Go to a grocery store and you’ll no doubt see the ‘gluten free’ section. The media has made ‘gluten free’ ‘gluten intolerance’, ‘gluten sensitivity’ the ‘new black’ in the world of dieting.
Is there a need for gluten free eating? How do I know if I should avoid gluten?
Manufacturers will find any excuse to lighten your pocket book but won’t necessarily deliver on promises of improved health.
Sadly, many of the products available that boost ‘gluten free’ are anything but.
Hey, do I sound a little cynical??
I guess it’s because I am. There are too many ‘half truths’ out there and people aren’t getting to the bottom of their health issues because of it. It’s time for some clarity.
Enter gluten expert: Dr. Peter Osborne.
He’s part of a group that I regularly meet with. This group is all about providing valuable and honest fitness, fat loss and health information to people like you. I’m fortunate to have the contacts that I do in this business so that I can pass on all the leading edge information.
I’ve learned a lot about gluten in the last little while since Peter has been showing up at meetings.
The good news when Peter shows up is that you can be sure he’ll bring lots of cool stuff to the table.
The bad news is that at all the meals, all the gluten related foods will just sit there cuz no one will dare eat any in front of him. It’s sort of comical actually. (I’m not totally gluten free, but we never eat gluten in front of Peter, don’t tell him that on occasion we all eat gluten behind his back!)
Here’s a video I did with Peter a while back. As some of you know, my alter ego is ‘Female Fat Loss Over 40 Expert’. Gluten is definitely an issue that the over 40 demographic can benefit from learning more about:
Dr Osborne has recently made some information available to you online. He has a very busy practice in Texas with a waiting list to see him, so this is the easiest access to him and valuable health information.
If you feel you have any of the health issues he talks about in his video, you owe it to yourself to check this out. I’ve had many clients benefit from his expertise.
CLICK HERE for more information on how you can improve your health.
I know that many of you are looking for ways to improve the quality and quantity of your push ups. I have a tip that will not only help you push ups, but it will help you with your pull ups as well.
It doesn’t sound wildly sexy, but it’s effective to help stabilize the shoulders and strengthen the upper back.
It’s called scapular stabilization.
What this means is that in the push up position, or plank position, you need to squeeze the shoulder blades together rather than letting them protract or let the back round. Draw the shoulder blades down and back and keep the back flat. This helps to strengthen the middle back, (the rhomboids and spinal erectors) and helps to create more stability and strength through the back. This will help with push up quality and quantity and also give more back strength to aid in quality and quantity pull ups.
You can check out the video for a demonstration of what I mean about retracting and protracting the shoulders. Shoulder stabilization is necessary to avoid injury in all kinds of training, particularly in doing push up exercises and pull up exercises.
I have lots more tips and tricks to increase the quality and quantity of your push ups. Check out my program to see if it’s right for you.
A good videographer is hard to find. Sometimes things just go wrong. Seriously, when filming guerrilla style videos in the gym or at a park, what can you expect? Often I’ll accost some random passerby who looks sort of like they wouldn’t run off with my camera and hope that they shoot a decent video. Sometimes it works, sometimes not so much.
I have two video (bloopers) for you here. The videos aren’t anything to look at, in fact the second one is down right silly, but since I’ve never seen myself move so fast I included it on the blog.
While the videos are lousy, the workouts we did for them are awesome. I did them while I was in San Diego with a bunch of amazing fitness pro’s including ‘Mr Finisher’, Mike Whitfield. Big Mike is a ton of fun and he’s always up for a challenge. We hung out for a day doing videos and working together and basically yucking it up.
For one workout we got a group circuit going when we went to Fit Gym in San Diego. First, a little about the Fit Gym…The gym is a collection of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen under one roof (where I felt like a total slob with my pig tails). I felt I should have hit the spa first, or at least thought to put some make up on before heading there where there are hard bodies and pretty people everywhere. I figured if I didn’t look good, at least I could be drenched in sweat to give myself a good excuse, so this workout was born.
Here’s the gang:
Mr Finisher- Mike Whitfield, me, The Pilates Chic- Sylvia, Frankie Frank, Brian 'Boot Camp Games' Kalakay
This video in no way shape or form really shows what our circuit was about. It’s a mish-mash of us doing our own thing. By the time someone thought to shoot the video, the gang was done with the pull up set, so they had resorted to the DB bent over row (even though I called this a pull up circuit 😉 )We lost one of our gang to a bathroom emergency (sometimes intense workouts will do that to you, especially when you’re on the road and not eating and sleeping like normal, too funny when he fessed up to this…).
The circuit included:
the pull up exercise
spider crawls
jump rope
burpees
plate swing
Our videographer took a break from burpees to do a quick filming here.
We did 45 seconds of work with a 15 second break to switch exercises. We did the round 4 times.
Good times.
After this one, we went out for dinner and I did a ‘super set’ of sea bass and scallops at an amazing seafood restaurant called ‘Donovan’s’. Yum.
The next day, ‘Mr Finisher’ Mike and I hit Petco park in San Diego. I pondered the possibilities here…what to do, what to do…
I also thought about my baseball career which was a non-starter at the age of 6 when I was told I ‘made the cut’ but was too little for a uniform. At the age of 6 I couldn’t see the point of playing baseball without a cool uniform so I hit the swimming pool instead. Probably a good thing given my poor vision, I probably would have been knocked out cold with a fly ball.
We decided to do a few workouts together for you. Now you may think that something happened to the camera here in this video, but this is really Mikey and I moving at lightening speed 😉
Okay, so there was something a muck with the camera after all.
We called this the ‘Padre Finisher’ because we did it by a cool statue of some ‘Padre’ dude in Petco park. (Sorry, I’m not a baseball fan…) Too bad the bystander/videographer didn’t get Padre in the shot (he just stood there like a statue, didn’t do anything near as cool or fast as Mike and me.)
Here was the workout (feel free to do it at your own pace):
10 box jumps
20 close 3/4 push ups
30 skips with the jump rope
Repeat five times.
So there you have some of my blooper reels, but good workouts just the same. Have some fun with them.
If you need some help with your pull ups, I can help here.
Mike and my buff pal, Travis Stoezel have some cool finishers for you here. These are the ‘hardcore finishers’ I’ve been talking about all week. Don’t even look at them if you’re on the wussy side….;)
These Hardcore Finishers are the bomb. As noted in this post, I’m lovin them. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how you can build muscle while losing the flub, all the while getting super fit. I love the whole mindset aspect of Hardcore Finishers. Basically it’s five or six minutes of hell, but it’s so empowering. I get that ‘I can do anything’ attitude when I do them…
I’ve been getting asked the question ‘what’s a hardcore finisher’, so I asked Travis to enlighten us. Here’s some good info for you. But don’t bother if you’re sort of a wus 😉
