Archive for the 'Christian Fitness' Category
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Here’s another great article by Craig Ballentyne, the author of Turbulence Training. Although it deals with motivation when losing weight, these tips can be applied to every area of your life.
11 Ways to Stay Motivated in Your Fat Loss Program
By Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Author, Turbulence Training
Get 50% Off Turbulence Training
Today, we’re going to focus on something that I know a lot of men and women are struggling with – MOTIVATION.
So here are my top 11 inspirational tips to help motivate you to stick to your fat loss plan and transform your body & life forever.
11. Never Give Up
If you fall off the wagon, cut your losses. Don’t let it weigh on your mind and hold you back because it’s only minor damage that can be dealt with. The important thing is to get back on track, immediately. Never, ever, EVER give up. I believe in you.
10. Don’t Procrastinate
Do it now. Whether you’re thinking of cleaning out the pantry or finally starting to exercise, STOP procrastinating and DO IT now!
9. Identify Exactly What It Is You Want…
…then don’t let anything stand in your way of getting it. By setting specific goals along with deadlines you are providing yourself with a measuring stick.
8. Do Your Best With Everything You Have Control Over
Most people fail to control themselves, and end up only with regrets. We trade minutes of pleasure (i.e. fast food) for days, weeks, months, and years of regret.
Remember that the pleasure of eating lasts for only minutes, but you inhabit your body 24 hours per day, 7 days per week for life.
Rather than trying to “out-cardio” your bad diet, you must PLAN ahead to overcome obstacles. Otherwise, you’ll never succeed.
7. Replace Bad Habits
Everyday you will be tempted to fall back on old bad habits. To make a lasting change in your health and appearance you must do everything you can to resist that. Try adding a new healthy habit each day to replace an old unhealthy habit.
6. Be Consistent With Baby Steps
The best approach is to build your life one positive step at a time and the way to do this is by taking baby steps to improvement each and every single day. Be a little better than yesterday.
5. Test
There are no failures, only good and bad tests.
You should always be trying something new, monitoring your body’s response, and deciding whether or not that food or exercise belongs in your “tool box”. Do everything you can to learn more about your body. The more you know, the faster your success will be.
4. Social Support & Role Modeling
You can’t soar with eagles if you’re hanging around turkeys.
By hanging around others who want to lose weight, you can leverage their knowledge, commitment, support, and success to push yourself harder than you otherwise would be able to.
3. Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone
People will do almost anything to stay in their comfort zones.
If you want to accomplish anything, get out of your comfort zone and strive to increase order and discipline in your life.
Discipline means doing the opposite of what you feel like doing. Setting goals and deadlines are the easy roads to discipline.
2. Plan
Planning is the ultimate key to fat loss success.
With a weekly plan of meals and workouts in place, you will be much less likely to hit a road bump that takes you down the wrong path. Try setting aside one day a week to map out your weekly itinerary and you’ll be amazed at how quickly your body transforms itself.
1. Realize YOU Are In Charge of Your Success
Og Mandino once said, “I shall shape my future. Whether I fail or succeed shall be no man’s doing but my own. I am the force; I can clear any obstacle before me. Or I can be lost in the maze. My choice. My responsibility. Win or lose; only I hold the key to my destiny.”
Translation – Everyone can succeed and reach their goals. It’s a just a matter of how badly you want it.
I know you want it. And I know you can do it. And I’m really looking forward to your success.
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July 22 2010 | Christian Fitness | 1 Comment »
I’m so sick of writing about politics I want to throw up. So, at least for awhile, I’m not writing about it. It just makes me angry. Besides, we only live once, and although those of use who are saved will live forever in heaven, still, why wait until the next life to live a good life?
Peter Carvell is one of my favorite workout guys. He offers bodyweight only workouts for free.
If you’re still trying to get that six pack abs, maybe this workout will help.
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July 12 2010 | Christian Fitness | 9 Comments »
My apologies for not posting lately. I have been pretty busy with my business.
I do have a guest article for you today though. I hope you find it helpful.
The Best Exercise Substitutions for Your Workout
By Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Author, Turbulence Training
=> Turbulence Training
The truth is that sometimes you just won’t have the equipment, space, or strength to do some exercises in Turbulence Training.
Fortunately, there’s GREAT news about that, which I realized last week while writing up a new exercise column for Men’s Health magazine.
And the GREAT news is this:
Almost every single TT exercise can be substituted by an equally amazing exercise from my repertoire.
So let’s go through a huge list of exercise substitutions. This will be perfect for you to print out and keep with your TT program or in your workout area.
Exercise Substitutions
1) To replace Squats, you can do:
1-leg hip extensions
Step-ups
Deep Step-ups
Split squats
Reverse lunges
Forward lunges
Bulgarian split squats (with back foot elevated on a bench)
Reaching lunges
1-leg deadlifts
1-leg squats (use bands or straps for assistance if necessary)
1-leg squats standing on a bench
By the way, if you are using dumbbells for squats or lunges and you find that the weights are too heavy to hold, you can switch to a barbell if you have access to it.
The only reason you don’t see barbell exercises in the TT programs are because most TT readers exercise at home with dumbbells.
2) To replace Deadlifts:
The only “direct replacement” is dumbbell squats.
Otherwise, just replace deadlifts with a superset pairing of any lower body exercise paired with a row.
For example:
Barbell lunge supersetted with a DB row
Stability Ball Leg Curl supersetted with Inverted Row
3) If you have sore knees and need to replace lunges:
First, see a doctor and have them diagnose the problem. Second, see a therapist and have them treat the issue. Third, see a trainer and have them assess where you need to work on flexibility and how you can include some “knee-friendly” exercises in your workout program.
These exercises include:
Lying Hip Extensions (also known as Lying Hip Bridges)
1-leg Hip Extensions
Lying Hip Extensions with your feet on the ball
Stability Ball Leg Curls
4) To replace Bench Presses or Dumbbell Chest Presses (of any kind), you can do one of these:
Pushups
Close-grip pushups
Decline pushup
Elevated pushups
Off-set pushups
Pushups with your feet on the ball
Pushups with your hands on the ball
Pushups with your feet on the ball and hands on the bench
Suspended strap pushups
Spiderman pushups
Spiderman climb pushups
Pike pushups
Dips
Decline close-grip spiderman pushups
By the way, if you have dumbbells but no bench, you can replace flat dumbbell bench presses by lying on the floor. And you can replace incline dumbbell presses with standing 1-arm dumbbell shoulder presses.
5) To replace any kind of row, here are alternatives:
Dumbbell rows
Dumbbell rows with elbows out
Dumbbell chest supported rows
Barbell rows
Inverted rows
Underhand grip rows
Seated cable rows
Renegade Rows (with flat dumbbells or kettlebells)
Dumbbell rear deltoid raises
Rows with TRX or blast straps
Chin-ups (these are done with an underhand grip)
Eccentric chin-ups
Sternum chin-ups
V-grip chin-ups
Pull-ups (these are done with an overhand grip)
Eccentric pull-ups
Sternum pull-ups
And in place of pull-ups or chin-ups, you can do:
Dumbbell rows
Dumbbell pullovers
Underhand grip pulldowns (kneeling) – replaces chin-ups
Overhand grip pulldowns (kneeling) – replace pull-ups
Assisted chinups/pull-ups using machine
However, if you have absolutely no equipment (i.e. no dumbbells, no barbell, no cables, no straps, and no bar) then unfortunately there is no way to train your upper back. The best you can do is to add a lot of prisoner squats, prisoner lunges, stick-ups, and WYT’s to your bodyweight program.
6) To replace dips, you can do:
Any version of close-grip pushups
Dumbbell floor presses
Dumbbell close-grip presses
Close-grip bench press
7) To replace dumbbell split squats, you can do:
1-leg lying hip extensions
Bulgarian split squats (use higher reps or the 1 & 1/4 rep method)
Split squats with your front foot elevated 4-6 inches
1-leg deadlifts
1-leg squats (holding straps or cables for assistance)
1-leg squats standing on the bench
Step-ups
Deep step-ups
Reaching lunges
(NOTE: For many exercises, including pushing and pulling too, you can play around with the 1&1/2 rep style – lowering to the bottom position, coming halfway back up, and then lowering again, and then coming all the way back up.)
Please forward this list to your friends or print them a copy.
To your success,
Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Turbulence Training
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June 22 2010 | Christian Fitness | 3 Comments »
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