Supplementing Can Taste Good

More talk on supplementing for a healthier system.

Now I assure you that if you supplement from vegetables and grains and things of the like, your face won't look like that. The only thing you'll notice is that your skin will have about the same texture. Nice and smooth.

   So you can supplement with fruit smoothies, juicing, and cooking the right foods. You just have to know how to do it. A lot of people know how to do it right, and some know how to do it wrong.

   If you just slurp down protein supplement shakes, your muscles will become incredibly massive, yes, but, they will be lacking certain things if you're not cramming in the veggies and fruits and grains and animal products.

   Now I understand that a deal of exercise enthusiasts so happen to be vegan. I personally couldn't make myself do it because my body requires too many calories and kinds of proteins and fats with what I do to be one. A deal of you out there are the same, smacking on the salad, but also having an egg or two in the morning and some kind of meat a few times a weak. And then there's the group who says, meat twice a day, no other way to go.

   We all have our views and way of eating and nobody eats the same things the exact same way as other people. We all have our ways we like things and our ways that we don't like things. So when we supplement, why not enjoy it? 

   

Tougher Each Time

Exercising toughens you up. It makes your body harder, stronger, and more able to respond to shock better and take jolts of energy far better than someone with a weak body.

See that picture? That's from one of my favorite movies there, one of the best in my opinion.
   If you notice, a boxer can take hit after hit after hit because their bodies are so incredibly tough. The reason for such handling of incredible stress is not a secret but a fact. Muscle, and a good amount of it. Say you have an, er, soft middle. Somebody punches you in your, "soft", middle. You're probably going to get really winded.
   Now say you started doing crunches and leg raises and a whole bunch of other things to condition your core and make it strong and it's about ten times stronger than it last was. Somebody decides to hit you in the stomach again, and their fist pretty much deflects off of your sweet new abs.
   Now the thing is, muscle provides a barrier of shock resistance in your body. The reason it's there is to protect things like your intestines, kidneys, liver, and so forth. It's also there to obviously make your body move.
   But with muscle comes pain resistance. Pain will be scarce in your life if you take up fitness. Now yes it will hurt when you get sore from a workout. But I'd rather feel like a bunch of split rubber bands pulling back together than land on my butt after getting pushed over and have a bruise for three weeks.
   Muscular structuring from vast exercise also prevents bruising. Any kind of bruising, unless you have a habit of busting your shins up on your bike pedals at the skate park. Then you can't do anything about it.
   Be strong, it makes you tough.

Exercise No. 24 Windshield Wipers

A good core conditioning work out here. Simple but not easy if you're of lesser experience in working out. Let us learn how to do these.

There are two ways you can do these. One is on the floor as you see in the example above, two is on the pull up bar.

   On the ground you simply swing your legs side to side, for starters you can do these with your legs bent, and then as you progress and become stronger you will learn to do these with your legs fully extended.

   Now if you want to be a beast with core cuts and six pack abs, you can also do these on the pull up bar. But, on the pull up bar it allows for more range of motion. So you can do full rotations, now make sure you don't move your legs one way only and that you move both so that way you won't end up all lopsided. I've seen it happen. Talk about weird abs...

   So work your way from the ground to the pull up bar, and this is a great way to get those abs.

Immunity Strength

Your immune system really has a lot of say in what you do when you're exercising and going about your regular daily habits.

Your life style and eating habits have a lot to do with your immunities. If you have a poor diet, one that consists of chicken nuggets and pizza pockets, and for hydration you drink a lot Gatorade and Pepsi non stop all day, you're probably sick anywhere from once every month to two months.
   Yes I understand if you have a naturally low immune system due to health issues that don't come from lifestyle habits or anything. It does happen. And if you have HIV, it's your fault for doing that.
   Now, to maintain a healthy system, and to stay well and not sick, you have to eat right. You've probably heard this a ton, but it's true, and it's not changing.
   Also having a diet to keep you regular if you will, keeps toxins out of you. It reduces hormones that your body doesn't require, and the toxin releasing will help your body fight other things instead of having to keep up with all of the other things that it's trying to keep out.
   So if you were wondering, having a strong immune system requires eating well and lots of pooping. So why not do something that's relieving and feels good to keep well? You've probably read my other post about keeping a clean system. It's somewhere blow this post.
   Food that scrape out your insides, ones that are filled with vitamins and minerals and antioxidants are just what you want. The occasional moon pie is completely okay, but not for three meals a day.
   Get your sugars, but in the right way. When I say sugars, I don't mean corn syrup, white sugar, and splenda. Heavens above no! Splenda is probably the worst thing you could ever do! And it tastes like powdered goat butt! I look at labels now on certain products I buy at the store in fear of taking it home to find out its sweetened with splenda. I really hate it when my ice cream has a gritty flavor and is, "healthy".
   By getting your sugars, I would mean something along the lines of getting them out of fresh fruits and vegetables. There are so many things we as humans can eat to remain healthy, but we don't eat them as often as we should. Eating those things will keep us well and strong.
   I do understand that bodybuilders and people who power lift will eat diets so high in carbs they're practically chewing on bricks before a work out, and that junk food does make you strong. But rest assure, you're body is not meant for lifting things like that off of that kind of stuff. Chances are, you'll probably live until you're forty and then your heart will turn into a cup of pudding and you'll spend the rest of your life on a pacemaker.
   Being well is a combination of eating well and being strong. You can lift weights and run every day, but you can still be ridden with horrible allergies and fevers on the weekend if you don't eat well to maintain a good immune system.
   Also, when you have a week immune system, you stay sick for longer. You can probably decrease your sick time by about two fold if you eat right to maintain a strong immune system.

Exercise No. 23 Triple Clap Push Up

It's not hard to do this one, you just have to have some strength, and you should know what little technique there is required when starting out.

When you start out, try splitting your legs apart somewhat until you become stronger. First you try just getting a clap behind your back, and then move to double clap, and then triple.
   At first, you really have to work to get that first one without having your feet so far apart. Push up and as soon as your hands come off of the ground, bend at your hips and clap once in front, once in the back, and once in the front again.
   The stress it exerts into your muscles causes your body to become stronger, and you can actually get some pretty good pectorals off of this.
   Have fun.

Confidence in Exercise

This is another common topic in exercise, any kind. Dancing, martial arts, sports, weight lifting, calisthenics, running, cycling, all of it. If you exercise in some way, it will boost your self confidence by a ton.

I've seen exercise transform people. It really does wonders. Sometimes to them, it's all they've got. But that's okay, if all you have is making yourself stronger and better mentally and physically, that's fine because those are two things that help us become who we are.

   I'll give you an example. You have a young boy, with great potential that he hasn't figured out about just yet. He starts out in, say, middle school. Just got through fifth grade, that time when we're all changing, getting acne, gaining weight, feeling insecure, and most are dealing with depression which will last until high school or the rest of their lives. It's all a common part of life we deal with.

   So this young boy, looks around his school and decides he wants to be difference. He doesn't want to gain weight, or be uncomfortable with himself and decides that acne is just a part of life that he'll deal with. He'll make the best of himself.

   He starts to exercise, he rides his bike, runs, does as many push ups and pulls ups and squats and jumping jacks and things of the like that he can do all at once over the course of an hour each day. He starts to get some muscle, become a little stronger, in fact a lot stronger than he used to be. So he starts to feel better about himself, because he doesn't have anything to be self conscious about and he notices as well.

   He notices also that he feels better than he used to. He can perform daily tasks with no issues and has an easier time keeping up with the world around him.

   So what do we notice in this example? That this boy has made himself stronger, and he feels better. He made his body stronger, and that made his mind stronger.

   When you exercise, you feel better, and you start to look better, and when you start to look really good, you feel even better because people notice you even more and usually have less negative things to point out because they can't find any in your appearance. If your personality has something to do with people not liking you, then I can't help you there.

   Now I'm not saying, people will say negative things about you if you're out of shape. But, they will have an easier time pointing these things out. That is why people feel more self conscious when they're not in such great shape and that's why they don't feel as good as they can feel good.

   By becoming stronger, you boost your mental strength with confidence, insults aren't as easily taken in, you're less of a jerk yourself because you feel better and you're not laughing at other people because they're out of shape, you could have been too.

   Now for those of us who have been in shape pretty much all of our lives, we're usually a nicer bunch, on occasion you will run into somebody who's naturally thin that's a complete butt head, but I'm not here to talk about personality issues.

   With exercise, your confidence level becomes higher. If you know that you look good, you'll know that you feel good. Exercise also relieves stress, and stress can sometimes be a problem in self confidence, exercise helps with getting rid of that though.

   If you do something physically, and you know you're at least somewhat good at it, you'll feel better about yourself. For instance, I used to ride my bike about thirty to forty miles a day five times a week. I usually would do a good two hundred miles a week on my bicycle, at least, and then count in the unicycle and it would be even more.

    I knew I was good at riding my bike, and I was fast, and I had incredible endurance. (still do) I always felt good about myself because I always had something resting in the back of my mind that said I was good at something. Each of us are the same way, if we know we're good at something that makes us feel better, we'll always feel good. Confidence is always at an all time high, when, you are exercising.

Body Weight Equivalence

It's important to know that when you exercise and use weights as part of your program, that you know how strong you actually are when it comes to body weight equivalence in plates.

Usually if you can support your own body weight on a barbell up and above your head, you ought to be able to support your own body weight above your head, right?

   Well it depends on how that's meant to be taken.

Say you can bench press a barbell with two hundred pounds on it, and that's your body weight. It's your max press, and you're regularly benching 160 to 170. Now, go a bit into the future, you're doing a regular bench press with your body weight, you're a strong person, your max overhead press is now your body weight.

   You have the strength and balance to handle both kinds of weights, since they're not Smith machine workouts or universal machine workouts, your stabilizer muscles have been strengthened as much as your regular muscles. It's a good thing to have those muscles worked out, and you're a beast if you can do that.

   Now, your stabilizer muscles are strengthened to handle something like a barbell on your shoulders or up and above your head to balance it and press it without a problem. That is a valuable form of strength to have, and a very beneficial form of strength.

   But, that's a different kind of balance, when you move into something like advanced calisthenics, your stabilizer muscles are worked out almost the same way, but in a different way at the same time. It's very different from weights.

   With weights you have incredibly strong muscles that are far stronger than if you were to do body weight. But with body weight you work out muscle groups that would take three or four different exercise to target if you were to do those with weights.

   So both are very beneficial. I encourage you as someone who does both kinds of exercises to experience the benefits of both kinds of exercises. Pull ups, muscle ups, control of your body on a flat surface. If you can dead lift two and a half to three times your body weight but do a one handed handstand and clean front flip, you're a rare breed, but a defined and strong breed. Someone who knows just about every element of strength.

   If you know body movement and object movement, you can do just about anything.

Inner Strength

Inner strength is something that people don't really think about all to often when exercising. You have your muscular strength, which is outer compared to your organs. Your heart, your lungs, blood system, all of that is what I'm going to say is your, inner strength.

When people are exercising and they haven't done so for an extremely long time, sometimes they complain about being out of shape because their chest hurts. I can come up with a few reasons for that.

   The lungs are usually weaker than they should be, unable to keep up with providing air for your body throughout blood stream, so they're overworking and cause discomfort and pain. As well as the heart is lacking in strength. It can't pump blood that hard and fast without beating at unnecessary speeds, and when your heart beats at such speeds which it's not meant to do, it hurts.

   Now, when your body is strong, your heart and lungs are strong, that inner strength spreads throughout your body bringing you to new limits and feats of strength.

  A strong heart has no problem beating fast, but not too fast, because it can pump blood easier and faster than a weak heart.

   Strong lungs take in more air at one time than weak lungs, and don't require so much because the body isn't working over time, resulting in less need for so much air.

   People who are strong inside are usually in less pain. Strength makes you able to handle the stresses life throws at you far easier than if you weren't strong.

Exercise No. 22 L Sit Push Ups

Yeah I know, sounds kind of different from any other exercise you're doing on body weight. But take my word for it when I say that this is a fantastic exercise to become stronger and more stable with.

For this, you need to have a decent ability to hold this. This doesn't call for much balance, just control and strength.

   Prerequisites are that you should be able to move your legs around at least a little bit during the L sit position and you can do it on your finger tips. If you can't hold it on your fingertips due to weakness in the hands, just work on fingertip push ups for a while until you're somewhere at about twenty of those.

   So obviously, you go onto your fingertips for more range in motion. You're not looking for short little bursts of popping your body up and down, you want some distance between the ground and your butt. So move to your fingertips and go into L sit position and then try dropping down slowly at first.

   You can't hold your legs out in a perfectly straight alignment for this exercise, because your feet will hit the ground and mess you up with it. So try it out, try going down, and then pushing yourself back up like you're picking up into L sit position.

    Just move up and down, if you fold your legs into lotus position at first when you do this that will help with strengthening your abdominals for the exercise, but after a bit you'll be able to do it with your legs out.

   Not easy, but works out the core, triceps, and deltoids. After being able to do these, you'll be able to L sit tricks and stuff where you split your legs, move them around in circles and crap and you'll be an L sit beast. So have fun and keep your body strong.

Exercise Focus

So today we have a lot of things going on as we work out. Phones, TV, computers, people complaining about how you took the rest of the Debbie Cakes, there's so much. So, what do you do to focus when learning a new movement?

   For some of you, I know it's not easy to turn your phone off or leave it charging when your learning something new and you don't need a tutorial or something playing in the background for help. You really just need to put off whatever it is that continuously drags your attention away from what your doing.

   I'll say that right now, American's don't have good attention spans worth crap. So, how does somebody who can't even pay attention to a colorful spinning board for one excruciating minute learn something so hard as a one handed handstand or flares? Oh geez, it seems pretty much impossible!

Individually we all have a specific kind of intelligence, and you have to learn how to focus that to the point of concentration on something new that you are learning. So what did you do to get that intelligence? Your worked hard, so why not work on something that you actually want to do but don't think you have the patience or concentrating will do?

   Well first, with a new movement, you have to make it a thought. Something you think about at least nine or ten times a day. For instance, the words handstand, flip, trick, dance, and calisthenics make their ways through my mind at least five times a day each. Because I've trained myself to have focus on the thought of those movements, I got them down.

   If you focus on something you can't do, but want to learn, surely, you will find yourself practicing this movement sometime somewhere somehow. Like when you're reading a book in your room and you're getting up to grab a pen to write something you really like down, and you look at the floor and say to yourself, "I think I'll  try to do a handstand." Or, "A planche? Yes!" Soon you'll get to the point that if it's an opportune moment, it won't get in the way of anything you're doing, you'll find yourself doing this movement in someway just to do it because it's fun and it feels good.

   So make something you want to focus on a thought, and when it becomes a thought, it will become something you can focus on and you'll find yourself getting good at it. Whether it takes and extremely long time or not, is up to your body and structure as well as level of strength, but it will come, and it will happen.

   So focus, and you'll learn.

Avoiding Muscle Injuries

I'm not a professional on this topic, but I can offer some tips and ideas on how to avoid tearing something or pulling it.

First off, I recommend you only work out to your limits, and not past them. That doesn't mean doing shoulder presses until it hurts or you can't pick the bar back up. So much for every other exercise. Your stamina and endurance is what your limits are made out of. You listen to your stamina and endurance to avoid hurting yourself.

   Your muscles are like a car engine, the more they're worked without a break, the more tired they get, so they require a rest, cool down time. A car engine breaks down if it's overheated, say it's been running twenty thousand miles straight without a stop, that would mess it over, same goes for your muscles. 

   But your body doesn't overheat with something like that going on, it just stops working until it's gathered the proper energy back together and has repaired itself fully. Or on the occasion, if it's been overworked, something will break, go out of place, or tear, and then it will stop working.

   The key to success and not hurting yourself is, work to your limits and not past them. Yes I know, how are you going to go past your limits if you're only working up to them? That's the thing about the human body, if you work up to your limits, and only continue to do so, you work very hard with your limits, and slowly they expand. Instead of jumping way ahead into something, you won't fall over and hurt yourself or drop the bar on your chest and get crushed.

   So avoiding muscular injuries in exercise is very simple, you do the crazy things you want to do, but you build yourself up to doing them. You have to build instead of jump, there's a reason your body will tell you when to stop, and that's so it won't hurt itself. 

   And then of course you do have the occasional freak accident, that will happen once in a while to that unlucky guy and it'll cause him to either go to the hospital or just not be able to perform various movements for some time.

   Nobody ever said exercise was completely safe, but you can be safe in exercising by doing things right instead of wrong. I personally much prefer a hard but safe workout instead of an easy and unsafe workout. 

   Believe it or not, you can do an easy but unsafe workout. You can do things with the wrong form, too fast, or just in plain stupidity. It happens and people get hurt by doing that all of the time. 

   But a safe and hard workout, with a straight back, perfect form, done right, not moving too fast or too slow, just right, and it keeps you out of harms way. Certain exercises, you have more chance of hurting yourself going too fast, like bench press, and then others such as curls, if you go too slow, you have more time to hurt yourself because the muscles are under prolonged stress. Pressing exercises and pulling exercises are much more different from each other. So with safety comes less injury. Do so and exercise serves you well.

Exercise No. 21 One Arm Pull Ups

A real pain to master, but something that will make your biceps massive if you can do it. I'm not saying when you can do it, I'm saying if because it's so incredibly advanced in calisthenics. You're supporting your entire body weight by one arm, and pulling it up. That so happens to be the equivalent of a one handed handstand push up, you just don't require balance.

You don't have to look like that guy in the picture there when you do it, but you do have to be able to pull yourself up. It's so hard! I know! It's like you got a bad batch of pencils and they keep breaking, because you can't get it.

   Now if you do learn how to do one arm pull ups, your biceps will swell like crazy because they have to be able to put up with the stress.

   I recommend you be able to do about 25 controlled pull ups in a row before you start moving to this one.

   When you pull upwards, you should start out with fingers on the bar with the other hand, and start to take one away at a time as you get into it. Soon enough, you'll be at your index finger, and then you can move to your ring finger or your pinky since those two have the least gripping strength.

   When you pull up, it's so much as getting to the part of making your elbow bend, you just have grit through the attempts each time until you can actually get it to bend and your entire bicep pulls all of your body weight up. There's really no need to give the step by step instructions because this happens to be rather simple, just incredibly hard.

   Your body will face sideways if you're using a horizontal bar, that's entirely normal for this exercise because the way your body moves, it's the way you'll end up facing. Now one armed front levers, that's a different story. But soon enough, I'll offer a step by step tutorial on those, for now though, stick to one handed pull ups if you're even there. Good luck.

Exercise No. 20 Human Flag

Something fun to do, whenever you see a flag pole or a fence and you want to impress your friends. Also a double work out in a sense since your using your biceps on one side and your triceps on the other and a ton of your core.

Like you have no idea how much of your core goes into this unless you actually know how to do it. So I'll help you out, this is fun to do, not dangerous if your careful, and very impressive to the ladies, or guys. Depending if you're male or female, or pansexual which I seriously doubt you are. Let us learn how to do a flagpole!

Prerequisites:

You need to be able to do a crap load of pull ups for the bicep strength as of using your pulling arm, it helps if you can hold a one handed handstand against the wall with your leaning arm, and you should probably be able to do some really good leg raises and window wipers.

   You can't be the person who just got into exercising if you want to learn how to do this. You have to be somewhat experienced in exercise.

1. Find a flagpole, or a fence, or a playground, generally speaking a sturdy object that won't fall over. Hold one hand down on the lower part of the flagpole or fence like an underhand pull up, and then place your hand higher, like you're doing a really wide grip overhand pull up.

2. Now comes the hard part, the very hard part. Being able to get your body up into the position you're holding it.

   Lift your body up, you're going to have to jump to get into this position at first. For beginners you need to hold your body up at a ninety degree angle, or at a pike position which is a ninety degree bent angle at your hips.

3. To do it straight, try it out with one leg extended, work on holding it that way, and then when you get comfortable with that, extend the other leg. You won't be able to hold it for more than a second at first, but over time you'll get better and be able to hold it longer. So keep practicing.

Have fun, and stay strong.

Limits of the Human Body

Limits are something a lot of people talk about in fitness, and going past limits you know you shouldn't cross can be dangerous and harmful, but also, if you work to go past them safely with care and learning, you can create limits of your own, that most people and yourself will be unable to see because they're so far off.

Limits were created so that the human body will not get hurt. And most of us can easily tell where our limits are. In fact, we have a defense mechanism built in to where we are scared to go up to our limits. You have to train yourself to not be scared to go to your limits.

   You can also train yourself to make your limits become scarce in portion. There are many people who you will see and notice that, limits mean nothing to them. For instance, gymnasts, people who do tricking, people who do parkour, contortionists, and most of all, bboys.

   If you think parkour or gymnastics is past normal limits, your mind will be changed ever so greatly if you watch some of the greatest bboys ever to mark their names on the dance floor. Proper movement to music yet the combination of artful movement in strength and power. It's incredible what you will see people do when their limits are only a mere figment of their imagination.

   Now Limits in strength are one thing, limits in landing from very high up are much different. Proper limits such as not being stupid enough to jump from a thirty foot wall onto a concrete surface are very important to follow, because you shouldn't do that, it's stupid.

   Breakdancing though, I've seen people go to such vast limits in movement that they throw themselves into the air and do a full rotation with their legs split apart and land on the ground as they keep spinning. They time themselves just right, understand their movement just right and pull off things that most humans would never dream of getting into.

   Now if you're looking into testing your limits, I recommend you talk to your doctor before you get into anything of the like. Also, if you have a past of health issues, such as obesity, arthritis, and other things, your limits will be very obvious to you.

   If you're in your later age, I'm talking mid fifties and up, it's going to be a little harder to test your limits, but if you're very healthy, go ahead dang it! Learn hand hops or tumbling!

  Usually, the people who are the best at testing their limits in body movement, would be the people have had a past of what I call extreme twerpism. Meaning they're really skinny and light, and on occasion, pretty short. I have a past of twerpism, I'm just really tall. It's different when you're tall, people don't expect you to do certain things, they say that's not possible because it's harder. But in complete misunderstanding, I have no desire to let myself become limited. It took twenty minutes for me to learn how to do a front flip, and two years to start doing fingertip planche push ups, and three days to start riding a unicycle around my neighborhood.

   The power of the mind has so much to do with your limits. My strength has been well earned from becoming strong and well limited. You have to earn your lacking in limits, you have to make yourself strong to understand, and you have to make yourself know where they are, but just how far you can push yourself until you hit them.

   It's not easy learning your limits, but if you have a passion for discovering how far you can go with them, you're very different from everybody else. For an example of someone who does not have many limits, look up those ultra marathon runners who will do one hundred mile marathons. They are some of the most incredible and strongest of people to ever run, not walk, the face of this earth.

   Your limits are where you place them, and they're where you want them to be. Learn them, and you can move past them into a new realm of limits.

Exercise No. 19 Flag Freeze

I'll  warn you ahead of time. This is incredibly difficult, was the first move I wanted to learn in my fitness endeavors along with hollow backs, and it took me a two year history of avid training to master it. But! I will tell you right now! It is impressive and amazing to learn! It's most certainly something you do not see many people do very often at all, and I'd like to teach you how to do it!

So first off, you need to understand the balance of a one handed handstand as well as the two handed flag freeze variations with close triangular hand placement, and wide hand placement. These need to be accomplished with your legs fully together, and you need to be able to go low, and get your elbow somewhat close to ground.

   If you need to go back to those, I have them in my one handed hand stand tutorial.

   Anyways, first learn to hold a one handed handstand with your foot about eighteen inches from the ground. Not precisely, but get it close, if you hold that for a good five seconds, I'd say your ready for the flag freeze.

   

Flag Freeze:

   To perform this, pull your legs together as a full one handed handstand, or you can have them apart slightly, whichever you most desire, it's more impressive with both together. Once you have your legs up and in the air, start leaning to the side, as far as possible without losing your balance. When you come to a point to where your elbow is slightly bent and your arm leans forward and is underneath you, you can lift your hand from the ground. Your back should have somewhat of an arch as of you will thrust your chest out, and you will be bending your core sideways. If you do not have flexible abdominals or obliques, this will be somewhat of a challenge, but makes it even better to accomplished because a rigid form will make it look far better.

   I personally have an issue with full core flexibility, so my preference is to hold both legs together and my body mostly straight.

   Your center of gravity comes from your dominant standing arm being somewhat bent at the elbow because of the way you are leaning and tricep and all of your shoulder is holding you up. It's some way to support ones body weight, but it's just too dang cool!

   So good luck! I hope the best for you as this is my favorite thing to do in fitness, and have a good time learning it!

-The Fitness Cookie