What is your “target” heart rate?
Your heart rate is the same thing as your pulse, it is the number of times your heart beats in one minute. Pulse rates vary from person to person. Your pulse is lower when you are at rest and increases when you exercise (because more oxygen-rich blood is needed by the body when you exercise).

Knowing how to take your pulse can help you evaluate your exercise program.

How to take your pulse
1. Put the tips of your first three fingers on the inside of your opposite wrist, just below the base of your thumb. You can also put the same three fingers on your  neck, on either side of your windpipe. (See the illustrations to the right.)

2. Press lightly with your fingers until you feel the blood pulsing beneath your fingers. You might need to move your fingers around slightly up or down until you feel the throbbing.

3. Use a watch or clock with a second hand to time the pulse for 10 seconds.

4. Count the beats for 10 seconds. Multiply that number by six to get your heart rate per minute. Example: HR for 10 seconds 20 X 6 = 120

I haven’t personally felt the effects of altitude sickness but I’ve seen it and it’s not pretty. It’s characterized by an awful headache, dizziness, fatigue and nausea and can ruin your climb if you’re suseptible. A guy on the same trip a couple of years ago had the headache one minute and was very sick 20 minutes later, he was in top shape but had to see a doctor when we got to the hotel.

Altitude sickness usually goes away without treatment (when you get down to a lower atitude) but if it gets bad enough can cause your brain to explode – not really it just swells fatally.

The study tried ibuprofen up to about 14.000 feet but did’nt knock the sickness out completly so don’t try to use Advil to climb Everest.

impair your muscles ability to recuperate And repair themselves. Researchers have done a study, a small one with rats, that show not only a lot of little exhausted rats but alarming increases of oxidative stress to the muscle tissues caused by statins.

Do you take statins? Have you noticed your workouts or runs dragging?

You might want to have a talk with your doctor and rethink your diet choices; your cholesterol levels consist not only of the cholesterol in your diet but cholesterol made by your body as well. So if you were to say, go all vegetarian– that means no cholesterol through diet– what would your cholesterol measurement look like?  It might be a good idea to find out.

Will be back with more on this little bit later after more study. Something to think about.

Scientists at UCLA examined 1,575 healthy men and women that averaged 67 years of age.
Fatty acids were measured in the subjects’ by testing blood cells, which is a reliable test for this. They also checked the brains of subjects using MRI scans for any damage that would throw off the test.

Individuals in the bottom of omega-3 levels had considerably inferior total brain volume than persons in the highest level. The measurements were adjusted according to age and other determining variables. The lower level subjects performed much worse when visual and abstract memory was tested.

Dr. Zaldy S. Tan, the author, a professor of medicine at UCLA stated that “We feel that omega-3’s reduce vascular pathology and thus reduce the rate of brain aging.”

Most of the test subjects were eating more fatty fish and not using Omega-3 supplements, but the answer is clear. Omega-3′s keep your brain younger.

Regrettably, every body training program is not created with this in mind, when speaking in terms of muscle fiber types.

Type A Fast-Twitch Muscle Fibers

The first muscle fiber type is called Type A Fast Twitch and is responsible for the most explosive movements, but, will fatigue very quickly.

As an example,you would mainly be using type A muscle fibers if you were to do a set of 3 hard reps for squats or bench press, .

Type A Fast Twitch muscles are inclined to have sizable motor neurons and little mitochondrial density. They also have a a low level of oxidative capacity, which means they aren’t able to utilize oxygen very well. Because of this factor they are not suitable for endurance activities, as during these type exercises , oxygen needs to be present in order to maintain muscular contractions.

The main fuel that these muscle fibers are going to use is stored muscle glycogen (glucose) and creatine phosphate. They do not use body fat at all because they are only able to repeatedly contract for up to about 20 seconds.

Type B Fast-Twitch Muscle Fibers

Type B fast twitch muscle fibers is another muscle fiber also categorized as a fast twitch muscle fiber but not to the degree that type A is.

This fiber type is mostly utilized during activities that are fairly short in duration, but all out speed.

As an example, if you were to sprint for 100 meters, you would be using mostly type A. On the other hand, if you are running at an interval of about 80-90% of your max capability for about 30 seconds, you would use more of type A.

Type B muscle fibers are intermediate compared to Type As far as being resilient against fatigue, and they contain a high quantity of mitochondrial density.

This muscle fiber type is able to use oxygen to a great extent, as demonstrated by it’s being harder to fatigue and the longer length of contraction abilities.

Slow Twitch Fiber Type

The last type of muscle fiber is categorized as slow-twitch. These are the muscle fibers you would use when running a marathon or any other long duration, lower intensity activity.

These muscle fibers have a very high quality of resistance to fatigue and have a huge capability to use oxygen..

They are fairly slow to contract, so you can’t anticipate a great deal of power from these muscles, and are not be intended for exercises that need a high measure of power.

Slow Twitch Fibers are extraordinary in terms of mitochondrial density and they have a large number of capillaries running throughout them. The main reason is to enable enough oxygen to get to the muscle tissues when doing the extended muscular work they are made for.

These Slow Twitch fibers are the muscles that will rely on fat as fuel to a greater extent than, using creatine phosphate or carbohydrates..

Training Your Muscle Fiber Types

Now that you’re accustomed to the three major muscle fiber types, we should talk about how you will train each successfully.

Since type A are your chief power generators, to enhance them you’ll need to train using exercises that require max effort for short periods like sprinting at full speed or 3 rep sets for lifting, and any type of exercise that requires sudden contraction.

To train your Type B Muscles Fibers you want to slightly decrease the force with which you are to contract while at the same time increasing the time it takes to contract..

For example you would use the 6 to 10 repetition range to train these.

Next, you improve your slow twitch muscle fibers with endurance. This fiber will usually require the longest time to train for improvement because you need to focus on going for longer periods.

If you’re a runner, run farther and translate this to any other activity. This type of muscle has the ability to go for extended periods of time so this is exactly what you want to train it to do.

So, next time you are trying to organize your training program, be sure to take the different muscle fiber types into consideration. This will help you to get the most out of your training program, getting the precise outcome you’re looking for.

For a lot of you, shedding the excess fat can be really hard; sometimes even a lifelong fight. This is especially true about those mystery body parts or more accurately “body locations” that have stubborn fat deposits that don’t respond to diet and exercise.

You might not know about this but several non-invasive procedures to remove fat deposits have been working their way into the dermatologist’s office.

That’s right folks liposuction may be a thing of the past in a few years. But right now dermatologists are using a thing called radiofrequency to not only remove small deposits of fat but, get this…tighten the skin at the same time.

See fat cells are a little bit different than other cells, the little bastards cannot take heat or cold. And this is where most of the new technologies are focusing. Using radiofrequency your friendly dermatologist can now target specific areas of body fat using temperature to go after the fat cells.

It works by driving controlled heat far into the fat cells destroying them. Never to be seen again. Another great thing about this type of procedure is there is no downtime, you can just go back to doing what you were doing before your office visit.

The doctors we talked to said the procedure can be used just about anywhere on the body from small areas like the face to large areas like uhh well you know.

It works especially well on people who are not obese but simply have stubborn fat pockets but, from the excitement we’ve seen about this, they’re not going to limit it to small fat pockets.

Tightens the Skin?

Another claimed benefit of radiofrequency is its ability to tighten the skin directly over the fat deposits that are targeted. It does this by manipulating the collagen in the skin with heat which tightens the area up over a period of weeks.

Well there you go, pretty soon you’ll be able to have your cake and eat it too, without feeling guilty. She

Here’s a chart that breaks down the levels of cholesterol in different protein brands. Click chart for slightly larger image if needed.

You Have Options as to What Kind of Squats You Start With.
You can do:

• Body Weight Squats —>Great to start out with in the beginning.

• Door Squats —> Good for those with balance problems

• Smith Machine Squats —-> For serious results without the need for spotters

• Barbell Squats —> The king of leg and butt builders. Your goal should be these.

Body Weight Squats: These will get you ready for the barbell with less soreness.
Look for barbell and door squats below in this post.

THE PERFECT BODY WEIGHT SQUAT

1. Stand with feet 1-2 foot widths wider than shoulders
2. Feet should be pointing straight forward or turned a little out to the sides
3. Arms in front for balance
4. Inhale as you go down
5. Drive through your heels and exhale as you stand up
6. Do not lock knees out completely

Do up to 3 sets of as many as you can do comfortably. Start with 3 sets 15 or 20, then move up to 30 per set, then 50 when you feel you can perform easily. Both men and women athletes can perform hundreds.

**You will see your best progress though by using a barbell in my opinion but these are great to start with.

Squats are “whole body” exercise, and you should ultimately perform them with some added weight. There is a lot to keep track of while doing squats and it is extremely helpful to do them in front of a mirror to make sure your form is good.
Video thanks to the very good people at Crossfit.

Exercise Is the Key Cheating the Age Clock

New research from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s K.G. Jebsen Center of Exercise in Medicine provides statistical evidence that the 50-year-old can be just as physically fit as a 20 year old. But couch potatoes need not apply. Exercise — hard and often is essential to truly staying young. Say the researchers from Jebsen Center.

Middle-aged guys can take heart in research from the Center. They have determined that activity is far more important than age as far as fitness levels — and an active 50-year-old can be every bit as fit as a sedentary 20-year-old, says Ulrik Wisloff, Jebsen Center director and principle investigator of the study.

The study shows that by increasing the intensity of your exercise, you can avert the list of diseases that plaque today’s middle aged male.

“Physical condition is the most important factor in describing an individual’s overall health, almost like a report card,” says Stian Thoresen Aspenes of the center.

Training Intensity is Much More Important than Length

Interval training involves performing short periods of high intensity exercise followed by periods of  low intensity exercise of the same length. Such as: Sprint for 1 min. – walk for 1 min. that would be one interval. Depending on your level of fitness to do 3 to 10 intervals and structure them dozens of ways to fit your purposes. Look out for a special report on interval training coming up soon right here.

But a new study at Ohio State University disagrees with me. The study shows the two sexes differ greatly in their weight gain after marital status changes. The head researcher on the paper Dimitry Tumin, is a doctoral student at Ohio State.

He says “divorces for men and, to some extent, marriages for women promote weight gain that may be large enough to pose a health risk.” It seems that the likelihood of gaining huge gobs of fat is highest if the status change comes when you’re over 30. Tumin says, “For someone in their mid-20s, there is not much of a difference in the probability of gaining weight between someone who just got married and someone who never married. But later in life, there is much more of a difference.” The team presented their study at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Las Vegas on August 22.