A big thank you to everyone who helped me out by filling out my recent survey. It really helps me to learn more about YOU. When I know what your needs are, I can do a better job at meeting them.
Many of you asked questions, so I’ll take this opportunity to address a few of them…..
Question: How can I get a good upper body workout when I’m working around shoulder pain?
Answer: I’ve had my share of shoulder and elbow pain. It’s important to AVOID certain exercises that will worsen your shoulder condition or even cause shoulder pain. Here’s a post with the 5 Worst Exercises for Your Shoulders (lots a videos there for you).
I have no miracle for getting a ‘good upper body’ with shoulder or elbow pain, but I do have a miracle for getting OVER your pain so you can get to work on your upper body. Check out this post.
As we age, we seem to always be training around something. It’s imperative to listen to your body and respect any ache or pain you feel. I make notes of when a pain started, what I was doing, the intensity of the pain, how it’s reacted to certain movements etc. That way I can better assess the problem, or provide detailed info to a medical expert. I honestly do a lot of my own rehab with the help of my friend, Rick Kaselj. He steers me in the right direction with rehab that I can do on my own, and then if I find no relief I can seek medical attention. You can see how Rick solved my shoulder pain here (and even my knee pain here).
Here’s a video that Rick made for those of us that do a lot of pull ups to help our shoulders stay healthy:
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Turns out there are a number (59%) of readers that are women 🙂 
Question: I’m a woman approaching 40 and I find that I can’t lose weight. What’s the best workout approach? I don’t have much time.
Answer: I honestly didn’t make that question one up, but it may seem that way when you see my answer. I work with many women in their 40’s in my fitness boot camp. I got into the whole online fitness coaching world with my first program called, Female Fat Loss Over 40. I developed it because I got so many questions about this and needed a way to address the issues of women in this age group.
This video pretty much explains my training approach with women in their 40’s who feel like their metabolism is tanking:
The interesting thing is that you don’t necessarily need to be a woman in your 40’s to benefit from the strength and HIIT approach I suggest. But I highly recommend it for women in this age group because women (you know who you are!) commonly gravitate towards steady state cardio (the dreadmill!). As I said in the video, steady state cardio is a road to steady state boredom, plateaus and frustration. You’ll see specially formulated workouts for women in your 40’s and beyond here.
This last year I’ve taken on a partner to help me with this program. Her name is Lisa Bullock and she’s a kick in the pants – entertaining and educational (enter-cational?). In any case, if you’re a woman in your 40’s and beyond and if you find some of the Challenge workouts a little too, well, challenging… you’ll find my ‘other’ blog and fun stuff here.
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Question: What do I do if I’m starting from scratch as far as fitness goes? I took a long lay off. (Like years…)
Answer: Don’t do too much too soon! The biggest mistake many folks make when they get back into fitness is that they forget that their body isn’t conditioned to go 100%. They remember what they could do ‘back in the day’ (whether that’s from a month ago or from junior high 😉 ) and they go back to the same intensity. The best advice I can give you is to go 50% of what you feel you’re capable of for the first week. You’ll likely be sore anyway, but you’ll avoid injury.
Look ===> 
The majority of my readers, 87% of you, are over 40.
This means, more than ever, that we can’t afford to be injured.
You may think you’re ready for Challenge style workouts, but they may be a little intense for you.
My recommendation is to go ‘slow and steady’. Do progressive and safe workouts. The best ones online are from my good friends Dr. Dan Ritchie and Dr. Cody Sipes. You’ll find video follow along workouts (with me!). Here’s what these workouts are about:
Check out this blog post to find a workout.
Take a look at the Functional Fitness program here.
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It wasn’t a big surprise to see that the majority of you train at home. Under the ‘other’ category, many of you said ‘outside’, ‘playground’, ‘hotel room’ and other places that a ‘home style’ workout would work well.
I also asked how you liked your content delivered, and here’s what you said:
So since 72% of you train at home and 63% like more videos, I thought I’d go to the vault and pull out an oldie but a goodie. This is a playground workout that you can do while your kids are playing at the park. Do 30 seconds of each exercise and repeat twice:
- broad jump
- monkey bar pass (or pull ups)
- suicide sprint
- jump rope (or phantom skip)
- bear crawl
- skaters
- Repeat twice
- Finish with 200 jumping jacks
If you like this workout, then you’ll LOVE my good friend Todd Kuslikus’ Bodyweight Bundle
You’ll get SO MUCH value for only $37 that you won’t even believe your eyes:
The Bodyweight Bundle 2.0 Includes All Of The Following…
- 8 Bodyweight Muscle Building/Strength ebooks valued at $235.70
- 6 Bodyweight Fatloss ebooks valued at $214.94
- 4 Bodyweight Play/Trick ebooks valued at $201
- 10 Bodyweight Workout Videos/ebooks valued at $246.79
- 5 Bodyweight Nutrition/Receipe ebooks valued at $97.94
- 4 Bodyweight Rehab/Stretching/Warm Up ebooks valued at $116.90
Total Value of Bodyweight Bundle 2.0…. $1,113.27
Your price: $37 🙂
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And last but not least, what’s a Q n A without Sev?
I travel a great deal but never have to worry about Sev. It’s like he gets to go on a little doggy vacation too. He goes to his wonderful dog sitter, Elena.
Here he is with some of his pals, Monsieur LaRue, Cher (his love interest), Winnie and Buck ====>
Elena is like his doting Grandma, as you can see, everyone is getting spoiled with a teaspoon of Cool Whip – something he’d never get at home.