The Best Health and Fitness Articles of the Week #82 – Improve Your Grip Strength, Healthy Vegan Recipes and OLY Shoes

image courtesy of crossfitkelowna

Here’s a recap of the best health and fitness articles I’ve read over the past week.


Improve Your Grip Strength

Just like this article says, grip strength is important for plenty of reasons, most importantly being able to lift more weight on exercises like deadlifts and barbell rows. There are some cool and interesting exercises here to help you increase your grip strength.


What Drinking Coffee Does to You

There are some excellent pros to consuming coffee, but drinking coffee also comes with some drawbacks if you drink too much. If you limit your intake to around 2 cups per day and if you drink high quality coffee, you have nothing to worry about.


A Guide to Eating a Plant-Based Diet

This article goes into the many reasons why eating a plant-based diet is important and how to transition into a vegan diet. There’s also a good list of foods that you can eat that are easy when starting out. This guide goes through just about everything a beginner vegan might be wondering.


Looking for Healthy Vegan Recipes?

When people are considering going vegan, they are always worried that they won’t be able to eat tasty meals anymore, but here’s a short list of recipes that are easy, tasty and healthy – Tortilla soup, fruit salad and apple crisp.


Seriously. Do This Yesterday. One of My All Time Shoulder Fixes

I bet it’s scary being friends with this guy. You never know what kind of painful situation you’re going to be in when he’s around. 😉


Using Coffee Enemas For Liver Detoxification

I always hear conflicting advice about coffee enemas, which is probably why I’m too afraid to try one myself, but this article does make it sound enticing. The author of this post also recorded a very informative video of the entire process.


How To Meditate – 3 Simple Techniques

Slowly but surely I’m learning more about meditation. I know it’s beneficial and I really want to do it, but life is so hectic that I find it hard to make time. This article talk about exactly that too – “if you’re too busy to meditate, you’re too busy!” I think what I need to do is set a schedule. Maybe just a few minutes after work everyday.


7 Home Remedies to Combat the Side Effects of Chemo

I hope that my healthy dietary and exercise habits are enough to prevent getting cancer later in life, but if not, at least I can refer back to this article if I ever have to go through chemo. I’ve seen the effects of chemo in my family and it’s not pretty.


First OLY shoe.. Recommendations?

I workout at home, so I lift completely barefoot. I like the idea of lifting barefoot more than lifting in shoes, but maybe I’m short-changing myself by not using weightlifting shoes. I’d really like to try a pair out to see how they feel.


Outdoor Home Rope Climb Post

There’s no way in hell my HOA would allow me to build this in my backyard, but I would in a heart beat if I could. I might see if my brother is willing to build it in his yard so that I can use it. This is awesome!


Train Like A Man, Look Like A Goddess

Ladies, do you need more proof that lifting weights won’t make you bulk up and look like a man? Here ya go! 😉

Fitness Articles of the Week #55 – Endurance Lifting, Swimming Technique and Learning to Meditate

Here’s a recap of the best health and fitness articles I’ve read over the past week.


Build more muscle and experience better pumps with only one exercise

This is the type of workout that only the very dedicated would be able to stick with. I can only imagine how tired my body would be after training one body part for so long. It sounds very interesting though. I don’t know if I’ll ever try it, but I would like to if I had more time.


Keep Your Plants Warm Over a Chilly Night with a Bucket of Water

I just might have to try out this clever trick. For me, it depends on how expensive buckets are. At least it would be a one-time purchase though and then my garden would be good to go every year.


Swimming Technique: Animations & Articles From Experts Swim Smooth

If you need to work on your swimming technique, like I do, you should check out everything this site has to offer. You can choose the type of swimmer you are and get some great info on how you can swim better.


Fitocracy’s First App Makes Fitness Tracking Competitive

This sounds like a really cool iPhone app for tracking your fitness and staying motivated. You can track activities, and in turn earn points as you do them, which allows you to “level up” and compete against other users. It sounds really cool. I have a super-old iPhone that isn’t compatible with this app, but I hope to get a new iPhone later this year, so I’ll try it out then.


No-Bean Hummus, Flax Crackers, Cucumbers

I really wish I had a Vitamix blender, because I would make this immediately. Mmmm, looks like such a delicious snack.


Remove Deodorant Stains with a Foam Brick

This is a cool trick, but I’m even more surprised at how long it took for the girl to tell us to use a foam block on the fabric. The best tips here are the links at the end of the article that tell how to remove dried stains using aspirin or baking soda.


How to Meditate Daily

Meditation is something I’ve really been wanting to get in to, and starting at two minutes per day sounds like the best way for me to get into it. Lifehacker also has a great article containing things you can do while meditating.


The Most Difficult Dinner Guest Ever: And 5 Delicious Meals To Feed Them

This is something I’m sending to everyone in my family. Yes, I’m a difficult dinner guest, lol. Nobody ever has anything for me to eat. My aunt at least tries though and usually has some frozen Boca burgers, a vegetable tray and some hummus.


Triathlon Training Plan

This is a pretty good article for a beginner wanting to do a triathlon. This post starts from the very beginning of triathlon training and covers all of the basics. I want to do a triathlon some day, but I never learned to swim as a kid so I’m still working on that. Hopefully by the end of this summer I’ll be more confident in the water.


Inverted Rows – Build Your Back Without Weights

It would be so cool to have a set of TRX straps. They’re just too expensive though, especially when I already have pretty much all of the weights I need. It would be nice to switch up my routines by mixing in a few moves like the inverted rows in this article though.


Is Foam Rolling Bad for You?

Foam rolling is painful and in most cases, when something fitness related hurts, it’s not a a good thing, but as the author of this article points out, foam rolling is an exception to that rule. Read it and learn why.

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