Revolution Fitness

Happy Monday!  Start your week off right with a little motivation to get you through the day.  Today’s quote is:

“Energy and persistence conquer all things.”~Benjamin Franklin

In order to be able to follow this motivation you’ll need to do a few things.

For Energy:

1) Eat Well: Your body can not function at it’s best if you’ve been fueling it with bad foods.  If you had a rough weekend eating wise, get back on track today at lunch time.  One of my fave’s is a salad from the Whole Food’s Salad bar.

2) Sleep: In order to keep that energy up you’ll need to make sure you’re getting the right amount of sleep for you.  Average for individuals varies from 7-9 hours a night.  Determine what works for you and strive to reach it.  Sleep is when your body heals itself so you can be ready to go the following morning.

Persistence:

1) Plan of action: Determine what you are setting out to do.  Whether its as simple as finishing house hold chores by a certain day this week, or training to run a marathon.  Write out your plan and give yourself a deadline.

2)Don’t be discouraged by obstacles: Life has a tendency to throw obstacles in the way of our goals.  I’m sure the Bulls never imagined Derrick Rose wouldn’t be playing against the Heat, but did they let them stop them?! No, the rest of the team went out there, played hard and what do you know? They won! Now, if you’re not a sports fan you may have no idea what I’m talking about. The point is, there always seems to be obstacles thrown in the way.  Sometimes I wonder if it’s a test to see how bad you really want something.

Make this Monday and this week a great one.  You have the power to do that for yourself.  Remember:

“Energy and persistence conquer all things.”~Benjamin Franklin

Load One Side to Work Your Core

Since your core stabilizes your body, creating instability means it has to work that much harder. That means you can work your abs without ever doing a crunch. Here’s how: Load one side of your body. Hold a weight on one shoulder during a lunge, press just one dumbbell overhead during a shoulder press, or perform a standing, single-arm cable chest press.

Mix Up Your Grip To Do More Reps

If your hands and forearms give out before your back or legs when doing deadlifts, chin ups, inverted rows or bent-over barbell rows, mix your grip: With one palm facing towards you and one facing away, grab the bar and do the exercise. For the next set, switch both hands. Keep alternating and you can rest your grip while working with the hand the opposite way, meaning your back and legs will determine when you’re done with the set.

Use Multiple Joints with Every Move

Single-joint exercises like biceps curls and triceps push-downs will build your muscles, but slowly. Unless you’re a bodybuilder with hours to spend in the gym, get more done in less time: Trade these inefficient moves for exercises that work multiple muscles and joints — squats will build your legs and back, a bent-over row will build your biceps and your back, and a narrow-grip bench press will train your triceps while it sculpts your chest

Explode Through Every Rep

The “slow lifting” trend should be confined to the eccentric, or “lowering” portion of any exercise. During the concentric portion, where you push, pull, press or jump, move the weight (or your body) as quickly as possible. Even if the weight doesn’t move that fast, the intention of moving the weight quickly will turn on your fast-twitch muscle fibers, which will make your body more athletic and train it to use more fat as fuel.

Developing good habits is the basic of personal development and growth. Everything we do is the result of a habit that was previously taught to us. Unfortunately, not all the habits that we have are good, that’s why we are constantly trying to improve.

1. 
   Exercise 30 minutes every day. Especially if you don’t do much movement while working, it’s essential that you get some daily exercise. 30 minutes every day are the minimum recommended for optimal health.
2. Eat breakfast every day. Breakfast is the more important meal of the day, yet so many people skip it. Personally, I like to eat a couple of toasts in the morning along with a fruit beverage.
3. Sleep 8 hours. Sleep deprivation is never a good idea. You may think that you are gaining time by sleeping less, when in reality you are only gaining stress and tiredness. 8 hours are a good number of hours for most people, along with an optional 20 minutes nap after lunch.
4. Avoid snacking between meals. Snacking between meals is the best way to gain weight. If you are hungry, eat something concrete. Otherwise don’t. Update: for clarification, I mean don’t eat junk food between meals, but eating real food it’s ok.
5. Eat five portions of fruits and vegetables every day. Our body and brain loves getting vegetables and fruit, so I highly recommend eating as much of them as possible. Five portions is the dose that’s usually recommended by many health associations.
6. Eat fish. Fish is rich of omega 3 and other healthy elements. At least one meal per week of fish should be enough for getting all these nutrients.
7. Drink one glass of water when you wake up. When you wake up, your body is dehydrated and needs liquid. Make the habit of drinking one glass of water after you wake up in the morning. Also, drink more during the day.
8. Avoid soda. Soda is often one of the most unhealthy beverage you can find. Limit your consumption of soda as much as possible and you’re body will be grateful for that.
9. Keep your body clean. I don’t advise spending your day in front of the mirror, but a minimum of personal care does never hurt.
10. If you smoke, stop it. There’s no reason to smoke anymore, and quitting is possible.
11. If you drink, stop it. Same as above. Don’t think that alcohol will solve your problems. It never does. The only exception is one glass of wine per day during meals.
12. Take the stairs. This is just a hack that forces you to do a minimum of exercise. Instead of taking the elevator, take the stairs.

Increase Your Range of Motion

Add more work to each rep and increase the efficiency of your workout by increasing the range of motion — the distance the main motion of the exercise travels to complete the rep. Squat deeper. Drop the weight until it’s an inch or two above your chest. Raise the step for stepups. Elevate your front or back foot on lunges. Get more from each move and your body will thank you. 

Tuck Your Shoulder Blades Down and Back

This tip is great for chinups, but it’s more than that. By sliding your shoulder blades down and back before an exercise — like you’re tucking them into your back pockets — can improve your results and protect from injury. It helps activate your lats for pulling exercises, work your pecs more completely in pushing exercises, keeps your chest up during a squat, and can reduce painful impingement on your rotator cuff during biceps curls.

Alcohol in your system is detrimental to any kind of fitness activity (except maybe on the dance floor). Here’s how booze wreaks havoc on your regimen.

1. Slower Recovery
Hard workouts drain the glycogen stores (carbs stored in the liver and muscles) and leave your muscle tissue in need of repair. “Pouring alcohol into your system as soon as you finish stalls the recovery process,” says Tavis Piattoly, R.D. High levels of alcohol displace the carbs, leaving your stores still 50 percent lower than normal even eight hours later, according to one study. Sip or snack on a combo of muscle-repairing protein and carbs (think low-fat chocolate milk or peanut butter on whole-wheat crackers) before tipping back.

2. Packed-On Fat
When booze is on board, your body, besides having to deal with the surplus of calories, prioritizes metabolizing the alcohol over burning fat and carbs. Alcohol also breaks down amino acids and stores them as fat. “For some reason this process is most pronounced in the thighs and glutes,” says Piattoly. “Excessive alcohol consumption really chews up muscle in those areas.” It also increases levels of cortisol (a stress hormone), which further encourages fat storage, particularly in your midsection.

3. Disrupted Sleep
Boozing also blows your muscle recovery and performance by sapping your sleep. In a study of 93 men and women, researchers found that alcohol decreased sleep duration and increased wakefulness (particularly in the second half of the night), especially in women, whose sleep time was decreased by more than 30 minutes over the night. “Disrupting the sleep cycle can reduce your human growth hormone output—which builds muscle—by as much as 70 percent,” says Piattoly.

4. Depleted Water and Nutrients
Alcohol irritates the stomach lining, which can reduce your capacity to absorb nutrients (the reason you have an upset stomach after a few too many), says Brian R. Christie, Ph.D.—not to mention that alcohol makes you pee. For every gram of ethanol you suck down, you pump out 10 milliliters of urine (that’s about 9.5 ounces for two beers). As little as 2 percent dehydration hurts endurance performance. And by the way, you can’t rehydrate with a dehydrating drink (e.g., beer).

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1. Change Yourself

2. You Are In Control

3. Forgive & Let Go

4. Without Action You Aren’t Going Anywhere

5. Take Care of This Moment

6. Everyone Is Human, Even You

7. Persist

8. See The Good In People, and Help Them

9. Be Congruent, Be Authentic, Be Your True Self

10. Continue To Grow and Evolve