Body-Mind Connection

You have heard it before.  Your mind has a huge impact on your body.  Our decision-making and free will dictates our eating and exercising habits, which have a great impact on our overall health.  This is nothing new.  We know our mind determines how motivated we are to act, which fluctuates just like our overall health. While the mind-body connection is often talked about in this very space, the body-mind connection has also been making recent news.  This article talks about how exercise can help prevent Alzheimer’s disease.  Dr. Cyrus Raji conducted a study on the power of exercise amongst the elderly.  Raji found that calories burned greatly impacts the amount of gray matter in the hippocampus, which effects memory.  Raji even goes as far as to say, “No pharmaceutical drug on the market has been shown to have these effects on the brain -- not a single drug,”

So while we often talk about the mind-body connection, let’s not ignore the body-mind connection.  What shape our body is in can often determine how strong our mind is.  Make sure your body and mind are active and don’t let either become complacent.  They are depending on each other.

Sneaky Brownies: Healthy Fats and Fiber Right Here!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We had a great time with lots of fabulous food and fantastic family time. My family has a tradition, it's the tradition of Pie. Every year, the main even at Thanksgiving is not the turkey (we had 3...) not the side dishes (not even the whipped-with-real-cream mashed potatoes) but it's, really, about the pies.

This year, the 23-pie selection included pumpkin, pecan, key lime, S'mores, chocolate creame coconut, a General Pie-treas (my witty brothers' pie) and numerous fruity variations. Delicious!

However, I don't like pie.

I made a Not-Pie instead. Also, being the nutrition nut that I am, I made a healthy Not-Pie and I thought I would share the recipe so this holiday, there can be some desserts that are not an insulin coma waiting to happen. Here's the link to the original recipe (I love Cara's site!), and below is my not-following-the-recipe version:

- 1 can black beans, drained and rinsed

- 1/2 fairly ripe avocado

- 3 eggs

- 4 Trader Joe 100 calorie 70% dark chocolate bars, mostly melted (they were cheaper than other chocolate options...)

- About 2 Tbs of agave nectar (honey works too)

- Heaping tablespoon of Hershey's Dark Chocolate cocoa powder (yuuuummmm)

- 2 TBS stevia powder (or until it tastes good to you) I actually don't have sugar in my pantry, much to my tea-drinking mother's distress.

1. In a food processor, blend the eggs, beans and avocado until smooth. It will look like dark poop.

2. Pre-heat your oven to 350-ish (I always forget to to this first and since I'm relating how I made this delicious chocolaty goodness, I'm trying to stay true to my actually cooking technique.)

3. Melt the chocolate bars in the microwave (or stove if you have a double boiler) until their mostly melted. I'm impatient so I didn't wait for them to melt all the way. Add them into the black bean goopy-goop. Also add in the cocoa powder and agave nectar. Pulse until well blended.

4. Add stevia (or whatever sweetener you prefer) until it tastes good to you. Mine were not super sweet (like traditional brownies) but still maintained the bitter characteristic of dark chocolate. And sweet enough not to taste the black beans too.

5. Pour mixture into pan of choice; since I was making a Not-Pie, I used a circular pan, but I'm pretty sure that a rectangular pan will make no difference in taste. Cara suggests using an 8 x 8 pan and she's pretty smart.

6. Bake about 30-ish minutes or until you can poke the middle and the poker comes out clean. They'll be more fudge-like than cake-like.

Ta-daa!! Pretty easy huh? So, why should you make these this holiday season (and risk 5-year olds telling you they don't like your pie? (True story)). Reasons are as follows:

1. The recipe offers up a healthy dose of fiber, which we know is a good thing for our bodies and can be scarce during the holiday meals. Also, the fiber helps prevent blood sugar spikes and the ensuing insulin spikes, keeping a steady blood sugar level in the blood (and NO sugar crashes). The fiber also helps fill you up so you eat less.

2. There are healthy monosaturated fats in the avacado (the ones doctors are ga-ga about for healthy hearts). These fats are incorporated in cell walls (helping keep cells healthy, happy and young).

3. There is a good dose of protein from the beans and eggs (woefully lacking in most sweet things)

4. Avocado and black beans provide multiple beneficial compounds like luetin (prevents macular degeneration), vitamin E  and glutothione (both helps fight against disease and sickness, like colds, keeping you healthy during the festivities),  both contain multiple flavonoids that have anti-inflammatory properties. My favorite fact, black beans have molybdenum which is a trace element which breaks down and detoxifies the body from sulfites, compounds found in wine and salad dressing, and while only some people are sensitive to them, they can't be great to have floating around your body.

5. This is more of a personal benefit, but because they're not as sweet as most desserts, I feel less sluggish after having some.

6. The feeling of smugness knowing what is in them when people are enjoying your delightful brownies.

Pre-Thanksgiving Madness

It’s that time of year to appreciate all that we’re thankful for, spend time with friends and family, eat a lot of good food and lift a bunch of weight!  Since we are going to soak our cells in calories anyway, why not get a good strength training session in before the feast?  Do a few sets of squats, presses, and pull-ups, and your body will likely be a little less willing to store all the calories as adipose tissue.

But for those of you who really want to turn it up a notch and do something borderline insane, here’s a few physical challenges that will push the limits of your body and mind.

20-Rep Squat

The 20-rep squat, aka The Widowmaker was an infamous old-school way of packing on mass and showing the world that you’re tougher than Chuck Norris.  The objective is fairly simple: load the bar up with a weight that you could hit a challenging ten reps with, and do twenty.  How!?!?  Get under the bar and start squatting.  You will probably blast through the first half of the reps smoothly.  When you feel like you want to rack it, stay disciplined and keep the bar on your back while forcing yourself to take several deep breaths.  Then perform another rep.  Then breathe again, and do another rep.  Repeat until you hit twenty reps. Yes, this one set of 20 will take forever, and no, it will not be pleasant.

Triceps Death

All the bench press heroes will like this one.  You’ll need a bunch of boards, a spotter, and another friend to hold the boards.  Set up as if you were doing a close grip bench to a 1-board.  You’ll do five reps to the one board, and right after your last rep dgfev online casino your friend will switch it to a 2-board.  Do another five reps and have him/her switch to a 3-board and do another five.  If you have a 4 and a 5-board handy throw those in the sequence too.

Kroc Row

Popularized by powerlifter Matt Kroczaleski, this exercise will really smoke your grip and upper back.  Grab the heaviest dumbbell or kettlebell that you can pick up with one hand, and row it for as many reps as possible.  Whether you choose to do a 3-point row or a row on the bench with your hand and knee supported is up to you.  Chalk up and bang out as many reps as you can, rest a bit, and match the reps with the other side.  I should add that a little common sense is in order here, and when the movement starts to resemble a series of mini seizures more than row, it’s time to put it down and walk away.

Strip Sets

This is a great way to deplete your muscle glycogen levels so you can fill them back up with pumpkin pie and mashed potatoes.  Although you can apply a strip set to almost any exercise, I’ll use push-ups against chains as an example.  Set up in a push-up position and have a friend throw chains on your back (let’s say you use 4 chains).  Start doing as many push-ups as you can.  When you are a rep or two shy of failure, have your friend take off two chains and immediately continue with your push-ups.  When you come close to failing again have your friend remove the last two chains and do bodyweight push-ups until your triceps explode.  Then go to your knees and do a few more.  Then do an iso-hold at the bottom.  This example may have gone a little further than I intended at first but whatever, it’s Thanksgiving!

Conditioning Challenges

You can be creative with this one.  Load up the prowler and go for a max effort trip, or load it up lighter and get as many trips as possible in a specific window of time.  You can push it, pull it, drag it, even use a harness and bear crawl with it.  You can also use the implements and do farmer’s walks for distance or again go for a super heavy 1-trip max.

Keep in mind that these challenges should be used once in a blue moon, and not as a staple in most of our programming.  It’s fun to step away from your regular program once in a while and do something a little more on “the wild side,” but remember that real progress comes from consistency and adhering to a well-designed training plan.

But it’s the holidays so enjoy yourself, move some heavy things around and eat up!  Stay safe and I hope to see you all out at the Thanksgiving lift tomorrow!

Know Your "Why"

What do you spend most of your day doing?  Do you know why you do what you do?  If you’re an athlete, why do you play your sport?  Motivation can determine effort, resiliency, and ultimately have a profound impact on performance. Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs (see the pyramid below) speaks to why we act the way we act.  Our needs vary, but our self-actualization and esteem needs are greatly in our control, and vary from person to person.  However, if we recognize our motivation and why we desire certain things, then we are able to feed our motivation rather than starve it.

Take a look toward the top of the pyramid and determine why you do what you do.  That explanation should be embedded into you and be a constant reminder when the going gets tough.

Common Exercise Corrections: Pain in The Knee During Lunging

Installment numero three-o in the common exercise fix series. To recap: 99% of the time it's not the exercise, it's the execution that's causing issues.

So, let's say you're doing a split squat, step back lunge, forward/walking lunge or some other lunging variation that I forgot to mention and, oh bugger, your knee hurts.

If you have pain in the front knee...

- Check your shin angle. If it's not perpendicular to the floor... then you probably are experiencing pain in the front of your knee.

Look at that shin!

- Check your variation. Some folks just can't do forward-moving lunges. Switch to a reverse lunge (above) or split squat variation, thus minimizing the sheer force on the knee (also, of course, maintaining that vertical shin).

- Still having problems? Check how you're applying force through your foot. (Sorry, that was an awkward sentence) Are you pushing through the ball of your foot to stand up or your heel? Pushing through your heel will put the stress of standing up on your glute (instead of the quad) and your glutes are a LOT better at producing hip extension than your quads. Matter of fact, think about pulling yourself upright through your heel as you stand up. (This applies to step-ups too.)

If you have pain in the back knee...

- Check your back leg's placement. Are you in line or is the back leg at a goofy angle? You want to stand about hip-width apart and make sure that your knee is going straight down (instead of in or out at an angle). How does one create such a delightfully descending back knee? Squeeze your butt. It should straighten out any wild knees.

- Check your variation. Maybe switch to a lunge exercise that doesn't require the back leg to work as hard, a Bulgarian split squat, might work as you're not supposed to use the back leg as much.

Note* this has an ISO hold at the beginning of the set.

- Still hurting the back knee? Perhaps try a different single leg exercise such as a bowler squat, a single leg squat progression or single leg RDL. Those will help train the posterior chain (which might be the source of your knee pain, weak glutes or hamstrings) as well as your hip stabilizers (adductors, glute medii, quadratus lumborum) as it might be an instability in your hips that are causing the knee pain.

If, after trying all these fixers, your knees still hurt, well, don't do lunges (you're in the percentage of folks that just need to stay away from them). There are plenty of other single-leg exercises out there that are just as awesome!

Warm-up for the Overextended

It's pretty common to see people walking around with the devastating condition of anterior pelvic tilt (it probably sounds scarier than it actually is). These poor souls end up with overextended lumbar spines that can cause a lot of strain on the lower back. Some people never have any serious issues with it, while others may experience significant pain or injuries. If you fall into this category of the overextended it's important to keep some of the factors in mind and begin to start neutralizing your spinal position. A good preparation before a training session can help put your body in a better position to smash big weights, stick jumps cleaner, and stay injury-free. So how do you do it?

Step 1: Lengthen the Tight Muscles Cranking on Your Spine The hip flexor muscles, including the psoas, illiopsoas, and rectus femoris tend to tighten up and create this duck-like appearance of overextension.

So whip out your foam rollers and lacrosse balls and loosen up your hips and quads. These hip flexors get a lot of attention for being the culprits behind the swayback posture, but they don't work alone. The lats are a significant accomplice to this less-than-ideal spinal curvature. Because the lats attach so low on the back, they can yank on the spine and worsen the situation, so be sure your lats get some foam rolling love as well.

Step 2: Mobilize Stiff Joints A key component to positioning your spine into a better alignment is thoracic spine mobility. A hyperlordodic posture is often acccompanied by a rounded upper back, so get some t-spine extension work in. Some good ones include t-spine extensions on a foam roller, quadruped extension rotation, side lying windmills, and t-spine dips.

Then go ahead and loosen the hips as well with some hip flexor mobs, adductor dips and adductor rockbacks. Hurdle drills are also great for getting the hips moving.

Step 3: Turn on the Posterior Tilters Being stuck in anterior pelvic tilt is not solely created by tight muscles, but also the failure of the antagonists to pull things back into place. Two of the most important muscles needed to tilt your pelvis back towards neutral are the glutes and the abdominals. These two muscle groups are your soldiers in the war against overextension. Get them going with plank variations, reverse crunches, and glute bridge variations. I think this is a great place to add half-kneeling anti-rotation presses. With this exercise you tighten up your abs to resist rotation all while contracting your glute and providing a stretch for the hip flexor on the same side. A win-win-win situation.