Bodybuilding.com Wants To Give You A Lot Of Money.

Each year Bodybuilding.Com sponsors a competition offering the ultimate incentive for you to finally get off your ass and get fit: MONEY.

Visit their website to learn how:

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/transform-for-life.html

Winter Dreams Of Summer Fun

Six months ago were you thinking about how great you’d look by now if you’d only started working out back then, upping your nutrition and fitness game? Yet here you sit six months later and nothing’s changed because you were too busy or tired or stressed or whatever. There is no perfect time in your future to do this: there is only NOW.

There are lots of enviable before-and-after examples online on YouTube and on fitness blogs and websites of what people accomplished in 90 days when they finally made up their minds to do it (search google images with "men before and after"). Browsing these examples might just get you revved up to finally take that challenge, to change yourself, to turn over a new leaf.

Looking great is a life-altering prize in itself, enhancing your self esteem. Kidding yourself by railing against others’ “unfair” judging you by the way you look overlooks the obvious truth: we are all judged on the way we look, and all the self-righteous nonsense in the world will not change that reality. It just IS.

Looking better than we do presently is within everyone’s power. But feeling great physically and being secure in the knowledge that you are fitter, stronger and healthier by your own efforts has its own unique rewards. Losing your spare tire and building muscle has significant emotional benefits as well, not the least of which is the stress-reduction that comes from working out your excess energy and frustrations through strength training.

Equinox Gym: A Dystopian Nightmare?

This article in GQ about Equinox Gym does a great job of describing the kind of gym and exclusive cliquish membership that might just send shivers up your spine.

The female author revels in and celebrates and promotes this Dystopian gym’s retina scanner in place of a membership card and its social-climbing, vacant, status-seeking preening posers. In the process she disparages all other gyms, claiming Bowflex at-home workouts are “bogus,” and claims that Gold’s Gym members are all steroid users. She also seems repulsed by actual muscle: “Lean is the physical ideal here; company executives actually use the term Equinox body—a toned, androgynous shape designed to glide in and out of $300 Acne jeans and sleep (“regenerate”) on the finest linens.”

Androgynous? Sounds like a nightmare.

My chosen gym is frequented by old people, really obese people, muscular Marines, hard workers, female bodybuilders, and all kinds of others whose main goal at the gym is not schmoozing, networking, or feeling superior to all others.

The article makes for an interesting, albeit creepy, read. You may end the article, as I did, with a new appreciation for your current gym.

HOW TO DEAL WITH TROLLS

Trolls are solitary attention seekers. They are individuals who feel ignored and unheard in real life situations, so as a way of validating themselves they manipulate others via their keyboards. They write things with the sole intent of getting a reaction, and THAT means triumph as far as they’re concerned. To get others involved in their drama is the ultimate validation for them. Nothing feels worse to a troll than being unnoticed.

Your responding to a troll hands them the victory they seek.

Your responding to a troll provides them the attention they desperately crave, which only drives them onward to state even more outrageous things. If no one listens, if no one responds, if their words are rejected as unimportant and irrelevant, the troll will go away. Being ignored is the ultimate indignity for a troll. With no one listening, there will no longer be any motivation to shout. It’s akin to being the sole resident of a ghost town. Any response to a troll provides them with the gratification they so aggressively seek, so the very best way to respond to a troll is not at all.

An online troll, once he makes his outrageous comment, sits back and waits with bated breath for the responses to pour in. How very gratifying to see when no one has taken the bait, no one has responded, to know that this pathetic little person is sitting there waiting, deflated and ignored. But that’s okay — trolls have nothing better to do.

Old Is The Wrong Time Of LIfe To Get Fat And Weak

A friend of mine who I’ve been nudging in the direction of becoming fit because he’s old and fat gave me an insight into the ball of confusion that is getting fit by those who are far from it.

A fitness routine is just not on sedentary people’s radar; they tend to ignore what looks to them to be disorienting and complicated.

Ain’t nothing complicated about being overweight: overeating = overweight, so nobody gets a pass pretending they never heard of that equation. But I admit the noise concerning fitness is deafening. So many “experts.” So many theories. So many idiots online writing how-to’s and what-not’s as if theirs is the last word on the subject.

I like to recommend something I myself do: watch youtube videos. There are videos for every level of fitness interest, from clueless to professional. Watch and learn: learn what interests you and what does not. Sign up on youtube and you can save those videos you like for your chosen routine. It’s true there are a lot of dunderheads giving stupid and even dangerous advice, especially the macho male types who preach that if you’re not practically killing yourself working out that you’re basically a sissy, but these sad guys/gals are obvious: hey, you’re only trying to get fit, not compete in the Olympics.

Sifting through all the fitness material in print and online is confusing, but starting off with a very basic at-home program that includes classics like push-ups and chin-ups will indeed produce results. For working abs, sit-ups have always been hard on the back, as are crunches done incorrectly, but planking is effective and there are dozens of variations for which there are a ton of videos online. Planking is fairly recent in popularity. Planking is not only effective, but for many it is much more enjoyable than old school situps and crunches. There are literally scores of different ways to work the midsection, and combining three or four different abdominal exercises in your workout will soon produce results without the tedium.

Just remember, it took you years to get into poor shape, but it will take only weeks to see your first initial improvements. You can’t expect to reverse years of damage entirely in a couple of months, and you can’t view your new diet and fitness routine as temporary: it is a lifestyle change so that you might enjoy better health, increased strength, higher self esteem and increased mobility.

Old is the absolute wrong time in life to decide it’s OK to get fat and weak.

How Does Your Protein Drink Taste?

How Does Your Protein Drink Taste?

My informal survey of the opinions on Amazon.com expressed by those providing their views on protein powders was eye-opening because the most often expressed criteria placed TASTE at the top of the list of attributes. Taste. Not quality of protein, or quantity. That’s telling right there. A scoop might contain 5 gms of protein in one product and 25 in another, but reviewers didn’t seem to notice this or other far more crucial factors than taste.

I recently switched from IsoPure whey protein, which I have used for at least 15 years, to MyProtein Iso:Pro 97. This MyProtein product, which is made in the UK, landed at the top of the list on LabDoor.com, the website that tests supplements for both quality and value. IsoPure Dutch Chocolate tasted fine, but I always added a big spoon of Hershey or Droste cocoa powder and pure vanilla flavor to intensify the taste.

MyProtein Iso:Pro 97 has no added flavor or sweetener, which is ideal, so you can make it taste any way you like. Many people don’t like sucralose or other artificial sweeteners, so the absence of a sweetening agent is a big plus for many. (MyProtein does make other protein powders with sweeteners.)

Best of all, MyProtein was 2/3 the price of IsoPure, so that made me really happy.

As far as MyProtein’s effectiveness, I will monitor that as best as one can do so and report later. Effectiveness is hard to quantify due to most people changing up many fitness/workout factors at once, such as a modified workout technique or length of workout session, adding other supplements as well, such as NO2 and Creatine, etc., getting more sleep, and on and on.

Stop Claiming "It's My Metabolism!"

Hopefully you’re not one of those people who explains all those excess pounds away by calling up the “it’s my metabolism” bullshit excuse.

But let’s just pretend for the moment that your cupboards and refrigerator aren’t filled with junk food and that you don’t eat at McDonald’s 3 times a week, and that it actually is your metabolism.

Your argument is that your metabolism has “slowed down” with age when in truth you yourself have slowed it down. Intentionally. You slowed it down by slowing down. You got lazy and slovenly. Intentionally. You stopped moving, and moving is what keeps your metabolism chugging along efficiently. You want to argue you had great metabolism as a teenager but then “something happened.” Yes, something did happen: you zoomed around like a crazy person as a teenager, and then you stopped doing that.

Your fat friends are fully supportive of your metabolism excuse since it so conveniently jibes with their own vexing situation, but I’m not your fat friend.  Rather than keep embarrassing yourself with the metabolism BS, get up and move — every day. Walk the dog a couple of miles, jogging intermittently, a few meters further each day. Go to the gym. Strength train. Swim. Yoga. Exercise along with the 10,000+ free exercise videos on YouTube in the comfort of your own home. Have more sex. And stop focusing so intently on food. Studies show fantasizing about food leads to depression.

Master Of Posing Perfection: Bob Paris

No one has yet come along who can equal Bob Paris in esthetics or posing mastery. Watch in wonderment over the man's Zen moves: if you're thinking about entering a physique contest, you can't go wrong emulating his routine.

How Does Your Supplement Stack Stack Up?

The problem with supplements has always been, how do we even know if what is claimed on the label to be in there actually is, and if so, is it any good?

Labdoor.com has come to the rescue with its independent testing and rating of supplements. Visit the site and check on how your protein powder, vitamins, creatine and a host of other supplements rate as to price and efficacy:

www.labdoor.com

Show your support for this vital service by buying your supplements from Labdoor.

Fitness Trackers? Thinking About Dyeing Your Hair?

If you're contemplating buying a preposterously useless and expensive fitness tracker to decorate your wrist. please, just flush your money down the toilet. Better yet, send the cash to me.

While you're at it, if you're a graying Gent, or maybe a Jared Leto follower, you might be considering dyeing your hair. No. Get your ass to the gym if you want to look younger, feel younger, move younger. Spend the hair dye treatment money on workout gloves or a weight training belt or some creatine. Or send it to me.