Zen My Fitness – Linking Muscle and Mind

Posts Tagged ‘Yoga’

Food should never be boring or don’t get the guilts about having a snack, that is unhealthy not the food.

Raw Avocado-Lime Pie

If you want to try something a little different then try raw food.

You eat raw already by snacking on fruit but that can be extended to raw foods like lasagna and cheesecakes.

Here are some Benefits of a Raw Food Diet ( taken from About.com).

• Increased energy
• Clearer skin
• Weight loss
• Reduced risk of disease

The raw food diet contains fewer trans fats and saturated fat than the typical Western diet.

It is also low in sodium and sugar and high in potassium, magnesium, folate, fiber, vitamin A, and health-promoting antioxidants.

These properties are associated with a reduced risk of diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Read the rest of this entry »

Stretching Complaints Department - Please Enter

Do you bother stretching at all? Does it really help or hinder? Can flexibility help improve your bodybuilding? … I say YES and here is why.

Firstly we are discussing static and dynamic stretching to improve flexibility. Don’t confuse stretching with warming up as they are two different animals and should be treated differently.

Poor flexibility prevents you from achieving a full range of motion. Having tight muscles gives you less muscle growth from the same strength-training effort.

How does it improve bodybuilding?

Over time we tend to become less flexible and stiffer. You might notice your range of motion start to become limited as compared to when you were younger. And performing heavy weighted exercises shorten and stiffen your muscles and connective tissues when the effort is imposed.

Find out the right way and when is it best to stretch. This is a Guest Post I did at Musclehacker.com please click here to read more

Do women go for a Body Builder or Yoga Master? Pavement Pounders or Mountain Climbers?

A survey done by Quirkology.com found that the highest rated male activity that attracts females are climbing, extreme sports and soccer!

The bottom three are body building, golf and aerobics.

I guess if you are training to be the next Jay Cutler and on the prowl for that some one special you might have to reconsider your type of fitness hobby! … Not a chance?  so don’t drop that dumb bell yet!

Fortunately my Eastern European buddy Vaclav Gregor, the Founder of Muscle Pyramid supplied this guest article for me on that exact topic on how to get a lean, dominate and masculine body whilst still hitting the weights.

Over to you Vaclav! Read the rest of this entry »

Who is lean, muscular, toned, ripped 6 pack and good looking, Let’s play who am I?

Come To The Dark Side - there is plenty of room

Hmmm … Straight away you might think … Hugh Jackman, maybe Robert Downey Jr or is it teen sensation Taylor Lautner?

WRONG IT’S ME! … OK it’s not me … but we all would like to think that way and wouldn’t we kill for that perfect physique?

In fact all of us right NOW is trying to create that look but ask yourself “at what expense” does it come?

The fitness journey begins, we achieve positive results that’s to our liking. And humans nature will drive us to do more and more as these efforts produce better results
so the cycle begins! Read the rest of this entry »

How do you live longer?

Well READ this article before you;

1. Re-order your monthly dose of Tibetan Goji Juice,
2. Go off for a 20km run,
3. Book a spa retreat so you can meditate like a Zen Monk.

So just throw those ideas out the window for the next 10 minutes!

Unfortunately living to a 100 is still guess work but we do have some control over our longevity.

You might not want to live that long but hey everyone’s goal should be striving for an excellent quality of life for as long as possible.

But what we do know about living longer comes from a combination of 10% genetics, 20% family history and 70% lifestyle choices which is the only part we can control.

I like to use historically based data.

Finding trends in historical data usually provides a reliable forecast for the future. Read the rest of this entry »

Quickly go tell all your non-Yoga friends that they better start doing Yoga poses if they want to build muscle …. what? I can hear you say!

There are many parts of Yoga (8 parts in fact), but here we are only concerned with the Yogic benefits of muscle stretching and body resistance training to really allow you to develop to another level of  muscle building.

Leading by example are two actors (with nicely buffed bodies) that regularly practice this ancient Indian  exercise is Matthew McConaughey and Spiderman’s Tobey Maguire.

Both having lean muscular and athletic bodies.

MUSCLE STRETCH

In your younger days you were probably very flexible but as you aged, your body decided that stiffer shorter muscles were the way to go.

In your teens, your lower vertebrae starts to fuse, your hamstrings are no longer strings but more like surf boards, stiff and less flexible.

So for most of us adulthood brings on poor flexibility preventing a full range of motion in exercise, so we end up with limiting our results.

IF YOU DON’T GO ALL THE WAY DOWN ON A BARBELL SQUAT – TRY THIS! Read the rest of this entry »

What do you imagine Yoga to be?

A series of stretches is one aspect the other is that is develops the mind. Combine the two and you’ll have a very complete healthy routine.

Everyone knows yoga poses improves flexibility but some still question how does it improve fitness.

YOGA FITNESS

There are many Yoga styles which can help you get fit.

One example is Ashtanga Yoga it’s a style which encourages dynamic movements and transitions between postures.

It can be done as a very effective cardio workout and isometric body weight bearing exercise.

World famous ‘Madonna’ practices Ashtanga yoga, she began to practice Ashtanga after the birth of her first daughter. That’s more than 12 years ago, now she is in great shape as a 51 year old.

Boyer Coe (World Pro Grand Prix Champion) says about Yoga stretching “It builds bigger, better-quality muscles.”

The Obvious Benefits are: Read the rest of this entry »

Zen and bodybuilding combined develops the area of “muscle-mind link” which will increase  your training performance.

This process is called Synergy; simply put, it’s where you add parts together but the resultant is more than the sum of those parts!

Sounds magical? Not really but what it can mean is that we take advantage of this concept, apply it for creating an effective fitness body mind set  called muscle mind link that will produce better results.

The muscle-mind link is not new, some associate this with ‘psyching yourself up’ before the event but with Zen it’s done during the excercise (in realtime!) so we are adapting it in a different way.

Get Ready

WHICH EXERCISE ROUTINE IS THE BEST?

There are many fitness and weight lifting programs out in this big wide world. You’ll find plenty of programs all different in their approach.

It’s either short repetitions or long reps, slow cardio or fast cardio; do this but don’t do that! Yeah you get the idea.

Try a few of the programs, you could say well that’s a ‘cop out’ ! but find one that gets results for you, which doesn’t normally mean the easiest one, the ‘hurt’ box should appear a few times during your work out.

Read the rest of this entry »