An Hour a Day does not Keep the Fat Away

  • December 1, 2010 4:01 pm

How often do people tell you that they cannot seem to lose weight even though they put in an hour per day in the gym or on the treadmill. Unfortunately, going about our daily lives and merely injecting an hour in the gym will not help us realize any goal of weight-loss or figure transformation.

As I have tried to emphasize before, fitness is all encompassing, it must be an ever present part of our lives. If your goal or definition of fitness then is yourself 15lbs lighter and more toned, then you must eat, sleep, and live in a way the progresses you towards that self-made definition.

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Break Down the Wall: Lactate Threshold Training

  • February 11, 2010 1:24 pm

If endurance is a critical component of your overall fitness then listen close. You NEED to know what lactate threshold training is. Why you ask? Well to put it as simply as possible, your lactate threshold determines how long and how hard you can exert near maximum effort, or to use the true term, exert yourself at your anaerobic threshold. So what I am saying is this; that wall you hit when you are running, that tries to bring you down to your knees and crumple in pain, is your lactate threshold. Now that we know our enemy, let’s learn how to beat it down.

First we need to understand some key concepts and know that the following is a simplification of a much more complicated set of biochemical processes but will suffice for our purposes.

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A President’s Standard of Fitness: Do you Measure Up?

  • December 9, 2009 12:20 pm

How many of you all remember the presidential fitness tests when we were in grade school? Well there is new test which is based on the same program aimed at adults.

Created in 2008, the adult fitness test is meant to test the aerobic fitness and muscular strength and endurance of the men and women of the United States. It is pretty basic in its testing criteria and easy enough that anyone can do it at home. You could even make it a competition between you and your friends to further motivate yourself to try harder.

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The Subculture of Steroids and Performance Enhancing Drugs

  • December 8, 2009 9:59 pm

The past few years have been unkind to many of the world’s top athletes. Olympic hopefuls to MLB sluggers to Tour De France cyclists, have all fallen prey to intense scrutiny as we seek to maintain the image of a pure natural athlete. I am not going to talk in specific about any one athlete in particular, but rather the culture of altering our bodies by way of non natural processes.

Everyone wants to be the best, be at the pinnacle of whatever sport or activity they may be participating in. We get it in our heads that to beat everyone else, we have to give ourselves a one up and this is where steroids and other performance enhancing drugs (PEDS) enter into the equation. Sure there are side effects to their use, but they can be mitigated by incredibly careful, doctor assisted monitoring. What I mean is frequent blood work and hormone panels. 98% of PEDS users do not fit into this category of careful use. So why even decide to go that route? You are short changing yourself, determining that you will fail at achieving your goal without even trying.

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Dynamic Flexibility Part 1: What is it?

  • December 8, 2009 9:48 pm

The question on when and how to stretch and warm up is one that comes up often. It is one of those, made to complicated because we think about it too much things. And from all this thinking have spawned several myths which we will talk about here later on. But what people fail to talk about or do much is dynamic warmups.

Dynamic warm ups are not exactly new, but they have yet to go mainstream. What are they? Well its warming up your body by stretching through movement. Examples of this are lunges, side bends, high knees, back pedals, scorpions, side stepping, high knee skipping, Frankenstein walk and MORE! Descriptions will follow.

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Beating Down the Wall: Mind over Body

  • December 8, 2009 9:38 pm

There comes a point when all of us think that we can not go anymore. That another step would kill us, turn of the pedal drain what little energy we have left, rep under the weight of a barbell crush us. Well the truth is, you are thinking you can’t so how the hell could you possibly expect go any further? No matter what you are doing, this point is what many of us like to call the wall.

Time stops, its a surreal moment actually, and you are given a choice. I mean this very literally — your body actually asks your mind if it wants it to go further even though it may hurt, even though our bodies think we are spent and have nothing left to give. Those of us with the courage to take the harder path will say no, I want you to keep on going; whatever happens after that, I will deal with when the dust has settled.

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Alcohol and Your Heart: A Reason to Raise a Glass

  • December 8, 2009 11:38 am

Here is some health advice that we can all get excited about. Recent research is showing a stronger casual link between alcohol consumption and coronary health.

Before we get into the details let me say a few words. Drinking in this article will be defined as no more than one drink per day for women and no more than two drinks per day for men. Thus, we are not promoting in any way heavy drinking. Further, if you do not already drink do not start drinking because of this article. Most of the research in this area is new, and though it comes from prestigious institutions it is still not fully understood.

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Cholesterol: It’s Not the Evil You Think it Is

  • December 7, 2009 10:51 pm

In a previous post we discussed what it means to be physically fit and some factors that contribute to a state of overall fitness. Cholesterol was one of these factors and so this we are going to discuss what it is and how it influences our health and well-being.

Cholesterol is a sterol, which basically is a steroid with a hydroxyl group added to it. More simply, it is a steroid alcohol if you will. It is not, as many people assume, a form of fat. It is though found in all fats and oils.

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Antioxidants: Waging War Within our Bodies

  • December 7, 2009 2:16 pm

I am sure you have heard the term antioxidant thrown about everywhere from the back of your yogurt cup, to the tea you drink and the vegetables you eat, but do you really know what this class of nutrients does. Think of it this way, your body is a war zone and the soldiers at the front line are antioxidants.

What is fighting what you ask? Antioxidants are trying to rid your body of excessive amounts of free radicals before they start a chain reaction. This chain reaction, if unchecked, could cause a buildup of free radicals, leaving your healthy cells and tissue at the risk of being prematurely oxidized.

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Are You Explosive: Functional Strength Explained

  • December 7, 2009 1:20 pm

Step into a gym and what do you notice first? The big guys right. What some people are able to transform their bodies into amazes all of us at some point or another. Men who look like descendants of Hercules himself. It is only natural for us to want to try and imitate these icons of strength and fitness, but before you set about training to be nothing but huge, ask yourself this. Do you just want to be able to move weight around, or be strong and immensely quick, explosive as I like to call it. The difference is this: being able to jump higher, run faster and exert force as quickly as possible versus having the ability to bench 300 pounds slowly or squat 500 pounds even slower. Ridiculous examples but I think you get the point. The mechanical difference is the types of muscle fibers we recruit to perform certain tasks.

There are two types of muscle fibers, fast-twitch and slow-twitch or TypeII and TypeI. Within the TypeII class there are fast-oxidative-glycolytic TypeIIa and fast-glycolytic TypeIIb fibers. Contrary to what some people believe, both exert the same amount of force, it is simply the rate at which they do so that varies.

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Rant: Push Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It

  • December 7, 2009 11:24 am

So I’m at the gym today and what do I see but three girls “working out” in the shortest shorts ever, talking and laughing like it’s the most fun they’ve had in their lives. Now, why did I just put “working out” in quotes? Because there’s a difference between actually working out and just hanging out in the gym and thinking you’re working out, and apparently a lot of people do not realize this. The gym is not a place to socialize people — be it the basement of your house, gym in your apartment or road you are going running on, go there with a purpose.

If you’re in the middle of a set and talking to the person next to you, you are not working out. If you are looking across the room and checking out some girl stretching, you’re not working out. And if you feel exactly the same at the end of a set as you did at the beginning, you damn sure are not working out.

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What is fitness? A Misunderstood Word

  • December 7, 2009 10:59 am

When asked what it means to be physically fit, most people respond by answering that it means being athletic, thin, strong, fast or any combination of the latter. This is still a broad definition. Since this blog’s purpose is to help explain what fitness is and how one can be fit, I find it necessary to define the term.

For our purposes, fitness is the epitome of health. Now this might seem bizarre or incorrect, but a properly executed fitness regimen will provide excellent health benefits. Merely exercising and dieting by no means produce fitness though. For example, someone who runs everyday but is on a high carbohydrate, low fat and medium protein intake  diet is at risk of developing atherosclerotic disease, among a slew of other things. Fitness then is a compound measurement of many key areas.

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Breakfast of Champions: Truth to the Phrase

  • December 6, 2009 11:07 pm

If there is one phrase in fitness that holds true it is that breakfast is indeed the meal of champions and is important for getting you through the day with energy.

What makes breakfast important is that it provides our bodies with fuel for the rest of the day, if the meal is balanced in protein, carbs and fat, curbs our appetite reducing the risk of overeating later and improves our concentration and focus. Some people tend to think that they do not have the time to eat breakfast. Just like those that believe that they cannot workout without a gym membership, this is nonsense.

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But, I Don’t Belong to a Gym

  • December 6, 2009 9:24 pm

One of the most widely circulated reasons that I hear as to why it is hard to stay healthy is someone saying that they do not belong to a gym. Who ever stipulated that being healthy required a gym membership? I think the reason  that people will resort to an excuse like this is because they do not know how to exercise without exercise equipment. Well let me see if I can help dispel the myth that being healthy requires a gym membership.

So what exactly do we do at a gym? Well, we either push something, which would be weights, pull something, or breathe hard which would be cardio. Now, unless you live in a box, I think it is impossible for anyone to say that they cannot do those three things in and around their house or place of work.

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BMI as a Case of Misusing Data

  • December 6, 2009 7:31 pm

It can be said that as a society, we are generally concerned with the status of our weight and if we are overweight, underweight, or healthy. The most frequently used measurement for assessing what category we fall into is BMI, or Body Mass Index. If you have not heard of it then don’t worry, you have not been missing out on any real knowledge.

BMI is calculated via the following formula:

BMI =
( kg/m² )		 (weight in pounds * 703 )
————————————–
height in inches²

Thus, it is merely a factor of your weight and height. 703 is a conversion factor from imperial to metric units as the formula was originally derived by a Belgium statistician early in the nineteenth century. It is incredibly accurate at predicting the overall state of health of a population, but for individuals it is terrible. Now I will say that the CDC and most physicians use this measurement as a general rule of thumb, but it is still mind boggling trying to figure out why.

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Let’s Talk Basics: Weight Management

  • December 6, 2009 5:38 pm

Assuming that you do not have other health issues, how your body retains or loses weight is a relatively simple concept to understand. If after this post you have any further questions please leave comments below.

Let’s first preface this discussion with some basic math stuffs. Your body is like a battery, excuse the sorry analogy. To do work it must intake a sufficient level of calories to convert into usable energy, which in our bodies is ATP or adenosine triphosphate. At the end of the day, excess levels of ATP are stored as either fat glycogen or other sugar substrates… or excreted. This is a gross simplification but it is sufficient for our purposes.

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A Novel Beginning: Secrets To…

  • December 6, 2009 4:27 pm

When is the last time you heard someone or something tout that it was going to reveal to you the 5, 10 or maybe even 15, secrets that would turn your life around. 10 secrets to amazing fat loss, or 5 quick steps to rock hard abs, this kind of non-sense is everywhere. Let it be known though that a finite percent of these claims do contain useful knowledge and tips that will help you reach a certain goal an exponentially larger proportion are absolute bogus pseudo-science. Again, the purpose of this blog is to help you better understand what is real and what is not.

If you google secrets of fat loss, http://topsecretfatlosssecret.com/ is the first link that comes up. First let me say that anyone or anything that makes you buy knowledge relating to health and fitness is nonsense. This does not include trainers, dietitians, nutritionists or doctors as they are charging you more for a one on one assessment of your needs. Back to, “Dr Suzanne Gudakunst”. She is making the claim that all people who are overweight are overweight because their intestines plaque buildup that is preventing the digestion of food, but to remedy this you need to buy her secret.

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Who can you listen to?

  • November 23, 2009 7:44 pm

There are few markets that are as saturated with pseudo-knowledge and self proclaimed experts as the fitness market. Everywhere you look there is someone or something telling you how to be healthy, how to be in good fitness, or how to achieve a particular goal. It has come to the point that it is almost impossible to pick out the real information and knowledge, and so we believe whatever sounds the best, or whatever seems to be articulated in the most elegant manner. The problem is that 99% of the information available at arm’s length is intended to sell us on something and thus this massive percentage of information is likely based in non-fact. AITank’s purpose is to make sense of what we hear and read, to separate fact from fiction and inform you so that you can make better decisions in regards to what you allow to influence your fitness. We are pushing for the raw truth.

The AITank Team