Fitness Inspiration Podcast – Fitness Inspiration | Fitness Motivation | Workouts | Diet Help

In this week's episode, you'll get an overview of Crossfit, some of the history of Crossfit, the differences between the Corporate Headquarters and Affiliate Gyms and a 5 Step System for being successful at Crossfit. All About Crossfit Olympic athletes and our grandparents both need to fulfill their potentials for cardiorespiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, speed, power, coordination, accuracy, balance, and agility. One is looking for functional dominance the other for functional competence. -Greg Glassman, founder of Crossfit I first became aware of Crossfit in about 2006. I had just completed the original Owen McKibbin workout and was looking for something new. For those of you who don't know who Owen Mckibbin is, he's one of the top male fitness models in the world and was on the over of Men's Health a record 19 times. He's also the author of The Men’s Health Cover Model Workout, Body Sculpting Secrets of the World’s Top Fitness Model. So - I had just finished Owen's workout and was looking for an alternative and I cam across Crossfit.com. I watched a couple of videos of women doing a workout called "Nasty Girls" where they were doing full body pullups on Olympic rings and Overhead snatches in a time based workout. I was blown away. The website also posted a new workout every day so I decided to jump in and started incorporating some of the workouts in-between my cardio training. It was a little bit confusing at first because Crossfitters have their own language and culture and it was a challenge to figure things out without experiencing them first hand. There were only a handful of Crossfit affiliate gyms at the time and none of them were close to me, so I was this lone guy in a corporate gym doing these strange workouts that combined barbell movements like snatches, squats and power cleans with high intensity interval training. I did find an area on the Crossfit site that gave modified versions of the barbell movements that I was not as familiar with, but it was really hard to keep up without someone to show me proper form for the barbell movements that were part of the core of the workouts, so what I eventually ended up doing was creating a list of all the non-barbell movements and creating my own series of workouts from them. Fast forward six years and there are now half a dozen Crossfit Gyms (called Crossfit Boxes) within 20 minutes of my house. I was little reluctant to sign up because there have been some stories in the press about how Crossfit is unsafe due to using heavy weights, but a co-worker of mine who is a Level-One Crossfit Coach finally convinced me to go try out a couple of classes with a Coach he knows and I got a lot of value from the class and the training. Later on in the podcast, I'm going to give you 5 tips for being successful at Crossfit, but first I want to go over a little Crossfit History and terminology and some p rominent people within the Crossfit Community so you have a good framework before you walk into your first class. The Brand Crossfit was founded by and Lauren Glassman in 2000. The first gym was in Santa Cruz, CA and the first Affilate Gym is in Seattle. There were 13 affiliated gyms in 2005 and today there are over 5,500 and growing quickly. Greg is a former gymnast who created the Crossfit system in the early 1990s to help professional athletes and law enforcement. In it's simplest form, CrossFit is a Strength and Conditioning Brand which combines weightlifting, sprinting, gymnastics, power lifting, kettle bell training, plyometics, rowing, and medicine ball training. Today, the headquarters for Crossfit Brand performs several major functions: Maintains Crossfit.com and posts an Official Workout of the Day every Day. Oversees Coach Training Publishes the Crossfit journal Franchises Affiliates Produces the Official Crossfit Games to find the fittest man and woman in the world. Currently sponsored by Reebok.

In this episode, which is part three of three on How to Get Fit, I'll tell you the four characteristics of a great workout and then give you my recommendations on the best workouts for men and the best workouts for women. "Set it, and forget it." Listener Questions from Last Week's Episode on Diet Before we get to our main subject for today, I just wanted to respsond to a few listener question about diet from last week. Q1. The guide contained a lot of information. is there an easy way to remember what to eat and not to eat. A1. Yes, I was listening to an interview with author and Olympic Athlete Dan John, who mentioned what he was told by his Olympic nutrition expert on his first day of training: Protein, veggies, and water. If you eat protein and veggies only with every meal and drink lots of water, you'll be fine. Q2. From @Cpelli - Do you have any good meal plans/snack idea sheets you could send me?  A1. Just follow the advice above and eat protein and veggies with each meal. For snacks I recommend plain beef jerky, macadamia nuts, soaked almonds and baby carrots. Q3. What about about Gatorade or other energ/sports drinks? A3. I would avoid Gatorade and most energy drinks. Most of them are just a bottle of chemical that cause havoc with your hormones. Gatorade and other sports drinks contain about 90% of the sugar as a regular soda so they will put you into th sugar additiction cycle that I discussed in last week's podcast. Q4. Sgarcia81 - Was venting about being on day 3 of strict paleo. A4. I didn't go into many deatails about this last week, but there are a couple of side effects you may experience when you start a Paleo lifestlye. On about day 3-4 some people people get itchy skin or a bad taste in your mouth as their body starts releasing ketones. Others maybe even a little light headed. Don't give up! Set it and Forget it. What I look for in a Workout Program Now, back to Ron Popeil. For those of you who don't know, Ron owned a company called Ronco and was the father of the infomercial. He was the first person to videotape a product demonstration for a home product, The Veg-o-matic. He also came up with some of these memorable quotes: "But Wait, there's more." "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to show you the greatest kitchen appliance ever made." "Hey, goodlookin', we'll be back to pick ya up later!" Set and forget was for the Showtime Rotisserie and was one of the last big products he marketed before selling his company for $55 Million and retiring in Beverly Hills So what does this have to do with fitness? It's because I recommend you follow a proven Workout System for these reasons: Characteristics of a Great Workout Program It's been tested by difffernet types of people. There is a day-by-day workout plan. It helps you track your process and areas for improvement. You can do it almost anywhere. So What is the Best Workout? These are recommendations based on my own experience. For the first 10 years I was in a gym, I never tracked my workouts. I would go in, do what I thought was a good workout for the day and then go home. And while that physical activity was enough to keep me from blowing up like a ballon while I was in my 20s, once I hit my 30s things were completely different. It was much easier for me to gain weight, losing weight took much longer than it had in the past, and I had to adjust to getting tired faster and a longer recovery cycle. I discovered the Body for Life system and it instilled some good principles. I trained different parts of my body on alternating days, and more importantly, I tracked my progess on paper and put all the workouts into a notebook. But a big drawback is that you need a full gym to do the workouts. That just doesn't work for me on a day to day basis. I don't always have time to travel to a gym and when I'm traveling I can never guarantee there will be a gym that is convenient.

In this episode, which is part two of three on How to Get Fit, I do a review of the three most popular diets and give you my five tips to sticking to the diet I recommend, along with a link to download the best diet to help you keep you healthy and fit. “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” - Hippocrates From Wikipedia Hippocrates was an ancient Greek physician, and is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine. He is referred to as the father of western medicine in recognition of his lasting contributions to the field as the founder of the Hippocratic School of Medicine. Hippocrates is credited with being the first person to believe that diseases were caused naturally, not because of superstition and gods. Hippocrates was credited by the disciples of Pythagoras of allying philosophy and medicine. He separated the discipline of medicine from religion, believing and arguing that disease was not a punishment inflicted by the gods but rather the product of environmental factors, diet, and living habits. Leading Causes of Death in 2010 Heart disease: 597,689 Cancer: 574,743 Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 138,080 Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 129,476 Accidents (unintentional injuries): 120,859 Alzheimer's disease: 83,494 Diabetes: 69,071 Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 50,476 (diseases and failure of kidneys) Influenza and Pneumonia: 50,097 Intentional self-harm (suicide): 38,364 (source: Centers for Disease Control) 4 of the top 10 causes of death are directly related to diet and there is evidence that some of the others can also impacted by poor nutrition. But prior to the year 1900, there was almost no heart disease to speak of. The only heart problems were related to congenital birth defects and were a small percentage of the heart disease we see today. So what's changed in the last 113 years? Sedentary lifestyle - Prior to 1900, people primarily work in manual labor jobs and on farms. Today we work in offices and travel in cars and buses. Processed Foods - In the 1800s food went from farms into the home in 48 hours or less because most people didn't have refrigeration or the space to store food. Today we buy processed food or eat fast food that has little to no nutritional value. Refined Sugars and Carbohydrates - Previous generations regarded sugar as a luxury and it was unrefined. Today almost every snack food and drink is high in sugar or a corn based sugar substitute. In the year 1830, the average consumption of sugar per year was 15 pounds per person. In the year 2012 that number has gone up more than ten times to 180 pounds per year. In 1910, the risk of acquiring Type II diabetes was 1 in 30. In 2010 the risk increased to 1 in 3. 3 Most Popular Diets Let's take a look at the 3 most popular diets today and see if there is one that helps with the Sugar Addiction Cycle Low Calorie - Simple math, you eat less calories than you burn on a daily basis. Low Fat - This diet encourages you to eat low fat foods or low fat alternatives to foods that you currently eat. Unfortunately, some low fat alternatives are higher in sugar. Low Carb, like Atkins and Paleo - Based on the principle that refined sugars, simple carbs, and processed foods negatively impact your blood sugar, insulin and hormone levels. This is the type diet I recommend and you can download my version of it in the resources section below. (more details in the podcast) 5 Tips to Help You Stick to a Diet Prepare your meals in advance Eat 4 meals a day instead of 3 Try and eat the same thing for the same meal every day Keep a snack on hand at all time. baby carrots, Macadamia Nuts and Almonds - Soaking almonds in water for 1 hour makes them tender and removes toxins Portion sizes: 1 fist for protein, 2 fists for veggies Finally, here's a look at a Paleo Food Pyramid from Mark's Daily Apple. Resources