Improve your selfesteem
June 8, 2009 by Chris Sine
Filed under No BS Resources
1. Do what you love to do.
Everyone loves to do something, when you indulge yourself in your love you improve the way you feel about yourself. You improve your self esteem.
2. Help others out.
Nothing makes you feel a warm glow than when you unselfishly help others. of course you can argue that this in itself is selfish, but if you take that line of thought you must think that existence is selfish. Forget that. Just do a good deed, help someone out, doesn’t have to be big and it doesn’t have to cost any money.
3. Acknowledge your strengths
There is no one who has no strengths. Everyone is good at something, know what your good at and give yourself a pat on the back. Do things that bring this quality out into the open. Excercise it, make it stronger.
4. Don’t put up with crap.
There is no reason you should tolerate other people being mean to you. Even if they say they are doing it with love. Make sure people know they should be nice to you and if they refuse, walk away from them.
5. Drop your negative friends.
Hang out with people who are positive and support you. It may be fun to bitch and moan but if you hang out with these types of people you will eventually become one of them. You may have noticed that people who bitch and moan are never happy.
6. Do your research
A lot of self help books are a waste of time in the sense that the only person who can change you is you. Reading even this blog post will not change you unless you get emotionally involved with the information. Which is really hard as it’s really dry and boring. Go read biographies of people you respect, people who do positive things and attain huge success. Learn from the master not the self help guru who is always in debt.
7. Learn to accept compliments.
It’s hard to accept a compliment and not to dismiss it as being ridiculous. Someone has an opinion and it should be respected, even if you do not argree with it. If people think good about you then maybe you should too.
8. Include positivity in your life.
I’m not talking an airy fairy chant in the mirror whilst naked. I mean take a positive slant on everything automatically. The meat pie you just bit in to may contain maggots, but maggots contain a lot of protien. OK that’s a bit extreme but you get the point.
9. Compare yourself against yourself.
If you look at how you were yesterday and how you are today and there is an improvement then that is great. If there is no improvement then you know you need to improve your efforts. Don’t start comparing your self to other people. Saying you are poor compared to D. Trump is just going to make you miserable.
10. There is no need for you to put yourself down.
Seeing yourself in a negative light you are only reinforcing your low self esteem. If you want to improve your self esteem. Ask yourself, how can I improve my self esteem. The answer will always be, find one positive thing about yourself and that will do it.
Chris Sine
Fitness Trainer
E:Chris@NoBSFitnessforLife.com
W: www.NoBSFitnessforLife.com
No BS Quick Cures for Crankiness
May 29, 2009 by Chris Sine
Filed under No BS Resources
Beat a bad mood with some feel-good solutions that will work in minutes flat.
Sure, there are days when you’d like to hang a sign on your door that says, “Leave me the heck alone!” But whether you’re stewing because of a tight deadline, a bad hair day, raging hormones or a sleepless night, you don’t have to spend the day gnashing your teeth and spitting venom at everyone that dares approach. Soothe those prickly feelings in a hurry with some remedies proven by science, and get on with your day in a more positive way. Here are 8 ways to cure your crankiness right now.
1. Listen to your mom
Save favorite voice-mail or answering-machine messages from people you love so you can listen to them anytime — or simply dial up a friend or family member. The voice of a loved one can quickly dissolve crankiness. That’s because pleasant sounds can decrease the tension that triggers irritability and distract you from annoyances. On the flip side, unwanted noise raises blood pressure, cortisol (the stress hormone) and, over time, even your risk of cardiovascular disease.
2. Order the suicide-hot wings
Spicy or hot food or drinks (think Thai, Hunan) can raise your body temperature and relax your body. So if you’re starting to think that AC is short for Arctic Circle at work, grab some hot ginger tea, wear a wool or fleece top or take a sauna or longer shower at the gym and the No BS Exercises will also warm you up. Increasing your body temperature can help calm your mood by reducing muscle tension, changing brain wave patterns, inducing hormonal changes and causing vasodilation (relaxation of blood vessels), which increases blood flow to extremities and circulation in general. when you’re comfortable, you’re automatically less cranky.
3. Get rocking
Ever wonder why Grandma looks so serene in her rocking chair? Rocking yourself is a natural anti grouchiness mechanism.. The rhythm allows the brain to relax and your heart rate to slow. If you don’t own a rocker (or want to), try this rocking yoga move: Sit on the floor, draw your knees up to your chest, join your hands under your knees and tilt your head forward toward your knees — now rock forward and roll backward onto your rounded back. Find any calming rhythm to shake your bad mood — literally — such as a mantra, humming, rocking or dancing in a swaying fashion. The clincher is that any music you listen to should be slower than your heartbeat — just think slow, soft rhythms.
4. Use powder
Sprinkle on some baby powder after your shower to chill your mood before you step out, or choose baby-powder-scented antiperspirant, car fragrance or drawer liners. Why? The smell of baby powder can quell a bad mood by evoking feelings (and memories) of safety and comfort.
5. Pause four times a day
Pause a total of 20 minutes a day, five at a time, to exorcise your inner grouch, That’s the magic number, research showed that’s what it took to reduce stress, including irritability, by 50%. Whenever you pause, your brain takes your body off high alert: your breathing returns to normal, which slows your heart rate, blood pressure and stress hormones and reduces the adrenaline overload that tension creates. The most important five-minute downtime is when you wake up: “Your body undergoes the biggest change in blood pressure and heart rate in the morning, so avoid hitting the ground running.
6. Telling jokes
Learn something from men: Study findings show that they typically open conversations with a joke or at least something not serious, whereas women start off by asking or telling someone what’s wrong, and the seriousness tends to escalate. “We can learn something from men about stress. “The more you can do to smile and laugh, the tougher it is to hold on to to bad feelings.” Laughing stops hyperventilation and reregulates our breathing pattern. And just smiling sends feedback to the brain that positively affects heart rate, blood pressure and digestion.
7. Wear pastels
Choose the peach top instead of the red one today. You may think that bright colours such as orange, red and yellow are cheery and energizing, but they can actually trigger aggression because they’re overstimulating. Consider that traffic signs usually capture these colours to send us into alert mode: watch out, danger and stop. Warmer tones have a nurturing, caring feeling, and the less bright and saturated the colours, the more soothing they are.
8. Get your heart racing
Do 10 minutes or more of aerobic exercise to douse grumpy feelings, 10 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise improved people’s mood the most. Working out at a higher intensity or longer won’t make you any cheerier either. Exercise has proven strong, calming effects that can last for several hours. But we’ve also found that it’s aerobic activity that seems to improve mood the most.
Chris Sine
Fitness Trainer
E:Chris@NoBSFitnessforLife.com
W: www.NoBSFitnessforLife.com
Bodyweight Strength Training
May 11, 2009 by Chris Sine
Filed under No BS Resources
Recommended For All-Purpose Strength
Mention strength training, and weight lifting or using machines immediately comes to mind. But there are many types of strength, not just “maximum” strength. I want to show you how bodyweight strength training is excellent for increasing each type of strength and why you should use your own bodyweight first and as an ongoing part of your strength training.
So, what is strength?
Well, a simple definition of strength is the capacity your body has to exert muscular and skeletal force against a resistance. The resistance can be the weight of your own body, the weight of something else or both. So, the larger capacity you have to move your own body or a foreign object in your environment, the stronger you are.
And being stronger has its benefits:
- You can do more with your body and objects you find in your environment
- You reduce the risk of injury because of increased ability to control your body and other objects
- You gain confidence knowing there is strength behind your movements
- You can overcome the challenges of sport, work and life easier
- And you look better because your strength is visually apparent in strong muscles
But the truth is, there are many different kinds of strength. And I believe each one can be improved upon with bodyweight strength training. Here we are going to look at the three main types of strength: maximal strength, explosive strength and strength endurance.
Bodyweight Training For Maximal Strength
Maximal strength is the amount of force that can be generated from one, all out effort, regardless of time or bodyweight.
Some people say weight training is best for maximal strength training, and for some exercises they are right. However, many trainees are using weights to perform exercises because they can’t handle the weight of their own body. For example, many men and women do Lat Pull Downs because they can’t do pull ups or chin ups.
There are many other bodyweight exercises that can build maximal strength. How about one-arm pushups or one-leg squats as strength builders? Most weight lifters can’t perform these exercises, regardless of the weights they use in their training.
Bodyweight Strength Training For Explosive Strength
Explosive strength is strength per unit of time, and is also known as speed strength. So, this is how much force you can generate in the shortest amount of time. In terms of bodyweight training, it means how fast you can move your body from one position to another.
Think of explosive movements like jumping squats or plyometric pushups where your body is propelled with such force it actually leaves the ground. Is this type of strength important? You bet it is!
Bodyweight Strength Training For Strength Endurance
Strength endurance is the amount of force you can generate for an extended period if time. It is the ability to be as strong as possible as long as possible. This type of strength is characterized by being able to perform a movement repeatedly without being overcome by fatigue or sacrificing form.
When you think of bodyweight strength training, this is normally the type of strength people think of. Rhythmic, repeated bodyweight calisthenics for example builds strength endurance.
As you can see, there are a lot of different types of strength. And you can train each one by using the weight of your own body. No outside resistance is necessary.
Think of it this way. The training you do is specific. If you do a certain type of exercise, you become better at that exercise. So, if you are training for all-purpose strength (which included maximal, explosive and endurance strength) where the object performing the movement is your own body, there is no better tool than bodyweight calisthenics.
Bodyweight strength training should be the starting point, and a continual part, of everyone’s over-all workout program.
Chris Sine
Fitness Trainer
E: Chris@NoBSFitnessforLife.com
W: www.NoBSFitnessforLife.com
Women’s Weight Training Myths
April 16, 2009 by Chris Sine
Filed under No BS Resources
First you should know that no amount of physical activity can give you your desired body if it is not coupled with bodybuilding nutrition and a total body workout. Actually, it is the bodybuilding nutrition that is the most vital factor in building the best body that you can have.
Women’s Weight Training Myth #1 – Weight training makes you bulky.
Due to the fact that women do not and cannot naturally produce as much testosterone (one of the main hormones responsible for increasing muscle size) as males do, it is impossible for a woman to gain huge amounts of muscle mass. Unfortunately, the image that may come to your mind is that of professional female bodybuilders. Most of these women, unfortunately, use anabolic steroids (synthetic testosterone) along with other drugs in order to achieve that high degree of muscularity.
In addition, most also have good genetics coupled with an unbelievable work ethic that enable them to gain muscle quickly when they spend hours in the gym lifting very heavy weights. Believe me when I say that they do not look like that by accident. Women who conduct weight training without the use of steroids get the firm and fit cellulite-free looking body that you see in most fitness/figure shows these days.
Women’s Weight Training Myth #2 – Exercise increases your chest size.
Sorry girls. Women’s breasts are composed mostly of fatty tissue. Therefore, it is impossible to increase breast size through weight training. As a matter of fact, if you go below 12 percent body fat (which I do not recommend doing), your breast size will decrease. Weight training does increase the size of the back, so this misconception probably comes from confusing an increase in back size with an increase in cup size. The only way to increase your breast size is by gaining fat or getting breast implants
Womens Weight Training Myth #3 – Weight training makes you stiff and musclebound.
If you perform all exercises through their full range of motion, flexibility will increase. Exercises like flyes, stiff-legged deadlifts, dumbbell presses, and chin-ups, stretch the muscle in the bottom range of the movement. Therefore, by performing these exercises correctly, your stretching capabilities will increase.
Women’s Weight Training Myth #4 – If you stop weight training your muscles turn into fat.
This is like saying that gold can turn into brass. Fat and muscle are two completely different types of human tissue. What happens many times is that when people decide to go off their weight training programs they start losing muscle due to inactivity (use it or lose it) and they also usually drop the diet as well. Therefore bad eating habits combined with the fact that their metabolism is lower due to inactivity, and lower degrees of muscle mass, give the impression that the subject’s muscle is being turned into fat while in reality what is happening is that muscle is being lost and fat is being accumulated.
Women’s Weight Training Myth #5 – Weight training turns fat into muscle.
More alchemy. This is the equivalent of saying that you can turn any metal into gold; don’t we wish! The way a body transformation occurs is by gaining muscle through weight training and losing fat through aerobics and diet simultaneously. Again, muscle and fat, are very different types of tissue. We cannot turn one into the other.
Women’s Weight Training Myth #6 – As long as you exercise you can eat anything that you want.
How I wish this were true also! As, this could not be further from true facts. Metabolism for an individual is determined by how many calories we burn while we exercise and while we rest. If we eat more calories than we burn on a consistent basis, our bodies will accumulate these extra calories as fat regardless of the amount of exercise that we do. This myth may have been created by people with such high metabolic rates (hard gainers) that no matter how much they eat or what they eat, they rarely meet or exceed the amount of calories that they burn in one day unless they put their mind to doing so. Therefore, their weight either goes down or remains stable.
Women’s Weight Training Myth #7 – Women only need to do cardio and if they decide to lift weights, they should be very light.
First of all, if you only did cardio then muscle and fat would be burned for fuel. One needs to do weights in order to get the muscle building machine going and thus prevent any loss of muscle tissue. Women that only concentrate on cardio will have a very hard time achieving the look that they want. As far as the lifting of very light weights, this is just more nonsense. Muscle responds to resistance and if the resistance is too light, then there will be no reason for the body to change.
Women’s Weight Training Myth # 8 - Women Shouldn’t Train Hard. I have trained with girls that train as hard as I do and they look nothing but feminine. If you want to look great, don’t be afraid to pick up the weights and lift hard!
Chris Sine
Fitness Trainer
E: Chris@NoBSFitnessforLife.com
W: www.NoBSFitnessforLife.com
Boost your Energy
April 6, 2009 by Chris Sine
Filed under No BS Resources
If dozing off at your desk around 3 p.m. in the afternoon has become a ritual in your workday — chances are you need to boost your energy. And while there’s no magic pill to make you feel energized, there are some ways to get out of that slump.
1. Get off the coffee wagon: You may be feeling like a java jolt to help keep your eyes open mid-afternoon — but beware. The caffeine rush will offer a pick-me-up for a while but then leave you with an even lower afternoon lull. Instead reach for a green tea to give you an energy boost. “Green tea is full of antioxidants that boost energy and even aid weight loss. “While coffee can leave you tired and dehydrated, green tea helps quench your body’s thirst and offers a sustained energy boost.” Energy boost and aiding in weight loss? We’re sold!
2. Eat often: No breakfast and scoffing down lunch at your desk at 1 p.m. is a recipe for feeling sleepy in the afternoon. Eating every 2-3 hours throughout day will keep your blood sugar levels stable, which in turn keeps your energy balanced. Instead of getting the highs and lows (which happens when your blood sugars rise and fall) you will have more energy throughout the entire day and chances are you won’t have the afternoon slump in your cubical. “Be sure to include a lean source of protein at each main meal such as eggs, chicken breast or a protein shake. “Having protein will also give you an energy boost and keep your blood sugar levels stable.” Nuts and crackers with cheese are protein-rich snack choices — so snack away!
3. Get sleep: Sleep does more for you than make you look good in the morning (we all know the wonders it can do for our skin!). It can actually give you more energy throughout the entire day if you get some good shut-eye the night before. “Aim for 7-8 hours of sleep in a dark room. Light can suppress the production of melatonin — a hormone that helps you get a good night’s sleep. “If you can’t wind down before bed, try some lavender oil under your pillow.” Another alternative would be taking Magnesium or the herb Relora; both help you to relax and ease stress so you can get some sleep.
4. Get off the couch: Stop watching Bones ( watching bones doesn’t count as physical activity) and get your butt to the gym — when you’re already feeling tired. But getting to the gym or doing some exercise three to four times a week will make you look and feel good plus give you more energy. Exercise gets the blood flowing which means more energy. Can’t make it to the gym or to a yoga class? “Take a 10 minute power walk on your lunch break, take the stairs instead of the escalator or treat the dog to an extra long walk.
5. Take vitamins: Want an easy way to boost your energy? Simply take a multi-vitamin that is rich in vitamin B — a natural energy booster. Taking one in the morning will keep you going all day — but avoid taking vitamin B in the afternoon since with all that extra energy it could keep you up at night. “Remember that vitamins supplement a good diet, not replace a poor diet.
Check with your health care practitioner if you notice a sudden, drastic drop in energy, which could be a sign of low iron levels or an under active thyroid.
Chris Sine
Fitness Trainer
E: Chris@NoBSFitnessforLife.com
W: www.NoBSFitnessforLife.com
