Archive for Fitness
Exercise Training: Critical Thinking
Posted by: | CommentsEvery Year the city of Miami Gardens hosts a festival called, “Jazz in the Gardens” and I attended it yesterday. I got a chance to see Mary J. Blige and Robin Thicke. I am from the “old school”, so it was really great to see Teena Marie doing her thing at the festival as well. Jazz in the Gardens was complete with all the trimmings including vendors and food. This festival was attended by “grown folk” and even some younger adults. I don’t know if I am being a bit too critical and maybe its because I am a health nut but 90% of the people there were overweight. It was really sad and it left me worried and wondering why people don’t take better care of themselves. If you have the answer for me, please send me a comment because I really would like an answer. It is a known fact that obesity is now an epidemic and my eyes were really opened as a result of attending this festival. Is growing old a rite of passage to get out of shape? It seems that way by what I saw yesterday and I am starting to believe that people don’t really care. I even saw some younger adults in really bad shape. I wonder if this would have happened years ago?
I was very discouraged by what I saw out there. I carry my business cards with me all the time but I just don’t think I had enough cards to give out on this day. I could have given out 5,000 business cards easy at this event and still would have needed to give out another 5000. What is the problem with our society? Why is it not an option to have healthy snacks and healthy food at these events instead of fried foods and sugary drinks? I guess it is just not as enjoyable as the bad stuff. What do you think? Until next time, see you on the lean side.
Darren McDuffie
Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist
Certified Fitness Testing Specialist
Certified Exercise Foundations Specialist
Certified Nutrition and Weight Management Specialist
Exercise Training: “Mind Chatter”
Posted by: | CommentsI hope your week is off to a great start! An interesting thing happened to me last week while I was working out in my garage. I was doing a circuit of exercises back to back with no rest in between, it was a 8 total exercises to be exact. Its called the crazy “8” and was invited by Craig Ballantyne with Turbulence Training. You may think it is easy to do but think about this, you are challenging your body to cardio and resistance in the same workout. Its only eight exercise but I can tell you after I finish four rounds of “Crazy Eights” I am exhausted to say the least! Well, this isn’t about “Crazy Eights,’” although I am going to give you a link where you can get the workout and try it for yourself at the end of this blog post. This is about what happened in my mind as I continued to work through the circuit and got tired. I started to hear what I call “mind chatter.” Have you ever experience this phenomenon?
Mind chatter for lack of a better word, is the place within you that tells you to give up. I have experienced it on several occasions during some grueling workouts. I start hearing this little voice saying, “quit” and “its not worth it”. I am not going to lie it is hard to ignore it, but I do. Why? I like a challenge and I want to improve. What about you? Do you listen to your “mind chatter?” Has it ever gotten the best of you? I believe people listen to it way too soon and normally it occurs just before a major breakthrough, but its hard to fight through the pain, right? Yeah, it is… but it is in these times that you’ll find what you are made of and if you are going to sink or swim. Do you sink or do you swim? I would love to hear about your experience with “mind chatter” and whether you listened to it or ran right through it and how it affected you. Until next post… see you on the lean side.
Darren McDuffie
Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist
Certified Nutrition and Weight Management Specialist
Certified Exercise Foundations Specialist
Certified Fitness Testing Specialist
Exercise Training: Women’s Pushups
Posted by: | CommentsCheck out my new video! I am discussing women’s pushups and the philosophy behind why I do what I do with my clients. Pushups are a great overall body exercise but with the traditonal way women do pushups you don’t get much activation in the abdominal region. If you are a woman, do your pushups this way for more abdominals action and better results. I hope you enjoy the video. See you on the lean side.
Darren McDuffie
Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist
Certified Nutrition and Weight Management Specialist
Certified Fitness Testing Specialist
Certified Exercise Foundations Specialist
Do you unravel when you travel?
Posted by: | CommentsI am traveling this week! A few thoughts came to mind so I wanted to ask, “what do you do when you are traveling”? What do you do when you are thrown into an environment and its not what you are use to? Do you adapt or do you just let yourself sink and give up on your healthy eating habits and exercise?
In the past when I traveled on business, I was at my own mercy. I would fall prey to all the meeting snacks they put out during break which would include pastries, cookies, and even ice cream. I”m not sure what it is about meetings but the thought of sitting there listening to one person for an extended period of time made me sleepy. In order to combat the sleepiness, I would eat just to try and stay awake. That was the wrong thing me for me to do! It gave me a sugar rush and it would temporarily keep me awake, but within a few minutes I would have to fight to stay awake even more due to the sudden rush of insulin. Once the meeting was over, I would run to my room feeling exhausted even though I didn’t exercise. Why wasn’t I exercising? It was probably because I thought I needed a gym at that time. I had fooled around in hotel gyms before and alot of them were ill equipped . What do I mean? They usually had one raggedy treadmill, no dumbells, and very few had any cardio equipment. So… what to do, what to do? I would usually go back up to my room kick up my feet and watch TV. Is that what you do now?
I think most of us give up when we are traveling because its easy to do. Its easy to eat all the bad food and skip working out because you are traveling isn’t it? What if you made the sacrifice to continue your exercise and eat healthy foods? Here’s what I did to make sure I didn’t skip my exercise routine and make sure I ate properly. I brought along my bodylastics resistance bands. I can attach those to my hotel room door for back exercises and also use them for a variety of other exercises. In addition, I packed some trail mix consisting of almonds, raisins, cranberries, and pistachio nuts. I ate that for a snack in between my regular meals. I bypassed the pastries in the morning, skipped the afternoon cookies, and told the ice cream goodbye with the evening meal. It made it easier that I prepared in advance and didn’t fall prey to self sabotage. Are you falling prey to self sabotage? See you on the lean side!
Weight vs. Fat… Do you know the difference?
Posted by: | CommentsI had an interesting epiphany the other day…. it came at a crazy time. I am training a client and she happened to ask me why she isn’t seeing her weightloss on the scale? I told her not to pay attention to the scale. She gave me a crazy look as if to say, “What do you mean, don’t pay attention to the scale?”. It sounds odd to tell someone this especially when their primary goal is to lose weight or is it? I think there finally needs to be a clear line drawn between weightloss and fatloss. Follow me… I am going somewhere with this!
In case you didn’t know, there is an obsession with weight loss. I would be willing to bet you can’t watch TV for an extended period of time without seeing an ad for some pill or potion to lose weight. Companies capitalize off this, and implant in the mind weight, weight, weight. Am I correct? What about fat? Few if any of these commercials attack fat loss! I wonder why? It’s probably because the money is in the disease and not in the cure. What do I mean by that? All of these weightloss companies are out to make a buck and not necessarily to educate the consumer. Don King, the boxing promoter, says it best when he says, “ Only in America” because only in America can ignorance be capitalized on to make a quick buck. They want to make money and won’t tell you the truth, but I am going to tell you the plain truth about weightloss right here and now! weightloss is a myth, it is fatloss you want to shoot for if you want to look and feel better. How could that be?
Have you ever seen someone who has loss weight at a rapid pace? I have and I can tell you they still looked unhealthy! When you lose weight at a rapid pace, chances are you are also losing muscle. Muscle is something you just can’t have enough of because it keeps your metabolism humming along so you can burn calories. You need to burn calories in order to lose fat. If you replace fat with muscle, you’ll look damn good… more shapely, more toned, and then you’ll have something in the bank that will keep your fat burning furnace revved up. You could settle for plain ol’ weighloss where you lose weight only to gain it back. If I were you, I would pick up a barbell, a dumbell, or resistance band and start building some muscle today. What do you think? See you on the lean side…Dee
Darren McDuffie
Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist
Certified Fitness Testing SpecialistCertified Exercise Foundations Specialist
Certified Nutrition Education and Weight Management Specialist
