Boom goes the dynamite!

This is just a quick heads-up on the status of PhitZone.

You may have noticed that something is amiss. You’d be right. Our server crashed (read disintegrated). While we perform regular backups, the database was pretty messed up, and we could only recover up to August, 2011.

I’m still trying to recover missing data, but it’s not looking hopeful at this point.

With that said, we may just have to keep moving forward from here. At least we were able to get something back, right?

Product placemet

I have four new products that I’m working on for you. I’m not going to committ on time just yet. I’ll send a message to the Facebook page and to the email subscribers when we are close to a launch date.

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Faith & Fitness Magazine

Get to know Faith & Fitness

I have three passions in my life. My God. My family. My health.

When I get a chance to combine these, man, I am all over it!

Awhile back, IFBB Pro Mark Dugdale, mentioned that he had been interviewed for Faith & Fitness magazine, and that I should check it out.

I clicked right on over, and found a very cool website that combines two of those favorite things–faith and fitness. In fact, I liked it so much, I added them to the blog roll, right over there in the sidebar. –>

Published bimonthly (every other month), the creators of Faith & Fitness, Lifestyle Media Group, do an outstanding job of blending two very distinct topics.

Brad Bloom, the publisher of F&F, got the idea when reading on a message forum. Somebody asked about a fitness magazine that they wouldn’t be embarrassed to have on their coffee table. I have my own set of issues about magazines, but the poster was concerned with the porn-like images throughout the current fitness magazines.

According to Wikipedia (take it for what it’s worth), 78% of Americans identify themselves as “Christian”. That’s a rather large niche. Seeing this, Brad jumped on board, and F&F was born. It has been published as an online magazine since 2008.

The range of topics covering family, culture, men, women, seniors, etc.

One of my recent faves is about how to have discipline. Brad looks at what it takes to have discipline in your life, from losing weight and being active, to acting in wisdom and showing compassion and grace.

What you’re going to find on Faith & Fitness are articles that talk about health & fitness, and how these tie into having a strong faith life.

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Know your limits. It’s ok to push yourself. I’m all for setting new Personal Records (PR), but if you just end up hurting yourself, the whole point is defeated.

That old adage of “No pain. No Gain.” is very dangerous if you don’t listen to your body. I once strained my rotator cuff because I didn’t listen. Luckily, with a little rest, it healed.

Becca wasn’t so lucky, and ended up with a slight bicep tear and shoulder surgery that put her out of the gym for nearly a year.

Strive for that next level. Just don’t skip a stair to get there, or you just might trip yourself up.

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It’s medicinal, I tell you!

Catnip tea - Yeah - it's that freakin' relaxing.

It’s ok — you read that right. We’re talking catnip today. You know, the stuff that makes your cat stoned? We’re going to make tea with it.

No, it’s is not the same as those funny brownies in college. (Wait, what?)

When I told Becca about this, she looked at me with a scowl, and said, and I quote, “Ewww.”

I can see her point, but what’s it based on? Perception.

Nepeta cataria, or catnip, is a member of the mint family of herbs. While felines “enjoy” catnip, people have been using it medicinally for ages.

According to Grandma’s Wisdom, the “heart-shaped leaves and lavender or white flowers have properties that can help relieve or prevent muscle spasms, increase perspiration and relieve flatulence.”

Who doesn’t want help with that?

Some other medicinal bennies include

• fever reduction
• appetite stimulant

The nitty gritty is that while it puts your cat into a metaphoric state, it can help calm your nerves and help you to relax.

Gimme the good stuff!

Let’s face it, making tea isn’t rocket science. Do I really need to give you a ‘recipe‘?

Steep 1-2 teaspoons of dried catnip for five minutes in hot water. You should be able to have up to three cups per day. Use the brain that God gave you. If you find that two is too much, don’t drink two cups.

Growing your own catnip can be a challenge if there are cats around. Then again, it could be highly entertaining to watch them roll around in a patch of the stuff.

Photo by ilker

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No gym required to get fit

Train outdoors for fun!

Guest post by Jeff Turner

First, what does, “getting fit” really mean?  No worries, here’s the answer; it depends.  Seriously, it depends on your goals, time, gym or no gym, and do you have equipment or just body weight.

My daughter, Brianna (B) just committed to play lacrosse in college.  She will be a junior in a few weeks so she has 25 months to prepare.  Yes, I’m a proud father, but the point is she has a different view of “fit” than most of us.  Playing at the D1 level takes big commitment, the good news is she has an awesome strength coach…and time.

What’s your definition of “fit?”  And will your life allow your goals to come to fruition?  If you’re one of those, “time-crunched” peeps that would love to be fit (er) or maybe run your best 5k, but just can’t fit the workouts or your runs in,  I’d say we have a problem.

Hey!  Not getting to the gym is no excuse.  Personally, I’ve committed to do all my workouts out the gym for the month of August, I’m gonna get’em all outside, in my basement or hanging in / on the car port.

Push-ups, pull-ups, get-ups, KB swings, flipping tires, bands, and just pulling and pushing stuff can all yield outstanding results (I’ve used all of those movements with 12-71 year olds).  Below is a video of B at the park — its just a 90 second circuit, but after 5 rounds it provided more than enough for that day.  That’s 7.5 minutes — can you commit to 10 minutes, 4-5 times per week?  Of course you can!

The next question is how do you start?  How much should you do, and what are the progressions?  If you need help starting, let me know.  Because you’re a reader of Phitzone.com I’ll tweak your program or get you started on the right path.  When you fill out the short contact form, add Phitzone in the subject line.

If you’re committed, and willing to invest a little time (and be consistent), eat right, I promise and guarantee you’ll be amazed with your results.

Visit Jeff Turner at http://fit2play.com

Photo by Steven Michelau

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Review of pilates in-a-box by Mari Winsor

Mari Winsor Slimming Pilates Kit

Caution – Affiliate links ahead. This is not a sponsored review, and the only compensation received was the kit that Gaiam sent us to review. I have included some affiliate links to Amazon in order to help support this site.
Have you ever found something that was buried in a closet, and when you find it, it feels like Christmas?

Gaiam, the company that produces various workout DVD’s, sent us this Pilates kit by Mari Winsor to review for you.

At the time I was powerlifting and Pilates didn’t fit in that routine very well. Becca was recovering from shoulder surgery, and was on strict orders not to exercise. The box got put away, and forgotten about.

What a mistake.

Pilates – What are they?

Pilates were the brainchild of Josheph Pilates in Germany in the early 1900′s. His system started out as bodyweight exercises performed on mats. It reminds me of something that you’d see gymnasts and dancers using.

The basic idea of Pilates is movements that require you to engage your mind in order to control.

As time progressed, Pilates developed a contraption referred to as the “apparatus”. There have been, and continue to be, many pieces of equipment used in Pilates.

Back to the story

After discovering the box, I opened it to discover a cache of stuff. There were two DVD boxes, some kind of contraption that involved a padded bar and rubber tube, measuring tape and some pamphlets.

I was impressed at how solidly the bar and tube was. The handles unscrew making the whole thing very adjustable to the task at hand. Overall, it’s a well made piece of equipment that should last many years.

While there were only two DVD’s, there are five workouts available. That many workouts gives you a lot of flexibility, and will keep you from getting bored. That’s always a win in our book. On top of that, the production quality is outstanding. Then again, I’d expect nothing less from Gaiam.

I’m not going to lie, just like yoga, this is tough stuff. My muscles were burning before we were done with the warm-up. I’m sure that after you do it for a bit, you will get used to that though.

Pilates for weight-loss

Included in the pamphlets, I found diet information, as well as a plan for weightloss. The included tape measure is to aid in tracking your body’s transformation over time. I’m a huge supporter of tracking progress, so this is another win.

Conclusion

So, what are my thoughts on Mari Winsor’s Slimming Pilates Kit? That completely depends on what your goals are. Yes, you will strengthen your muscles. With proper diet, pilates will definitely help.

I wouldn’t ‘just’ do Pilates though. It may do very well with the strength training portion of your workout, but there is no cardiovascular benefits that I could find. If you paired Pilates with a cardio aspect in your training, this could work quite well.

As I mentioned, there are affiliate links throughout this post. They all take you to an Amazon page. If you are interested in purchasing the Slimming Pilates Kit, please consider using one of these links to help support PhitZone. We love what we do, but we would also love to get paid for it if we can.

Thanks

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Get fit & healthy now!

Pick up the phone, your health & fitness is calling

Guest post by Jennifer Bell

Living fit & healthy is not always the easiest task to accomplish in a society where technology has made everything immediate. Obesity is a growing epidemic. People with over 25% body fat are considered obese. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 33% of all adult Americans are obese. Furthermore, nearly, 17% of all children are obese, according to the New York Times. Americans need a wake up call to get active and remain healthy.

Exercise, Economy and Depression

Economic woes take precedence over eating well and exercising for better health & fitness. According to an article found in the New York Times, anxiety and depression increases in people as the economic stress increases. Suicide rates increase as well. Americans that are obese only increase their chances of becoming depressed in poor economic times.

Exercise: The Mood Enhancer

Americans need to improve their fitness schedules to improve their moods and ward off depression. Exercise increases endorphins in the body, which is a natural mood enhancer. According to Web MD, it appears that any form of exercise can improve mood, self-esteem and relieve symptoms of depression.

Proper health and fitness will make you feel better.

Endorphins act as analgesics in the body and can diminish a person’s perception of pain. The endorphins can also help people sleep better, which is often a problem that is associated with anxiety due to economic stress.

Types of Acceptable Exercise

Americans can engage in biking, running, golfing, swimming, walking, tennis, gardening, dancing, yoga or even housework to get the body in motion, and sustain their health & fitness.

Most people do not recognize how a sedentary lifestyle affects the mood of a person. Exercise is important for overall health & fitness.

Obesity, Economic Woes and Fast Food

The problem with economic stress is lack of money for food or lack of time to prepare healthy food. The $1 burger at your favorite fast food joint is often more affordable and faster, than the healthy alternative at a sandwich shop or a healthy meal prepared at home. Healthy choices are instrumental even during financial and emotional strife.

When people do not have enough money to eat, they do not have the energy to exercise. They are more likely to pass out than to benefit from a cardiovascular workout. With public assistance, this hardly seems likely that any American would not have access to food. However, the economy has created some unusual circumstances.

Health & fitness take a back seat.

Some Americans are so cash-strapped that their diets are secondary to maintaining a house or car to live in. This is particularly true of middle class Americans that had to accept jobs making less money, but with the same bills to pay.

They may not qualify for public assistance, so that unhealthy $1 burger from Burger King looks more enticing every day. The burger is filling and at the right price, but it increases the daily caloric intake of the sedentary person.

Find Balance to Financial Stress, Mental Health and Fitness

Americans must find a balance of maintaining their finances, their mental health and their fitness. Without a balance, a $1 burger may in the future cause a $25,000 or more hospital bill. Cardiovascular surgery from clogged arteries is not inexpensive.

Even clients that are eating healthy are at risk for hypertension and heart attacks if they are leading a sedentary lifestyle. The heart must exercise and pump the blood at least three times per week for 30 minutes to remain healthy, according to the American Heart Association.

Will Becoming a Vegetarian Help Me?

Many vegetarians are obese because they eat a lot of pasta, potatoes, bread and other starchy foods with very little roughage to help them eliminate waste. They are also sedentary and this causes them to gain weight. Pasta, potatoes and bread provide energy for exercise. When the person does not expend the energy, it metabolizes to sugar and fat. This is what then causes obesity and diabetes. Becoming a vegetarian will not help you become healthy without exercise either.

Summary

There is no way around exercise for remaining fit and healthy. The body has to move to improve the mood and health of the individual. Answer your wake-up call today. Get fit and healthy.

Jennifer Bell is from Health Training Guide. Check out her site to learn more about massage therapist training and other exciting health careers.

Photo by Gokhan Okur

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Change as the situation requires

Chameleon are famous for adapting to surroundings.

Life. She’s going to throw you curve balls. You’ll be going along. Everything’s great. Then BLAM!!! You’re forced to deal with something new. Something different.

How you adapt, and handle that diversity shows what you’re made of.

It doesn’t have to be anything as serious as a death, or loss of a job (although we could easily talk about that in our current economy).

This can be as simple as somebody forgot to pick up butter at the grocery store, and you really needed it to make dinner.

Are you going to throw a fit? Maybe jump in the car, and head to the store? You could find something else to make, or consider it an excuse to head to your favorite taco bar.

“You’re Marines now. You adapt. You overcome. You improvise. Let’s move.” Gunny Highway – Heartbreak Ridge

On a number of occasions I’ve gone to the gym, workout plan in hand. Of course all of the equipment that I needed to use for my plan is all being used.

In the old days, I’d have packed up, and came back later. Now, I’d just do other equivalent exercises.

The last time that I went to a public gym was when we went to Vegas. We stayed at the Luxor, which actually has free weights in their gym, including a squat rack (Score!). I had a little wardrobe malfunction, and had to bail.

Instead bailing on the workout, I went back to the room, changed, and did a bodyweight workout followed by LOTS of walking.

Even the way that you train can require you to make adjustments. Chris at Zen Fitness says, “I believe movement and activity is always good but sometimes we need to take it easy with things like weight lifting, running, and other intense exercise.” When you’re feeling exhausted from a workout, it’s time to adjust and back off.

When life gives you lemons, do you sit and pout? Or are you the kind of person that grabs the vodka to make lemon drops? I’m more of a lemonade kind of guy, but hey, whatever floats your boat. I’m not judging.

Photo by Baynham Goredema

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Elliptical workouts aren’t effective!

Guest post by Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
www.TurbulenceTraining.com

Cross trainers suck

Recently, I was in Tampa, Florida, at a seminar. Between sessions, a physician from Georgia stopped me in the hall and said, “Hey Craig, you were right about those crosstrainer machines. I’ve had your program for a few months now and I’m getting better results with the bodyweight circuits.”

It’s always great to meet clients, and I was curious to find out how he heard of me. Turns out, he found me through Google, landing on an article I wrote about “how elliptical machines (crosstrainers) suck for fat loss”.

That’s right, I think those machines are almost a complete waste of time.

“I was using one of those machines for a long time and was wondering why I wasn’t getting any results,” the physician continued, “I’m so glad I found your program and now I’m using the bodyweight circuits from the Dumbell-Bodyweight Fusion Workout”, he added.

I told him how I wasn’t surprised. In fact, I’ve never personally known anyone to get great results with one of those crosstrainer machines. Now I’ve watched really lean people use them, but they didn’t get lean with those machines.

I know some people will be angry with what I have to say because they like exercising on the crosstrainer, but the truth is that they just don’t work as well as harder forms of interval training.

And hey, any time you are traveling or want a break from regular interval training workouts, you can use one of the 4 bodyweight circuits from the TT DB-BW Fusion Fat Loss program that you get as a bonus when you order the Turbulence Training fat burning workout routine.

Click here to get Turbulence Training
==> http://www.turbulencetraining.com

Let me know how it goes for you,

Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Author, Turbulence Training

About the Author

Craig Ballantyne is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training fat loss workouts have been featured multiple times in Men’s Fitness and Maximum Fitness magazines, and have helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45 minutes three times per week. For more information on the Turbulence Training workouts that will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment, visit www.TurbulenceTraining.com

Photo: CWCav

Pssssst–This post contains affiliate links.

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Shape Your Lower Body with Weight Lifting

You can shape your lower body using weights

Guest post by Suzanne Digre.

When you talk about wanting to work on your lower body, what you’re really saying is that you want to re-proportion it. You want a more defined backside or shapelier calves. You want more muscle or less fat in specific areas.

While cardio and lean eating will help reduce body fat and reveal your muscles, we all know you can’t spot reduce. But weight lifting, unlike cardio, can shape your body and change it in very specific places. Making just a few technique tweaks and honing in on specific exercises can get you stellar results in the specific areas you want.

Glutes

It’s common to see people doing exercises like back extensions without squeezing their gluteal muscles. In reality, when you don’t squeeze your glutes hard at the right time – the top, where you contract – you’re just not getting the best benefit from this exercise. Combine squeezing at the top with holding the contraction for two seconds, and you’ll feel a burn that is very significant. You won’t lift as much but you’ll feel it even more.

When it comes to exercises, it can be argued that nothing shapes glutes like squats. Squats are particularly effective if you can go low and squeeze your glutes at the top. However, as mentioned above, back extensions are super glute builders when you squeeze at the contraction and also hold a plate against your chest. Remember to pause at the top for a two-second hold.

Kettle bell swings are another way to shape your backside and again, but they’re only as effective as your form. You need to give your glutes a hard squeeze at the top, along with snapping your hips. Check out this video to see correct form.

Kettle Bell Swing from Suzanne Digre on Vimeo

Reverse lunges, step ups, hacksaw squats, hip extensions, and stiff-legged deadlifts are all also effective for developing your glutes.

Hamstrings

The glute-hamstring tie-in is the area where your glutes and hamstrings meet and it’s the area that makes your backside look high instead of low. You’ll be glad to know that many of the glute/ham exercises also work this area. Therefore, the hamstrings can be worked with the glutes (and quads) in addition to some hamstring isolation exercises. These include the lying hamstring extension, one-legged cable kickback, and the standing hamstring curl. Focus on form instead of how heavy you can go. If you’re use momentum or the wrong muscles because the weight is too heavy, is that really getting you to your goal?

Quadriceps

Leg extensions have a bad reputation for being hard on the knees, but if you perform them correctly they are can be safe for knees. Take the movement slow and hold for two seconds at the top. If you use this technique you’ll need to use less weight.

Squats are fantastic for your quads, as are leg presses. If you have strength imbalances in your legs, use the leg press machine single-legged to avoid letting the stronger leg take over. To emphasize your quads, keep the weight evenly distributed in your feet (press more from the heels to emphasize your glutes). Wall sits target the quads (and glutes and hamstrings) with precision – see how long you can last.

Calves

Your calves are working every time you do big compound movements such as squats and leg presses. It’s important not to overuse your calves by compensating for weak glutes. Consider them a small muscle group that gets trained less, but if you really want to hit them hard try drop sets or reverse pyramids. Don’t use these techniques more than once a week or you risk over-training them.

Standing calf raises and seated (donkey) raises are isolated movements that obviously target the calves, but try integrating calf raises into dumbbell snatches, squats, and leg presses. Just remember to stretch or foam roll your calves thoroughly after weight lifting, since they tend to be tight in most people.

Always integrate functional, full-body exercises into your workout as well as they are excellent for burning calories and saving time.

It really is possible to re-proportion your body using weight lifting. Target your lower body with these techniques and exercises and you’ll see specific changes – better than simply hoping what you’re doing works.

Suzanne Digre is a technical writer and fitness Blogger who is passionate about helping women feel at home in the weight room. Go check her out on Facebook, and Twitter.

Photo by John Nyberg

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