Positive Fitness

I am changing pace a bit with this post, I am reading a book about leadership right now and in there they were talking about the world record mile. It got me thinking, so I did a bit of research and found this page on great article on the World Record Progression for the Mile Run over at Wikipedia.

The world record hasn’t been broken since 1999, and is still held by Hicham El Guerrouj from Morocco at 3:43.13 minutes.

Below is a link to a video of the record setting race, my favorite part is that he is contested by someone keeping pace with him on the final stretch. It is a good watch and well worth the 4 minutes.

Hicham El Guerrouj Sets a World Record in the Mile at YouTube.

Dictionary.com defines Plyometrics as:

A type of exercise using explosive movements to develop muscular power, esp. bounding, hopping, and jumping.

Plyos (as they are called for short) are great ways to train your muscles for fast twitch movements and are an awesome way for athletes to develop stronger and faster bursts of speed in their movements. And every athlete knows that being faster and stronger are essential for success in almost any sport.

I really like Reference’s explanation of what muscular power is on the Plyometrics page:

Muscular power is determined by how long it takes for strength to be converted into speed. The ability to convert strength to speed in a very short time allows for athletic movements beyond what raw strength will allow..

This is such a great explanation of what muscular power is and how Plyometrics help in achieving things that your body would not be able to do solely using strength training. So with that we will get onto some basic Plyometrics movements to get you started in your Plyometrics training.

Power Skip For Height

Power skipping is an aerobic exercise that is great for your thighs and calves. It is basically a skip, where you alternate legs trying to achieve maximum height off of ever jump. Using this in combination with power skipping for distance is a great combo of Plyos.

Power Skip For Distance

This is just like power skipping for height except now instead of trying to gain maximum vertical height you will be trying to achieve maximum horizontal distance. So now you are jumping out instead of up (like you would for height).

A Guide to Workouts and Staying Active on the Road.

Photo by: Brent_Nashville.

When you are out on the road traveling for either business or leisure it is not always possible to stay inactive for days or weeks at a time. Your body will start losing muscle over the course of even a week so staying active is essential. Depending on your accommodations when you are on the road (hotel, camping, relatives or friends house) reflect what you will be able to do physically to stay in shape.

General

• Running - Ask someone where a safe route would be to run, as you may not be familiar with the area and the roads. Go out during daylight hours to be safe.
• Pushups - Make a rigorous pushup routine to do in your room, use different hand positions to work out different parts of your upper body. Including shoulders, triceps, and chest.
• Crunches - There are so many ab workouts you can do in your hotel room or lodging that your abs can get just as good of a workout on vacation as they would at home or at the gym. Plus the fact that your eating habits may abnormal (more grease, more fast food), crunches and running are great for burning those excess calories.
• Squats/Lunges - Doing some weightless squats will help your legs stay active and not lose to much of your hard work.
• Swimming - Swimming is a great workout for the entire body. Most hotels have pools (and maybe a hot tub for some relaxing after a hard swim or day) and you can get some laps in. Make sure you bring goggles so you don’t run into the edge of the pool! If you are camping, there is also a possibility of swimming, call ahead and ask.

Hotel

Quite a few hotels have access to weight rooms with a few basic machines, which could include treadmills, bikes, and a few weight machines. Use the machines to your advantage, usually they are not the best quality or most useful but if you can get a few upper body exercises in, it will definitely help keep those muscles active.

Camping

While camping you can do various activities including hiking, mountain biking, canoeing, swimming. Call ahead to where you will be staying and see the activities that they would recommend doing to stay active. Camping is usually a relaxing vacation choice, but that does not mean that you should take the entire trip off, get out and do something, be active, there will be plenty of time to relax at other points of the day.

Relatives or Friends

Ask your family or friends if there is something you can get out and do to stay active during your visit. Maybe they will get out and do something with you. Ask them for good running routes to avoid high traffic areas and other dangerous areas.

Conclusion

 As you can see there are so many options to stay active when you are out on the road and there really is no reason to not even attempt to get 15-30 minutes into a day, even if you are busy most of the day. It will make you feel much better and could help you sleep better on that awful hotel bed you have to stay on for a week.

I am on the road while writing this and I must say I have felt much better on the days that I got up and did some running and pushups compared to the days I did not. Leave your traveling workout tips in the comments.

I hope to make this a regular feature on Positive Fitness, what I am going to do is link to the best information and content I find during the week and post it to share with everyone. Everything from fitness, positive lifestyles, and other things.

Positive Living and Productivity

The Happiness Project has a great article on passion titled “Why PASSION is so critically important to happiness.“

A passion gives you a reason to keep learning and to work toward mastery. It can often give you a reason to travel, and therefore to have the new experiences so key to happiness. It gives you something in common with other people, and so fosters social bonds. It gives you purpose. It often has a satisfying physical aspect—rock-climbing, fly-fishing, knitting. It gives meaningful structure to your time. It makes the world a richer place. When you’re in pain, it can be a refuge, a distraction, a solace.

This can be applied to anything in life, becoming passionate about weight loss, fitness, healthy eating, anything and everything. I highly recommend this great article and blog by Gretchen Rubin she is a great author and blogger I have quickly come to respect.

Matthew Cornell has a good article on his blog “Idea Matt” about designer Bruce Mau on personal growth, a small excerpt from the article:

1. Allow events to change you.
2. Ask stupid questions.
3. Study.
4. Think with your mind. Forget technology.

The article is about design but I think a lot of it could pertain to health, fitness, and exercise. Good read and an interesting look at some things in life.

Game Producer has a good article on motivation entitled “14 Ways to Motivate Yourself” check out this article whether you are already motivated or looking to get motivated it is sure to have some thoughts and ideas you may not have thought of yet.

#14 - Remind yourself why you are doing this

The first tip about goal setting is important, but it’s as much important to remind yourself why you are doing games - or whatever it is where you need motivation. When you start reminding yourself about the main reasons what made you start the project in the first place you’ll be more motivated to continue.

The Positivity Blog has a nice list of 17 Inspirational Quotes on People Skills which I found to be a good and entertaining read with some good quotes, my favorite being:

Arguing with a fool proves there are two.
Doris M. Smith

Fitness and Exercise

I just discovered Wildman Training’s blog and found a good post on outdoors training, and being that summer is fast approaching I thought it would be appropriate that I am quite impressed with, the first is based on working out outdoors and in the playground, what could be better?

Real Muscle Online has a great article on “How to structure your ab workout for better abs” that I found very helpful and informational. They also had an informational post on “How to make your daily run more weight loss effective” that I found to be great as well. A lot of positive work going on at Real Muscle Online, keep it up guys!

The main reason regular running is limited in its effectiveness is because you get used to that heart rate range. If you jog at the same pace everyday your body becomes adapted to it and doesn’t get pushed. If you add some sprints in there though, you can increase your heart rate during the run as well as boosting your metabolism for the rest of the day. This means less calories absorbed as fat and more fat burning the next day. All good.

Crunch Notes has an article on “Marathon Training for Nerds” that is worthy to check out for the tech-hearted. They have a lot of great gadgets and technology that pertain to active workouts and running.

There are many workouts and exercises you can do for abs but in order to make drastic improvements on your stomach and abs you will need to make a lifestyle change. Healthy eating (a lower fat diet) will help reduce the fat in your body (along with physical activity). Doing crunches is not simple enough to achieve a six pack abs or washboard abs, it will take commitment and dedication but results can be had with hard work and a good diet.

First off I would recommend checking out AskMen.com’s Ab Guide. They have some great information there as well.

Diet

I have already introduced the idea of eating healthy in order to achieve your ab goals. I would work on cutting out the sweets from your diet. This will help drastically on the fat intakes you have. One tip I would like to pass along is to take out all your junk food from your cupboards and give it away, then go to the store and replace that junk food with healthy fruits, vegetables, and alternate snacks. Check out Wikipedia’s Healthy Diet entry for more information.

Cardio

Cardio is important if you need to burn fat, actually it is great for your body either way and will help a lot with achieving your ab goals. A few things you could are running (10-20 minutes, whatever you can do, push yourself), swimming, and biking. The first two would probably be your best bet since biking does not rely as much on your abs as the others do. If you need to burn fat this is where you are going to do it, ab workouts only workout the muscle underneath the fat.

Ab Workouts

Check out these sites for many great ab exercises until our list goes up:

• Ab and Core Exercise Progression
• Real Women’s Fitness Ab Section (men can use them too)
• AskMen.com’s Ab Guide
• How to Structure Your Ab Workout for Better Abs

 There are many other resources online for great ab workouts, I will write a post in the coming weeks with my personal favorite exercises for abs. Comment below if there is anything you would like to add!

Parents are trying to teach their children to lead healthier lifestyles at a younger age. This is great and I hope more parents start taking up this approach to help with the awful obesity problems plaguing the United States.

Biking

This has to be my top activity to do with children. Most kids love being out in the neighborhood on their bike, but also don’t hesitate to take them to the park, or on a nearby trail and let them enjoy the outdoors from a young age.

Canoeing

The lake or the river are a great destination for this activity, make sure you have an adult with the children and be patient with them. Teach them to proper way to paddle and any safety information you need to pass on to them, before going out. Don’t forget the life jackets!

Frisbee

Go to the park or the beach (my favorite) and play Frisbee, don’t leave the little ones out either, it is also fun to play in knee deep water.

Or you could just go out and throw a ball around, be it a basketball, baseball, nerf ball, play tag with your kids. They will probably brag about it at school that their mom and dad come out and play tag with them, or duck, duck, goose even.

Have fun with them, on whatever activity you decide.

These are just a few examples of activities your whole family can enjoy, add your suggestions to the comments!