Month: January 2014

I was not feeling well over the last couple of weeks and Wednesday was my first day back at the gym. Everyone knows that crappy feeling after getting better from any sickness; the sore muscles, listlessness, down energy. I wanted to ease back into the gym and used the same workout for Wednesday and Friday.

So first, you need criteria for your workout and I had the above plus really I wanted to push my muscles a bit, I wanted to to get some cardio just to get my blood pumping and I wanted to stretch, all in 30 minutes or so. I thought this would be a great opportunity to talk about my 30 minute workout.

Here is my 30 minute workout

Cardio for 15 minutes

• 5 minutes on stationary Bike or rowing.
• 10 minutes on Elliptical Trainer

Weights for 15 minutes

• Bench Press 1 set of 8 to failure, dropped weight for another 4 reps
• Seated Row 1 set of 10 to failure (guessed the weight to use well)
• One armed lateral raise  with cable 1 set of 12 for each arm
• 7-2-1 for Biceps (this is 7 reps going from bottom to half way up, 7 from half way up to the top, and 7 full reps
• Tricep pushdowns 1 set of 10
• Squats 1 set of 10
• Hamstring curls 1 set of 10 heavy weight
• 10 minutes of stretching, stetching every muscle group a minimum of two times for 10 seconds each.

OK, so probably 35 minutes but this workout did a few things well. It stretched my muscles really well, it woke me up with cardio and I really pushed my muscles quickly. I like the workout but very quickly I am worried I will stop getting much out of it since I am not doing anything really well, I am only hitting muscles with one set and the cardio is too short.

For a general workout and improving fitness I really do think that this works best. If you are not working out or like me am getting over a bit of a cold or flu then by all means I think that this is a nice workout.

There are people at both ends of the spectrum as far as workout time goes. Some people will only workout for 15 minutes and some can’t get in and out of the gym in less than 2 hours. As for me I think it is critical to get the blood flowing, muscles sore and well worked out, and stretched. This is why the 30 minute workout is best for me and my lifestyle.

Last night my wife, daughter, and I finally watched Fat Sick and Near Dead (our son wasn’t interested, playing Minecraft). What a great Dodumentary it was. The whole premise of the movie is the idea of doing juice fasts.

I am not sure if Juice fasting is really fasting as you are getting carbs and protein, and probably a bit of fat but you are in fact getting more micronutrients that you have ever gotten in your life.

What is Fat Sick and Nearly Dead about?

Fat Sick and Nearly Dead

Joe Cross is the maker and how to this film and as it is setup he is suffering from an autoimmune condition where his immune system just fires up and gives him rashes all the time, in addition to this he is quite a few pounds overweight. Starting in New York and driving across the US to California, meeting people, talking about juicing, and not eating anything but only drinking juices for 61 days.

In the end Joe loses about 60 pounds or so and convinces a few people to try his juice with mixed results. One very interesting meeting on the road though was when Joe ran into a trucker with the same problem as him who weighed just over 400 pounds his name is Phil.

Once Joe gets back home to Australia he gets a call from Phil asking him if he can help. Phil has decided that he is very out of shape, unhealthy and scared for his life so Joe Cross flies back to the US to help him out. Phil is just another regular guy and tries that fast, starts exercising and I was super inspired by the way that he took hold of his life.

In the end we get to see two transformations through the power of juicing. I have a bunch of smoothie background now and had next to no juicing knowledge and the great thing about this documentary is that there is a lot of info about juicing, how it works, and why to try it out.

One of the things the movie really teaches us is that Juicing does not have to be a 24/7 lifestyle but instead it is a chance to do a 10 day or even 30 day reboot of your system to fix any toxicity in your body.

The three of us learned a lot and were really inspired by this film. Joe Cross is a really inspirational guy and we loved his story and seeing all the other success stories as well was great. If you have Netflix Fat Sick and Nearly Dead is on there. Watch it! It is really worth the time.