Your Weight And Your Friends

Here is a very interesting article that appeared in WIRED magazine a while back...

Interestingly, YOUR weight status is associated with…

• Your friend’s weight
• Your friend’s friend’s weight
• Your friend’s friend’s friend’s weight

We are influenced by networks (social networks). Amazingly if your friends gain weight, you’ll gain weight. And the opposite holds truetoo, if friends lose weight, we lose weight.

So…if we get one person to lose, others around them may lose – a snowball effect. If one spouse apples healthy behavior, chances are the other will too. Improving 1 person’s life should improve others connected to them.

But you should focus on helping hubs of networks lose weight. According to this researcher, we should be targeting groups for change because it is more effective than targeting individuals because you create social ties. Essentially, you are spreading weight loss like a germ ( a very powerful germ!). And that’s the benefit of weight watchers and exercising in groups like bootcamps.

So go grab a couple of buddies or girlfriends and get exercising together. I mentioned this in a previous post of how important it is to have a network around your that will support you. Now this research shows how your improvement will affect all those around you as well. The amazing snowball effect.

If you are looking for a good place to start your new year then come and join me at my Body By Bradley Bootcamps.
Your first week is completely FREE and you have my 30 day unconditional money back guarantee when you sign up.



Yours in health,

Bradley Ernstzen

Body By Bradley Bootcamps
Body By Bradley Personal Training
Body By Bradley Blog
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The 3 Things You Must NOT Do…:-(

Well I have just turned 40 and it has gotten me thinking about where I want to be in the next 40 years. How I want to be when my kids grow up and have kids of their own.

So I did some research to find the 3 most common mistakes people make that contribute to the shortening of their life.


To insure that you live a long and productive life here are 3 things that you should not do.

1) Do NOT drink too much.
Consuming too much alcohol on a regular basis will play havoc with your liver and many of your other organs. I am not talking about only one drink a day. The worst is that you cannot see the damage it is doing until it is too late.

2) Not going to the doctor once your past 40.
Obviously, this is NOT a good idea. For anyone over 40 who is listening, stop being “too proud” to go to the doctor and get your butt in there every year. Take the tests they want you to take.

3) Not eating enough fruits and vegetables.
Most individuals diet are not so good. Believe it or not, many people live on coffee, toast, an egg, maybe a ham sandwich for lunch, too many beers, and a lot of candy (or sugar drinks or substitutes).



1) If you drink, do a mirror check. Are you drinking too much? Is it affecting your life? Your work? Your family? Look at your kids. Don’t you want to see them grow up and have kids of their own?
2) Are you active? Are you busy with projects and constantly learning or do you just watch TV?
3) Have you been to the doctor this year? Why not? Have you noticed something that just doesn’t feel right and should be checked out? Don’t be scared! Just go. Despite all the hard times that people give the medical industry, technology and medicine is catching cancer early and treating many of them well.

So…

• Don’t be a stubborn old fool!

• Go to the doctor!

• Better you lose a little pride and gain a lot of years.

Yours in health for ever...

Bradley Ernstzen

Body by Bradley Bootcamp

Body by Bradley Personal Training

Body by Bradley Weight Loss Membership Website

Key Factors To A Perfect Workout

7 Key Factors for a Perfect Workout

Here are, in order, the 7 key phases you need to go through in order to have the perfect “fat burning, lean body sculpting” workout.

1 – Self-Massage

I’ve been doing this half-heartedly for years, but recently started taking this more seriously, using a foam roller, tennis ball, and Acuball to “tenderize” my muscles prior to training.

2 – Mobility Warm-up

Just like you see in all of the my workouts, I use bodyweight exercises, dynamic stretches, and even static stretches prior to training – depending on my needs or my client’s needs.

And thanks to the new TACFIT bodyweight program, I have cool new bodyweight moves to add to my warm-up, including:

The Top 5 exercises You Are NOT Doing

1. Lunge Knee Twist (p.85, ONLY in the TACFIT manual)
2. Swinging Tripod (p.86)
3. Scorpion Strike (p. 94)
4. Rocca Invert (p. 96)
5. Cossack Lunge (p. 107)

Seriously, those are cool exercises you can do ANYWHERE, anytime.

3 – Explosive Exercise
Before I hit my main strength exercise, I’ll do a jump exercise (if I am focusing on a lower body workout) or a medicine ball throw (if I’m focusing on bench presses or military presses).




4 – Main Exercise

Now I move to the main exercise, such as squats, deadlifts or bench presses (and military presses or handstand pushups). In most of my workouts, you’ll start with a superset of the most important exercises as your main lifts.

5 – Assistance Exercises
We’re about 15-20 minutes into a workout by now, and this is where I’ll add assistance exercises for my strength work or metabolic circuits for a fat loss program.

6 – Ab Endurance Exercises
Personally, I’ve been doing a lot of the basics – planks, side planks, Stability Ball planks, and rollouts. You get a little more variety, including Ball Pikes, plus Jackknives, cross-body mountain climbers, etc.
Just remember, you do NOT need (or want) to do crunches or sit-ups.

7 – Interval Training

“Interval training, has opened my mind up to a better way of getting in shape and losing weight. I am spending much less time in the gym, and obtaining results that I never thought possible – over 30 pounds in 6 weeks.”

Interval training is powerful and proven, and is an essential part of the perfect workout. If you aren’t using interval training in your workouts, then get started NOW to boost your fat burning with intervals today! Visit my Body by Bradley BOOTCAMPS at Body By Bradley Bootcamp



Yours in health,

Bradley

Body by Bradley Bootcamp

Body by Bradley Personal Training

Body by Bradley Weight Loss Membership Website

The importance of keeping a food journal

Do you keep a food journal to assist you on your weight loss journey?

Some people have never done any food journal or even writing their workouts down.

Yes, the truth is when I started training all those years ago I actually kept records because back then I didn’t have a computer, or any of the technology that people have access to now.

So, for me, it was pretty much old school. I used a sharpened pencil, and a spiral bound flip notebook, it was good enough for me at the time. I kept records of each workout. I’d weigh myself regularly and enter my weight in my notebook, and I would write my nutrition plan down in the same kind of book so that everything was time correlated.  It was a really primitive way of tracking.

When I keep records I don’t like to make them too complicated; I write it down and let it lie. No judgments associated with it. I am not second guessing myself. I am not asking “Am I doing the perfect stuff?” I find people can paralyze themselves by judging their journal.

Whether you keep a personal journal of your thoughts or of your workouts its important just to write it down, then to REFLECT ON IT OVER TIME TO SEE WHAT WORKED AND WHAT HASN’T WORKED.

Usually at the time you write it all down you probably won’t have the clarity of insight to see what’s working but you’ll see it when you look back in retrospect. This is kind of bigger picture stuff, so I don’t know if it’s helping people immediately lose fat, but the idea is you JUST WRITE IT DOWN. It only takes a few seconds every day.

Another trick I have for writing a journal that’s even simpler than writing the stuff down in a notebook is to get a large desktop calendar.  I’m talking the huge calendars with the big blocks for the dates. What I often do for myself, and I recommend it to my clients is just basically keep a nutrition and exercise log on this calendar.

Therefore every day that you’ve successfully completed your workout or some type of physical activity, whether it’s at the gym, or you went for a walk, you put a slash in one direction. Every day you felt you’ve successfully finished a nutritional good habit, I use habit rather than saying a “perfectly designed diet” you put a check in the opposite direction.

The idea is you basically get a big X mark on the days that you’ve been successful and on the days that you’re not successful there’s either only one slash or no slashes. It gives you a great way at the end of each month to look back and say, “How well did I really do this month?” I find a lot of people don’t have good memories, they remember the past through rose colored glasses.

So, they think, “I did a really great job this month. I don’t understand why I’m not losing fat.” But if they actually had calendar they would have seen that maybe they were only 50 percent compliant with what they should have been, so it’s a great way to keep track, it also a nice way to project goals into the future.

Rather than having complicated goals it’s great to just have a SIMPLE set of behavior goals. Just think how easy it is to ask yourself. “Can I get 90 percent of the days for October checked off, Yes? I did my workout? What about my nutrition habit?”

You’d be surprised how often accomplishing SIMPLE goals leads to PHYSIQUE PROGRESS. It seems very simple and I know sometimes people want to dig for deeper physiological changes, but this type of stuff works very, very well and it’s easy to record. People are often underestimating how powerful it is.





Regards,

Bradley

Body by Bradley Bootcamp

Body by Bradley Personal Training

Body by Bradley Weight Loss Membership Website

What is Interval Training?

It can be very frustrating if your spending a lot of time exercising, eating right, and not seeing the results. Let’s jump back to ...

What is the role of interval training vs. steady state aerobics in a fat loss program?

Interval training is more important than cardio. First of all, it gets more results in less time. And with “lack of time” being the number one reason most people do not participate in a training program at all, clearly intervals are the winner here.

Now let’s just assume that lack of time is not a problem, well, interval training is still more effective because it applies more “confusion” to the muscle. Or in scientific terms, interval training results in a greater metabolic stress on the muscle.

From there, the muscle must work to recover, repair, and replenish the energy that was used in the training. It is much more metabolic work for the muscle to recover from interval training (and strength training) then it is to recover from aerobic training.

Therefore, in the post-exercise period, interval training results in more calories burned.

In fact, Alwyn Cosgrove from Australia that shows interval training is superior to slow cardio for fat loss. The researchers, Trapp & Boutcher put WOMEN through a 15-week study where one group was a control, one group did intervals (20 minutes of alternating sprints and recovery), and one group did 40 minutes of slow cardio.

The interval group lost 2.5kg of fat in 15 weeks on average (with one subject losing 7. 7kg of fat), while the slow cardio group lost only 0.4kg of fat over 15 weeks!!

So don’t get hung up on how many calories are burned during a training session with aerobic training. That is not nearly as important as how many total calories your body burns over the course of the day – as you do with interval training.

And for those that subscribe to the fat burning zone as being important, again, you aren’t looking at the big picture (the 24-hour calorie burning period). Instead, those that believe in the importance of the fat-burning zone have a myopic view of how the body works.

So get intervalling!!! :-)

Yours in health,

Bradley

Body By Bradley (Bootcamp & Personal Training)
Weight Loss Membership Website
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Keeping Fat Loss Simple

The 3 simple steps that every successful individual has as the cornerstone of a solid weight loss program are...

1) You have to plan ahead – for both diet and exercise. - You have to plan your workouts. You have to plan your meals. You also have to plan to have solutions for the obstacles you come up against. Most people know they have to plan their meals, but they don’t realize they also need a plan for avoiding night snacking. So Plan!

2) Get more knowledge - Learn about what works for you. Record your food intake on a site like www.FitDay.com. Identify what foods keep you full and alert, and avoid the foods that do the opposite.  Also, track your workouts. Which ones give you results? What type of cardio is a waste of time? Etc.

3) Get social support - You need friends or family backing you up on this. Fortunately, if your “real world” friends just want to drag you to Pizza Hut, you can find help online, such as on my weight loss membership site at Fitness Health Monthly where everyone is happy to help and support you on your fat loss journey. But just remember – no one can do this on your own. Get social support!

So get planning and plot your road to weight loss success.

Your is health,

Bradley Ernstzen

befitpoland.magix.net
bernstzen@yahoo.com
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Fat Loss and the mistakes people make!

Nutrition is more important than training when it comes to fat loss as pointed. Basically if you don’t eat right you won’t lose fat, no matter how good your training program is.


It is important to remember that to achieve the results you desire you HAVE to training with INTENSITY.

Do not rely on long, slow, low intensity cardio. Use intervals instead. Interval training is broadly defined as repetitions of high-speed/intensity work followed by periods of rest or low activity.

 Use low reps when doing your weight training. You want to increase the intensity of your training to put ‘metabolic turbulence’ on your muscles. Therefore you need to use moderately heavy weights or advanced bodyweight exercises and interval cardio training to apply this metabolic disturbance and achieve a significant increase in post-exercise energy expenditure.

However, no matter how well you adhere to these training tips, you will not succeed without getting serious about your nutrition. Eating poorly can decrease testosterone (in males) and increase insulin in both men and women. This will cause fat storage. At the same time, too much cardio and stress can increase cortisol.

If you have high cortisol levels, increased insulin, and lower than normal testosterone, you are in big trouble when it comes to having a good body. This is why Pilates & Yoga can actually help when combined with good nutrition – because they can reduce the stress and bring those hormone levels back to normal. But my fat loss weapon of choice is more intense exercise, especially for men.

While cardio is focused on breaking down the body, strength training, yoga, and Pilates all focus on building the body. Stick with building your body.

Here are a few fat loss mistakes that a number of exercise participants make.Using Only Long Slow Cardio. There is definitely mixed research support for long, slow cardio.

Most studies will show you two things:
1)    If you don’t include calorie restriction, doing only aerobic training will get you nowhere.
2)    If you include calorie restriction, you will lose weight, but you will also lose lean body mass.

Plus, it just takes too much time up from your schedule. Stick to interval training instead. You will get the same, or in my experience, better results in half the time.

Sticking with the Same Program Too Long. In most gyms, every day is Groundhog Day (just like the movie).  You’ll see the same men and women doing the exact workout that they did 2 days previous. I see men and women using the exact same weight circuit as they did literally the day before, using the same weight, the same crappy form, and showing the same lack of interest.

These people are much better off doing fewer workouts following a structured plan of increased intensity.  

DON’T TRADE QUALITY FOR QUANTITY.

Doing High Rep-low Weight Isolation Exercises. Exercises such as triceps kickbacks, concentration curls, side raises, and ab crunches are almost a complete waste of time.  The men and women that use isolation exercises will not make any improvements. Unfortunately, this is the approach taken by a lot of people in the gym.

Do NOT become like these people mindlessly plodding their way through the gym and achieving nothing and going nowhere!

Yours in health,

Bradley

befitpoland.magix.net
fitnesshealthmonthly.com