take off the brake, the car will go farther and faster, and probably use less fuel in the process.

This leads to two important conclusions: First, removing the impediments to your progress will probably help more than adding another set of squats, bench presses, or sprints. Second, it’s pointless to increase load and volume while those impediments are in place.  So What’s Holding You Back?

A friend of mine went to see a chiropractor for a back problem. The problem: misaligned vertebrae in his lumbar spine. The culprit: heavy Romanian deadlifts.  My friend is strong as hell — he was using close to double his body weight in the lift. His glutes and hams could handle the load, but his lower back couldn’t. Since my friend’s goal is to get even stronger than he was before the injury, what’s his best strategy? Keep pushing, despite the fact his injured back has already shown it can’t handle bigger loads? Or design a program that releases the brakes by strengthening his weakest link?

We switched to a heavy emphasis on core training that allows direct loading of his lumbar area, along with heavy single-leg RDLs, which maintained the strength of his glutes and hams without the risk of a lower-back injury.  Core strength is often the underlying issue, whether we’re talking about something major like misaligned vertebrae or something that’s annoying but minor, like a lagging body part. The core muscles need to stabilize and protect the spine, particularly when the extremities are in motion. If those muscles aren’t strong or stable enough, the first clue could be a lack of size or strength somewhere else.

Quick experiment:

Stand up and hold a single dumbbell out to your right side, as you would in the finishing position of a lateral raise. What muscles are working? Obviously, it’s your right deltoid. If you’re a trainer or otherwise knowledgeable about exercise physiology, you can probably name a few other muscles in the shoulder girdle that come into play, but we can all agree that the prime mover here is the deltoid.  But think about how your torso stays upright with that dumbbell hanging out in space. Your center of gravity has been thrown off, so something besides your right deltoid must be working pretty hard to keep you from listing to the starboard side. In this case, it’s your left oblique. It’s working to stabilize your spine, allowing your right deltoid to lift that weight and hold it out there away from your body.

Now imagine that the oblique on your left side is weak, or recently injured. You wouldn’t be able to lift that dumbbell, since the muscles charged with protecting your spine aren’t prepared to do their job. Your body cares more about the health and safety of your spine than it does about the size of your shoulders.  Your best strategy, then, is to rehabilitate and strengthen your obliques, thus releasing the brake on your muscle development. Stomping on the accelerator by increasing the volume of your shoulder training wouldn’t do any good, and might make things considerably worse.

Let’s assign some completely hypothetical numbers to this example, and say your right deltoid can lift 30 pounds for 10 reps. To achieve overload and force growth, we have to train the deltoid to do one of two things: lift 31 pounds for 10 reps, or 30 pounds for 11 or more reps.  But let’s say your core muscles, either because of injury or disuse, can only handle 29 pounds for 10 reps.  A bodybuilder might say the solution is to find a way to overload the delts while bypassing the core. Maybe he’d use machines designed for that purpose, or wear a lifting belt for his lateral raises, or do something else that wouldn’t occur to me. Ultimately, the strategy is counterproductive; even if it works, it only exacerbates the imbalance, which makes the brakes work harder to slow your body down and keep your spine safe.

See more at alwyncosgrove.com

Get Strong! Stay Strong!

Chris

By Steve Maxwell

Mobility, or joint mobility, is the ability to move a limb through the full range of motion–with control. Mobility is based on voluntary movement while flexibility involves static holds and is often dependent upon gravity or passive forces. Mobility demands strength to produce full-range movement, whereas flexibility is passive, thus not strength-dependent. Some authorities refer to mobility as ‘active flexibility’. It is possible to have good mobility without being especially flexible, just as one can be flexible with poor mobility, i.e., control. Of the two, mobility is more important. It is better to be inflexible with good mobility than flexible with poor mobility. The percent difference between your mobility and flexibility is the same percent chance of creating a musculo-skeletal injury during physical activities.

Sports, recreational activities and other daily physical practices can result in reduced range of movement in any participating joint. When the joint is unable to move through its full range, we call it compromised. When compromised movement is present in a joint, surrounding joints take up the slack, creating extra stress all around. A typical example are immobile ankles and feet underlying stress and injury to the knees, hips, and lumbar spine. It’s a cascade effect, albeit in reverse:  the body tissues are held together with sheets of connective tissue called fascia, so stress extends upwards from the feet. Poor mobility in one area can cause pain and stress in seemingly unrelated areas, but once fascial anatomy is understood, the idea that immobile feet could cause neck or shoulder stiffness is no longer a conundrum.

Mobility work reduces the potential body imbalances inherent in our athletic and recreational pursuits. For example, it’s widely accepted that running for distance shortens the hamstrings, calf muscles and hip flexors, resulting in decreased free movement in simple full-range exercises, such as bodyweight squats. Well-documented is the compromised range produced by heavy weight-lifting and body building strength sports–yet, properly conducted, weight training can improve range of motion! All too often, in practice, weight lifters endow themselves with tight, restrictive movement by over emphasizing short-range movements and excessive hypertrophy.  Worse, especially in the U.S., is that ubiquitous non-activity: sitting. Sitting in a chair, at a desk, while hunching over a computer is a recipe for a compromised structure full of imbalance and continual pain.

The solution? A joint mobility program. Joint mobility exercise stimulates and circulates the synovial fluid in the bursa, which ‘washes’ the joint. The joints have no direct blood supply and are nourished by this synovial fluid, which simultaneously removes waste products. Joint salts, or calcium deposits, are dissolved and dispersed with the same gentle, high-repetition movement patterns. Properly learned, joint mobility can restore complete freedom of motion to the ankles, knees, hips, spine, shoulders, neck, elbows, wrists and fingers. It’s especially important to keep the spine supple and free and if there were such a thing as a fountain of youth, joint mobility exercises come very close.

Use mobility exercises as a warm up, an active recovery during other activities, or as a stand-alone workout. You can rejuvenate yourself and reclaim the movement of a child with a good joint mobility program. Joint mobility makes a wonderful, energizing morning recharge and sets the day up on the right foot.

Get Strong! Stay Strong!

Chris

By Sylvia Anderson

You’re eating a balanced diet. You’re exercising daily. You’re staying away from junk food. But the numbers on your scale still refuse to budge. So why aren’t you losing weight when you’re doing all the “right” things? Keep reading to find out why you’re not shedding those pesky pounds . . . and what you can do to change that!

1. You’re Not Exercising Portion Control

One major reason why people don’t lose weight is because they serve themselves excessive portion sizes. For example, the recommended USDA portion size for meat is four ounces, or about the size of a deck of cards. Compare this size to the average size of a filet at a steakhouse, which is at least twice that size, and you can see why America is suffering from an obesity epidemic. Beware of hefty portions both when eating out and when eating at home.

2. You Skip the Most Important Meal of the Day: Breakfast

If you’re not losing weight, you should ask yourself if you are eating a nutritional breakfast. Breakfast is still regarded as the most important meal because it sets the tone for how you distribute your calories for the rest of the day. For instance, eating a breakfast of whole-wheat toast, eggs, and fruit will leave you feeling satisfied for a longer stretch of time. You will be less prone to snack and binge on unhealthy foods the rest of the day.

3. You Eat Only One Meal

Many dieters also make the mistake of fasting during the day and eating one large meal at dinnertime. While you may think you’d eat fewer calories by taking this approach, by the time evening arrives you are so hungry that you end up overeating. In fact you likely end up eating more fat and calories than you normally would if you had eaten three healthy meals and two nutritious snacks that day. Additionally, these large meals are often extremely heavy and caloric, and a bad choice so close to your bedtime.

4. You Don’t Pay Attention to What You’re Eating

People also fail to lose weight due to “calorie creep.” A common example of this is when people eat while they cook. Even taking small bites of foods can deposit hundreds of calories into your body. This amount is staggering when you consider that the average person’s recommended calorie intake is 2,000 calories per day. To combat “calorie creep,” you should pay attention to each morsel of food you put into your mouth. Do not distractedly eat small bites of food and expect that it won’t count as calories. Try keeping a food diary and making sure that you record every single piece of food or sip of drink you take. You might be surprised at the excessive amount of calories you take in.

5. You Are Eating the Wrong Foods

Another dietary reason why you’re not losing weight may have to do with your distorted ideas of a food’s nutritional value. Many people believe yogurt is good for you because it is a source of protein and calcium. While this is true, if you are eating full-fat yogurt instead of low-fat yogurt with healthy probiotics, you are doing yourself more harm than good.

You may also be getting extra fat through your cooking oil. If you’re using more than one tablespoon of oil or butter for cooking, you are adding many harmful saturated fats to your diet. Moreover, while olive oil is a healthy cooking-oil option, take care not to add more than a tablespoon because this oil is still heavy in fats.

6. You Are Drinking Your Calories

Some dieters pay meticulous attention to what they are eating, but forget that calories come in liquid form as well! Whether its juice or wine or a sports drink, those calories also count towards your daily amount. Think diet soda is the answer? Think again. Recent research suggests that even diet soda may spur you to crave sugary, calorie-laden foods. The best option, of course, is water. If you can’t stomach plain water, try adding a lemon or lime slice to make it more tolerable.

7. You Are Not Exercising Effectively

Lastly, you should examine your exercise routine. Are you using proper form when you do sit-ups and lunges? That is, are you honestly using only the muscles you’re supposed to be targeting? When doing exercise, proper form will get you the results you want and greatly further your weight loss. Also, you need to make sure that you’re getting your heart rate up when doing cardiovascular exercise. If you walk every day, but only do so at a snail’s pace, you’re not doing much to aid your weight-loss efforts.

Don’t despair! By taking a closer look at your approach to losing weight, you may just uncover some vital mistakes such as those above. Fix those mistakes immediately, and you’ll see results in no time.

Get Strong! Stay Strong!

Chris

By Nick Nilsson – Staley Training Systems

If you’ve ever had a hard time developing your shoulders, this exercise is going to be a lifesaver for you! Personally, shoulders are one of my WORST bodyparts. It’s tough to keep them strong…tough to get them bigger…and tough to really feel them working when I’m actually doing shoulder exercises!

But the first time I used this technique, it absolutely blew my mind. As soon as I finished the set, my shoulders felt like they were inflating! The blood was came rushing in and I knew I was on to something special…that RARELY happens to me with ANY shoulder exercises.

So what makes THIS exercise so special? You’re going to reach muscular failure TWICE within the same set. AND you’re going to do it with NO REST in between the two phases of the exercise. BAM BAM…one part right into the next.

But here’s the twist…it’s not a typical drop set in which you reduce the weight to achieve this! You’re going to use the SAME weight for both phases of the exercise.

The REAL key lies in the range of motion of each part of the exercise…

You see, when you do a normal barbell shoulder press, as you push the barbell up, you go through what is called a strength curve. In basic terms, it means at the bottom of the movement you are fairly strong. But as you press further (normally about 3 to 5 inches up in the movement) you hit a point where the leverage in your shoulders changes. The exercise gets a lot tougher.

This is called a sticking point – it’s basically the weakest point in the exercise. Another example of a sticking point is commonly seen in the bench press. If you were doing a bench press using a heavy weight, lowered the weight to your chest then started to press but couldn’t get past a certain point (a few inches above your chest), THAT is also a sticking point.

Bottom line, you can only lift as much weight as you can move through that WEAKEST point in the range of motion of an exercise. But OUTSIDE that sticking point, your muscles are stronger and can lift more weight!

The question becomes, how do we still do full range-of-motion lifting while putting greater tension on the muscles to maximize their strength in OTHER phases of the movement?

We’re going to break the movement into two distinct phases. On the first phase, you’re going to do FULL reps of the shoulder press. When you can’t do any more full reps, you’re going to do partial reps in ONLY the top, stronger half of the range of motion.

It’s a powerful technique and it’ll get your shoulders burning like crazy!

The key to geting the most out of this exercise is the setup…

How to Do It:

First, you’ll be doing this exercise in the power rack. While there IS a way to do it without being the rack (and it is still effective that way), the rack is going to allow you to really push your shoulders to the maximum.

Set the safety rails in the rack to just below shoulder height. You’re going to be doing a standing military barbell press for your shoulders, bringing to the front, of course! I NEVER recommend doing any behind-the-head shoulder pressing – it can cause shoulder damage.

For this exercise, start with a weight you can get at least 8 to 10 reps for. I would suggest doing 3 or 4 sets of this exercise in total for your shoulder workout.

Grip the bar with your pinkies or fourth fingers on the smooth rings of the Olympic bar. You need to take a narrower grip on the bar than with the bench press. The rails should be set so you have to bend your knees a bit to get under the bar. The bar should be held across your extreme upper chest.  Next, begin the pressing movement. Press the barbell up in front of your face then lockout at the top. When you do a military press, your knees should be slightly bent and abs tight to keep stress off the lower back.

Because of the path of the bar, you will be leaning back a little bit – it has to go in front of your face. But as soon as the bar clears your head, shift your torso forward so that the bar is DIRECTLY over your head. It almost resembles a bobbing-forward motion. This is a key point that a lot of people miss with the shoulder press. If you keep leaning back, it keep tension on the front delts and takes it off the rear delts.Lower the weight slowly back to your chest then press again. Keep going until you can’t get the weight past the sticking point. Try and get it past the sticking point, though! We want to be sure you’re right at the limit.

When you’re done, set the bar back on the safety rails. And here’s the trick that’s going to set your shoulders on fire…keeping your hands locked onto the bar, drop down onto your knees under the bar. Now keep pressing in the partial top range of motion of the press!

Because the bar is now ABOVE the sticking point, your shoulders have better leverage and can continue with the exercise! Do as many reps as you can until you can’t even budge the bar. I prefer to set the weight down on the rails in between reps here but you can keep a continuous movement, if you want. Do it whichever way feels best to you.

By exploiting the top range of motion after fatiguing the muscles in the full range of motion, you’re going to finally be working the shoulders with FULL resistance in the whole range of motion.

When you’re done, stand up. Your shoulders will be swelling up any second now!

As I mentioned previously, there IS a way to perform this technique without a power rack.

First, perform the barbell shoulder press, just like above. Now, instead of doing reps until you can’t get past the sticking point, you’re going to have to stop a rep or two SHORT of that point of failure.

Basically, you’re going to have to complete that last rep to the TOP. When you’re at the top, now lower the bar only halfway down (just above where your sticking point normally is) then press it back up to the top.

Keep doing reps in this shortened range of motion until you can’t hold the bar up anymore!

Get Strong! Stay Strong!

Chris

In preparation for swine-flu vaccinations next month, the state of Washington’s Health Department has temporarily suspended a rule that limits the amount of a mercury preservative in vaccines given to pregnant women and children under the age of 3.

Thimerosal has been eliminated from most vaccines in the United States, and the compound may  be linked to autism. But it will be added to the bulk of swine-flu vaccines.

Thimerosal will be added to the vaccine because it is being produced in vials that contain enough medication for 10 shots. The mercury compound kills bacteria, lowering the risk that the drug will be contaminated by needles used to withdraw separate doses.

A smaller amount of mercury-free vaccine will be produced in single-dose vials. Nasal sprays do not contain mercury but are not recommended for children under the age of 2 and pregnant women, because they contain live, weakened virus.

Five biopharmaceutical companies have been awarded massive contracts by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for development and production of more than 195 million doses of swine flu vaccine.

The companies — Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, MedImmune, Australian drug maker CSL, and Sanofi-Pasteur — will likely make a great deal of money.

Drug companies have sold $1.5 billion worth of swine flu shots, in addition to the $1 billion for seasonal flu they booked earlier this year.

These inoculations are part of a much wider and rapidly growing $20 billion global vaccine market.

“The vaccine market is booming,” says Bruce Carlson, spokesperson at market research firm Kalorama, which publishes an annual survey of the vaccine industry. “It’s an enormous growth area for pharmaceuticals at a time when other areas are not doing so well,” he says, noting that the pipeline for more traditional blockbuster drugs such as Lipitor and Nexium has thinned.

As always with pandemic flus, taxpayers are footing the $1.5 billion check for the 250 million swine flu vaccines that the government has ordered so far and will be distributing free to doctors, pharmacies and schools. In addition, Congress has set aside more than $10 billion this year to research flu viruses, monitor H1N1’s progress and educate the public about prevention.

Drugmakers pocket most of the revenues from flu sales, with Sanofi-Pasteur, Glaxo Smith Kline and Novartis cornering most of the market.

But some say it’s not just drugmakers who stand to benefit. Doctors collect copayments for special office visits to inject shots, and there have been assertions that these doctors actually profit handsomely from these vaccinations.

Get Strong! Stay Strong! (and think twice about the vaccination!)

Chris

By Charles Staley There’s a very eloquent formula for determining success in any sporting endeavor: Productivity = Potential — Losses Due to Faulty Process As an athlete, there’s nothing you can do about your genetic inheritance, but there’s always room for improvement when it comes to your training methods. Particularly, it’s important to identify and correct the most significant error you’re making, because resolving this error has the most potential to improve your athletic performance.

Golfers are a strength coach’s dream, because few of them utilize resistance training. In such cases, a carefully supervised 8-10 week strength training program frequently results in well over a 100 percent strength increase. This increase creates a strength “reserve,” which quickly improves both power, accuracy, and endurance.

During a golf swing, it takes a certain amount of muscular strength to overcome the external resistance of the golf club (this strength is provided primarily by the legs, hips, and rotator muscles of the torso). The stronger you are, the more strength that is left in reserve, and the more you’ll be able to accelerate the club, swing after swing, without exhausting yourself over 18 holes.

For novice golfers, skill practice sessions are sufficient for developing sportspecific strength. But as technical ability improves, the need for supplementary strength training increases accordingly. One interesting phenomenon in golf is that younger players ignore the conditioning element of their preparation, but it often takes years, even decades to develop technical proficiency. So, a golfer may be well over 40 years old by the time he or she has developed a high level of technical expertise, but by this time, physical conditioning has become an issue.

Resistance Training Technology on a Scale of “Good, Better, Best”

While health clubs and equipment manufacturers will tell you otherwise, resistance training machines are not the “best” form of strength training technology, especially for golfers. While they definitely have their place, machines tend to restrict movement to a single plane, which means that the strength developed will not transfer well to an activity like golf, which is multiplanar. Machines also use “variable resistance” technology, so that the machine supposedly matches the muscle’s force curve. But most credible research casts doubts on the effectiveness of this concept. Finally, machines normally restrict the movement to a single joint for the purpose of “isolating” the muscle being worked, but golf is not an activity which requires isolated movements! The object of strength training for golf is to train movement, not muscles.

While “constant resistance” devices such as barbells and dumbbells are superior to machines, they nonetheless have their disadvantages as well. Let’s use the bench press as an example: you lower the bar to your chest, and then ram it to arms length. You assume you’re moving explosively, but as your arms reach extension, the antagonists (latissimus, biceps, rhomboids, and medial trapezious) begin to contract in an effort to decelerate the bar before it leaves your hands. It’s simply a protective mechanism.

Contrast this with your objective, which is to accelerate the bar, and you begin to see the problem. There are ways to address this inherent disadvantage of constant and variable resistance training, however.

Strengthening the Stabilizers

Stabilizers are muscles which anchor or immobilize one part of the body, allowing another part (usually the limbs) to exert force. The most significant stabilizers are those of the trunk— the abdominals and trunk extensors. If the motor cortex detects that it can’t stabilize the force provided by the prime movers, it simply won’t allow the prime movers to contract with full force. Stabilizers are best strengthened through exercises conducted in an unstable environment, such as on a “physio-ball” (those heavy-duty “beach balls” you might have noticed in your local health club), or movements performed with medicine balls.

If you’ve never seriously considered adopting a serious strength training program to improve your golf game, perhaps it’s time to reconsider. Don’t let stereotypical notions of strength training prevent you from taking advantage of this important conditioning element!

SIDEBAR: Strength Training Suggestions for Golfers

1) Seek professional guidance from a sports conditioning professional. Certified personal trainers who have significant experience working with athletes may also be a good option.

2) Initially, expect a slight decline in your game as your body begins to adapt to the additional training loads. After a handful of weeks, your game should climb back up to, and surpass previous levels. For this reason, don’t start a strength training program for the first time if you have important tournaments pending.

3) Expect to spend between 1 and 3 hours a week on your strength training program. The emphasis should be on leg and abdominal musculature.

Get Strong! Stay Strong!

Chris

By Jeff Anderson “the Muscle Nerd”

Much research has been done into the seemingly impossible task of “spot reduction” of body fat.

You know…like how to burn fat directly off of your belly WITHOUT taking away from the butt you’re so proud of.

While experts have claimed that there’s no way to “spot reduce” where you’re able to take of the fat, recent studies are showing that it may in fact be possible.

For example, scientists have studied exactly WHERE fat is burned from in order to fuel certain activities.

It seems that there may be a unique connection where the fat cells in the location of the muscles being exercised may actually provide the bulk of the long term fuel for your training.

This is NOT definitive yet, but it holds promise.

It also supports my theory (and again, this is ONLY my theory!) that your MIND-MUSCLE CONNECTION plays a STRONG role in how much, and WHERE you can burn fat.

In this article, I reveal a unique tip that I use to increase the “mind-muscle” connection to (again, in theory) burn more belly fat from your training by implementing a crazy “cardio fat blaster”…

How To Burn More Belly Fat During Exercise

1. First, if you have my best-selling “Combat The Fat” program (www.CombatTheFat.com), you know that I’m a HUGE supporter of LOW intensity cardio as a fat-burner.

Sure, you can get your panties all in a wad while you preach to me about how HIGH intensity is better, but I lay out the FACTS in my book and the men and women who have used CTF know the real deal.

Anyhoo, I digress…

2. For this exercise session, you’ll do a quick, low effort warmup of about 5 minutes on a treadmill, bike, or other exercise equipment.

3. Next, do a set of WEIGHTED CRUNCHES until failure.  Just one single set.

4. Now, go and do a 10 minute LOW INTENSITY cardio activity that uses primarily either an upper body or lower body movement (e.g. – Rowing machine/jumping rope primarily works upper body while jogging, bike, works lower)

5. When 10 minutes are up, do one set of HANGING LEG RAISES (with your legs straight) to failure and then go on to your 2nd 10-minute bout of low intensity cardio using the opposite area of your body as your last set.

(i.e. – if you jumped rope in your last cardio round, switch to an exercise like jogging on the treadmill this time.)

6. When done, do a single set to failure of HANGING ROTATIONAL KNEE RAISES…then on to your 3rd round of cardio using the opposite half of your body.

And so it goes on, switching back and forth between an abs exercise and low intensity cardio.

For your follow up abs exercises, I suggest (in order)…

=> Hanging Knee Raises

=> Either crunches or V-ups

As you can see, we slowly decrease the intensity of the abs exercise choices with each set as you get closer to the end of your workout.

But in essence, by training your abs throughout your cardio session, you send a “message” to your body WHERE you want all that fat-burning cardio to do most of it’s work.

You may think I’m crazy, but give it a try and see if it doesn’t make a difference in where your measurements start reflecting results!

Even though I’m a fan of high intensity, its always good to have some variety.  Jeff always has good info.

Get Strong! Stay Strong!

Chris