Category: news

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

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Xylitol Research

Xylitol is a great alternative sweetener but what’s really interesting about the information from this study is that the damage caused by sugars can be stopped just by consuming xylitol, such as in a xylitol-based chewing gum. It also mentions that the digestive issues some people have with xylitol go away after a period of adaptation, usually about 4 weeks. I have a coworker that won’t consume xylitol because of digestive issues. I’ll make sure to let her know about this.

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How to Use Up Almond Pulp

These all sound like awesome ideas. I hate throwing away pulp after making almond milk do I will definitely be trying all of these out.

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My 5 Favorite Exercises…right now

These are no replacements for heavy traditional lifts but they are great additions to an already solid program. I actually don’t do any of these, but I have done most in the past and can vouch for their effectiveness.

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Verifying that sorghum is a new safe grain for people with celiac disease

This is probably welcomed news to celiacs since it won’t cause a reaction to their immune system, but I still wonder about the other possible negative aspects of sorghum, such as high carbohydrate content and all of things Dr. William Davis says about it, like that it causes teeth decay and iron deficiency. Dr. Davis uses extreme examples, but it’s still worth being cautious.

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Litvinov Workout

I heard the Litinov method quickly mentioned in a podcast with no explanation given about what it was, so I looked it up. The original Litinov Workout, created by olympic hammer thrower Sergey Litinov, consisted of doing fronts squats of 405 lbs. eight times and immediately sprinting a 75-second 400-meter run and repeating two more times. Obviously we can’t all front squat 405 lbs. but the idea here is to lift really heavy. This article takes Litinov’s method a little further with various alternatives. I would really like to try this in the park with a sandbag sometime this Spring.

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Ankle Mobility and one of the Big Ten

Here are two ankle mobility exercises you can do to help get deeper squats. One really cool thing I learned from this video is that it takes a minimum of two minutes to cause change in soft tissue.

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Your Hidden Source Of Strength: 3 Steps To Better Breathing

I’ve performed the Vasalva breathing technique during lifts before but I didn’t know that was its name. It works but I’ve always been cautious about it because of how fitness professionals always warn against holding breath during lifts.

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Monsanto’s Dirty Dozen

Do you consume sweeteners that contain saccharin or aspartame, such as Sweet’N Low, NutraSweet or Equal? Do you consume foods packaged in polystyrene plastics? Do you eat non-organic meat or vegetables? If you do any of those things, you’re poisoning yourself with cancer-causing chemicals manufactured by Monsanto. Monsanto is the most disgusting business ever. How they haven’t been shut down is a mystery to me. Damn our corrupt government and money-hungry businessman who keep these evil people in business. Stop buying GMO foods!

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10 Tips for Making the Best Coconut Butter Ever

I’ve made coconut butter in my vitamix before and it really is delicious. I did it entirely from scratch though. I scraped a fresh coconut, dehydrated it and then turned it into butter. Wayyyy too much work. I definitely recommend buying shreds from the store 😉

Here’s a recap of the best health and fitness articles I’ve read over the past week. I’ve been doing a lot of reading recently, so my update is bit long. I hope you can make some time to at least check out a few of these.

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Most Vitamins Are a Waste of Money

Great post on why we need to research the supplements we take before taking them. The author of this article mentions one of my favorite supplement researchers, which is ConsumerLab.com. Most of my supplement decisions have come from the research they’ve done.

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Five Ways to Fix Your Deadlift Today

If you want some tips on doing the deadlift from a coach who knows real weight training and physiology, this is a post for you. This post explains a little about fixing hip hinge, performing rack pulls to perfect form, improving hip mobility, improving spine mobility and learning how to breathe properly. I need to work on every single one of these things.

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Hips Don’t Lie: 3 Drills To Nail The Hip Hinge

Just as I was reading about the hip hinge in the article above, I came across this. The hip hinge is something I’ve never tried to work on, although I wouldn’t doubt if it needs some adjusting.

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Build Your Own Self-Watering Planter – Step by Step

Garden season is right around the corner and now is the time to start getting everything together. A planter box is nice, but a self-watering planter is even better. I don’t have the money to build one of these this year, but I really wish I did.

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Yoga For Starters Infographic

I knew there were several yoga styles but I didn’t realize there were as many as are listed on this infographic. This handy chart tells you which types of yoga are best for things like stress relief, energy, meditation, and even vegetarians. I don’t know how they determine which type of yoga is best for vegetarians, but I guess I’ll just have to trust them.

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The Cortisol Challenge

DH Kiefer suggests working out at night when cortisol levels are low and skipping breakfast, since early morning is when cortisol levels are high. According to this article, cortisol levels are highest around 6-8 a.m and begin to drop from 8-11 a.m., so you probably want to hold off eating your first meal as close to 11 a.m as you can. I can do the skipping breakfast part, but I just can’t stick to a routine when I try to workout at night. If I don’t workout in the morning, I don’t workout at all.

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It’s getting science-y in here: Everything you need to know about sugar

This really is the all-you-need-to-know guide to sugars and sweeteners. Get the rundown on the best and worst sweeteners around and how they effect our bodies. Looks like the safest sugar is xylitol, which is actually what I use most based on Dave Asprey’s Bulletproof diet.

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So You Want to Start Sprinting?

I wanted to incorporate sprinting into my routine last year, but I never did. I’m definitely going to do it this year and I’m starting with the information here. The foam rolling drills and mobility exercises are great too, and not just for sprinting.

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Dynamic Effort Training: BS or Legit?

Ready to geek out on exercise science? This one is about determining whether speed work is beneficial towards powerlifting efforts. The topic remains up for debate but according to the original author of the article, powerlifter Mike Tuscherer, from which this article from Bret Contreras stems, it sounds like speed work is best for beginners to lifting. Bret doesn’t provide an opinion on the matter but does go into some science that could help you make a decision on whether you should be doing speed work or not.

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Kettlebell Training Manifesto: A Beginner’s Guide to Kettlebell Training

This article provides a short history lesson of the kettlebell, a basic understanding of how kettlebells work, the different types of grips, and some exercises you can do. This is a great guide and goes into quite a bit of detail. Very well put together.

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An Alternative to Willpower for Losing Weight

Alex Lickerman, MD is a physician that has found a way to get his patients to stick with the slow-carb diet, despite the fact that most people who go on diets and successfully lose weight, end up gaining a lot of it back later. The key is psychology. Check out Dr. Lickerman’s seven point plan to not only remove bad foods from your diet, but any other vice you might have.

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7 Ways to Fix Weak Hamstrings

I just started working on my hamstrings about 4 months ago after reading an article similar to this one, explaining all the reasons why strong hamstrings are important. I haven’t incorporated a whole lot into my routine that focuses on the hamstrings but I probably will now.

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11 Reasons to Ditch Processed Foods

This is everything I’ve been learning from the book, Rich Food Poor Food. Here are just a few takeaways – dont eat foods with phosphates as an ingredient, don’t consume foods containing dyes and be careful of foods labeled as “natural.” The FDA has far too many loopholes for food manufacturers and destructive businesses like Monsanto. If you don’t want to poison your body or pass down busted genes to your children, avoid GMO and buy organic.

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Study: Vibram FiveFingers Lead to Greater Risk of Foot Bone Injury

If you’re a runner and plan on transitioning to barefoot shoes such as the Vibram FiveFingers, you may want to give yourself plenty of time to become acclimated to them. A 10-week study of 19 people running in Vibrams resulted in 10 of the runners getting foot bone injuries, two of which suffering full-blown stress factures. If you want to prevent the same from happening to you, consider taking loger than 10 weeks and focusing on low intensity runs.

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Aftershokz: Bone Conduction Headphones

These are sweet! I always wear only one headphone when I’m doing things like riding my bicycle, sitting at my desk working or mowing the lawn because I don’t like not being able to hear surrounding sounds. These headphones look like the perfect fix. I would love to try these out.

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The 17 Weirdest Things I Do Now That I’m Vegan

I do most of these things too, and a lot of them started after going vegan. I might be even more weird than Matt. I grow my own sprouts, I juice and make smoothies out of leftovers, I dehydrate foods, I make my own nutbutters and vegan milks, I wear Vibram FiveFinger shoes and I even brew my own kombucha. 😉

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Hot Trend: Tapping the Power of Cold to Lose Weight

Tim Ferris’ book, The Four Hour Body, mentioned that Ron Cronise lost 27 lbs. in six weeks using cold exposure. This is when I started playing around with the idea too. I didn’t take cold baths, but I did take only cold showers for two months in the summer. I didn’t any significant weight loss during that time, but I did notice that I felt great all the time. I had more energy and I slept well. I do believe cold exposure had something to do with that.

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Training Calves and Traps

Josh McMillan answers two questions related to why he trains calves and traps. Both are great answers. He trains calves because his calves don’t grow well. Many people don’t have to train calves when they’re doing deadlifts and squats, but I’m just like Josh. I need to do additional work on mine to get them to grow. And he does shrugs because his traps respond well to them. I really like his follow-up comment on that about never doing an exercise just to do it.

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Improving Squat Power Out of the Hole

Chad Wesley Smith is a strongman champion, physical preparation coach and founder of Juggernaut Training Systems. Here he provides tips on improving squat power. He offers three types of squat variations to improve explosiveness – pause squats (pause in lower squat position for 5-7 sec. before exploding up), slow eccentric (7 seconds down, explode up), and dead squats (start at parallel, pick up bar from pins in power rack). He provides a lot more tips on each of these lifts in the video.

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Lack of sleep ‘switches off’ genes

If you’re having problems getting enough sleep at night, you better learn to fix it or you could be deactivating genes that repair and replenish the body. Some of these genes effect metabolism, stress, inflammation and immunity. Just one week of bad sleep can turn these genes off. Imagine the damage you could be doing to your body if you have regular sleep problems.

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How I Stopped Eating Food

Could you imagine a world where nobody had to worry about finding food and where sustenance could be obtained entirely from a drink? A man named Rob Rhinehart is trying to make that a reality. He created a drink, which he’s calling “Soylent,” that contains every essential nutrient that body needs. He tested it for an entire 30 days, the whole time never eating a thing. He felt great, had tons of energy, noticed an increase in cognitive function and all for the price of only $50 a month. He’s looking for people to participate in a study for Soylent right now. Is this real or are we being trolled?

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

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Morning Fruit Juice – The Proof Is In The Juice

Israel Torres is well-known in the “Juicing” sub-category over at Reddit. I recently read a thread over there about someone who juiced cilantro for their first juice and they were immediately put off by it. It’s funny, because I did the same thing. It took me nearly a year to finally start eating cilantro again, ha! Anyway, in that thread, Israel Torres mentions that this morning fruit juice is his absolute favorite juice of all time. Considering that he’s done four 60-day juice fasts, that’s really saying something about this juice. I can’t wait to try it.

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Meeting Yoda: An Interview with Tim Ferriss

I love listening to interviews with Tim Ferriss because he always has so much great advice. Most of the interview is about his new book, The Four Hour Chef, which I just recently purchased, but have not read yet. It’s not a cook book like you might think, but it’s a book on accelerated learning, while using learning how to cook as an example.

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Temporary Tattoo Attaches Health Sensor to Your Body

What if you could monitor your hydration, sodium, potassium and magnesium levels simply by wearing a temporary tattoo? Well, that could soon be a reality because Researchers at University of Toronto Scarborough created a temporary sensor tattoo that right now can monitor for dehydration and they’re planning to create tattoos made of other materials that detect the other things I mentioned.

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ABC: Is it Dangerous to “Squeeze the Glutes” During Hip Extension Exercises?

If you’re feeling pain in your hip or lower back when performing hip thrusts, you might not be squeezing your glutes enough. Squeezing your glutes protects the spine and the hips, so do it!

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Contreras Files V: 15 More Practical Tips

Lots of great tips here, all based on studies and real experience. It’s all random, but I’m sure you’ll learn at least one new thing from this post.

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Tim Ferriss vs. Leo Babauta on Goals on Vimeo

I really like Leo Babuata’s thoughts on how you shouldn’t always get hung up on outcome driven goals and should enjoy the success you have during the process of doing whatever it is want to do. Tim Ferriss also talks about how he gives himself an allowance of 40% “breakage” in not completing his goals, although he sets his goals very high in order to make sure he still gets something out of it.

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How do you sterilize your juicer?

If you own a juicer, you’ve probably thought about this too. I certainly have. The stains on my juicer don’t really bother me that much and I feel like my equipment is clean enough, but if you don’t have the same feelings, there are some good tips on here on some things you can try. Some examples are using olive oil and a cloth, powdered brewery wash or even Oxyclean.

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Muscle activation in conventional and sumo deadlifts

You can read the whole post for really technical info pulled out of the study, or you can skip to the end and get the key points. I read the whole thing, but I have to be honest, I didn’t understand much of it 😉 In the end, it seems that both sumo and regular deadlifts perform similar roles and both are good to include in a training program.